Food Miles: Whitechapel Gallery Dining Room

My friend Dougie Anderson is a very tidy chap, both in appearance and domestically. I know this because we used to live together - in a flat-share arrangement, I might add, not in any other configuration. In my bachelor days, Dougie was always putting me to shame: while I was lounging about on a sofa picking at cold takeaway boxes, he would be zipping about the place with a duster, or deftly manoeuvring the vacuum. It was a bit like living with Anthea Turner.

I arrived at the Whitechapel Gallery to find Dougie waiting outside. I looked shabby; he looked immaculate.

Galleries and museums often have some sort of café attached - usually a steam-filled room offering weak tea, mass-produced chocolate brownies and the noise of children screaming at their parents and vice versa. But the Whitechapel Gallery is something else. It is home to a proper restaurant over-seen by culinary big-hitter Angela Hartnett and promises much more than brownies.

Like Dougie, the restaurant is neat and gleaming; unlike Dougie, it is wood-panelled and adorned with mirrors. The place was already filled with cultured-looking types of all ages by the time we started with a pair of rhubarb Bellinis. Then we went hell for leather like two men celebrating a bank job. We had some obligatory artisan bread with oil and then some whipped goat's curd with roasted garlic. Dougie had chicken livers with pancetta on toast, accompanied by an Australian Shiraz. 'This is great, Miles,' he said between forkfuls. I had sardines and a glass of Gavi. I haven't had proper sardines for years - they're wonderful.

This was all by way of a warm-up. We shared a Côte de Boeuf that had the heads of other diners turning as it was brought to our table. This was complemented by a bottle of Malbec, then supplemented with a lemon tart and a millefeuille.

If the meal had a low point, it was the argument that broke out between the couple at the next table. Their exchange, though heated, was carried out in whispers that served to make it menacing. It blew over eventually, and as we stood outside talking about how much we'd enjoyed it all, we could see them through the window gazing soppily at each other.