Grace and Flavour: Senkai

There is literally nothing about the solemn phrase 'Senkai is London's first sustainably sourced Japanese-inspired restaurant' that encourages me to put on lipstick and hotfoot it to Regent Street on a Saturday night. Right away, I was put in mind of Gwyneth Paltrow sadly pushing myoga ginger around with biodegradable chopsticks, rough paper in the loos and a lecture about whaling with every plate of sashimi. In actual fact, Senkai is rather upbeat, but then staff need to keep gleeful as they serve the tiny plates of pricey dumplings, tempura and robata, stripping every penny from your bank balance while never quite making you feel full.

We blew £160 in less than 80 minutes, bashing through plates of excellent shitake dumplings, tiny delicious pieces of pepper squid with seven flavoured spice, black kingfish with samphire (£16.50, glomp glomp, there goes 45 seconds), chargrilled aubergine (or, more accurately, a quarter of an aubergine), oysters with shallot rice vinegar and chilli ponzu, and perfectly nice but forgettable wrasse nigiri and cat shark maki. I wasn't worried about the St Paul's anti-capitalists lynching me for decadence as I wasn't remotely full and could have easily outrun them.

As plates arrived, served by aesthetically perfect staff, I sat on my low-level Japanese-inspired plastic garden furniture (a bit like if B&Q did a Karate Kid range) in the enormous dimly lit dining area, kept buoyant musically by what sounded like one endless epic version of 'I Like the Way You Move' by Bodyrockers, dipping deep-fried purple sprouting broccoli in soy sauce (possibly verboten by some culinary rule but I like to live fast and loose), more fascinated by the clientele.

So who eats at Senkai? On a Saturday evening, wealthy Chelsea dads ordering £800 of nibbles for a table of offspring who'd rather be anywhere else; long tables of European forty-plus bankers and their bare-flesh, bed-headed wives; earnest, casually dressed male foodies and their partners ordering one plate at a time then playing 'let's identify the micro-herb'. We paid up and went to The Diner off Carnaby Street for bourbon, cake and loud Siouxsie and the Banshees. I found my happiness there much more sustainable.