Grace and flavour: Angler

This week I celebrated my birthday.

More accurately, friends celebrated around me while I stood mooing into a mirror, pushing the skin beside my eyes back taut and tambourine-like, cursing my slide closer to the hideous ‘f-word’ that follows 39. They threw a small soiree for me at the delightful Modern Pantry in Clerkenwell. I love its private rooms upstairs. Gifts included crow’s-feet fix balm, a seven-inch signed copy of ‘I’m Not Scared’ by Eighth Wonder, a large Pyrex measuring jug, a variety of filthy things from Prowler and a Justin Lee Collins-esque Pukka Pad that I can take to restaurants to document crimes against food. That’s it now, I say, no more ageing. From now on I plan to be suspended in time just like Cliff Richard, Joan Collins, the lions at Trafalgar Square, and Caprice.

My birthday lunch was at Angler, that shiny-gilled, brand-new fish restaurant specialising in ‘the rich abundance of British rivers and coastlines’ — Orkney Island langoustines, Mersey Rocks, Cornish cod — at the top of the equally spanking new South Place Hotel, a seven-minute walk from Liverpool Street Station. I rather like South Place, it has the air of a cooler, bespoke Malmaison, in the days before Malmaison got slightly tatty and predictable. Angler is a large, bright, way-up-high, glass-fronted, modern room serving well-heeled comfort food. It’s the perfect place to sit and observe London growing ever taller around you. Have yourself a glass of Nyetimber Classic Cuvée and spy on the cranes, scaffolding and legion of men in hard hats industriously hammering Broadgate into a bigger, faster, stronger form.

Angler was deserted when I visited. It’s still very much a secret. It’s almost a shame to tell you about it, because I love restaurants when they’re at that ghost-ship stage but with an excellent menu and a talented chef loitering in the kitchen waiting for something to do. I took my friend the writer Sophie Heawood as my reviewing wingwoman. Eagle-eyed ‘Grace and Flavour’ fans may remember Heawood’s last appearance in this column over a year ago when she was in the advanced stages of pregnancy, resembling a small planet wrapped in stretchable linens. Back then she distracted from her sphericalness with a large, flamboyant hat not dissimilar to Ermintrude’s of Magic Roundabout fame. We used to get served very quickly in restaurants in those days. Her daughter Echo celebrated her first birthday this week at an East London venue full of equally bohemian babies fresh from conversational language classes, some of them able to gurgle in four tongues or more.

We ordered London-cured smoked salmon with warm blinis, which despite being a simple choice, transpired to be one of the loveliest things I’ve scoffed this year. The blinis were in actual fact ‘blini’ singular; one large, warm, spongey on the inside, crispy on the outside, fresh blini that resembled a Spanish tortilla. I yearn for it now as I type. The yellowfin tuna tartare with lime and chilli was zesty and fresh. This is thoughtful, accomplished cooking. The starring part of my lunch was the Angler and lobster pie: chunks of lobster in white sauce with button mushrooms and a rich mashed potato top. Heawood ate Dover sole meunière, which arrived as a whopping piece of what I’d declare the prettiest-looking fish served in London.

I like this place. It’s businessy but it has a heart, the staff are attentive and convivial, and the dessert menu is bloody superb: baked rice pudding with Victoria plums and clotted cream; sherry trifle with Pedro Ximenez; roast figs with pistachio crumble; and my choice, the idiotically decadent millionaire shortbread, which was a blur of rich chocolate fondant, dripping caramel and raspberry coulis. I’m not sure what the deal is with millionaires and their fascination with coating things in caramel and chocolate, but I’m sure it would liven up a night in with Donald Trump. Perhaps it’s what he styles his hair with.

Angler, South Place Hotel, 3 South Place, EC2; 020 3215 1260; Anglerrestaurant.com