A destination for style plates

light”); and the famous teardrop-shaped Fade pendants, which have a metallic finish that graduates from completely reflective to transparent in an even fade along the body of the light. On the tables are lots of his Etch tealight holders in brass, pierced geodesic structures, quite a thing, if that’s your thing.

As if this were not design enough, Bronte has also been construed as a “collector’s house”, “explorer-themed”, featuring “cabinets of curiosities”, displays, some behind glass, others sc attered i n f o r ma l l y around the restaurant. This may be a concept too far. Behind us as we ate was a display of glass paperweights which did not seem to add much except to show just how tasteless glass can be made if you try.

So there: Bronte is a designer restaurant for designer people and we spent some happy moments contemplating them captured at the rest aurant’s launch in the alwaysrewarding ES Magazine’s party-picture section last week.

And the food? Sorry, almost forgot. The menu has been created by Andrew Lassetter and is delivered by Jonathan Villar, who worked previously with fusion maven Peter Gordon. So it is mightily fusioned up, with lots of dragon fruit, paw-paw, kalamansi (acid orange), yuzu, tahini, nam prik, miso, mango, kaffir lime and all the rest of it, listily applied. It gives the impression of luxury holiday hotel food.

During a a short stay at the lavish Soneva Kiri resort on the Thai island of Koh Kood, such food seemed at once exciting and appropriate to me. Here it’s delivered on a budget — Bronte is not at all overpriced — in London, far from the sources of such ingredients, and our reaction to nearly all of it was that it was all right, nice enough, not bad, OK. K.

From the small plates, octopus,s, k a l a ma n s i , chilli, c h a r r e dd pineapple, thai shallots and mint (£7) was a cold salad, quite f re s h , qu i t e n i c e , n o t h i n gg remotely comparable to thee fantastic charred octopus at Barbary a few weeks ago.

Crab and avocado rice paper wraps, v e r mi c e l l i n o o d l e , man go, mi n t , coriander and nam prik (£6) were also cold, slightly slimy rolls with surprisingly little taste of crab or much else, given such a rollcall of ingredients, except that supplied by a heavy dose of nam pla in the dipping sauce.

Better was the chorizo and prawn scotch egg, aleppo chilli sambal (£6). Such has been the showbiz career of the scotch egg in recent years, it was bound to end up here sooner or later — a really strange combination of flavours that worked surprisingly well, lifted by the pool of red sauce in which it sat, with a herby splash of green too.

From “Salads and Bronte Dishes”, roasted rare beef, paw-paw, cucumber, mint, coriander, green chilli, pickled carrots and ground wild rice (£14) was again a little bit less than completely freshly prepared and a lot less interesting than its list of ingredients promised, a bit dominated by the vinegary pickle.

I ordered peri-peri baby chicken, avocado and orange salad (£14) purely because it seemed such an obvious Nando’s substitute — and it was a tasteful one, the chicken nicely jointed, the sauce not too hot, perfectly satisfactory. Skinny fries, nori and rosemary salt (£5) were good.goo Fig tarte fine, frangipane and vanilla ice cream (£6) was nice enough too, the pastry quite light.

So have the wacky scotch egg, the faux-Nandofa chicken and chips and you’lly do fine, and then you can enjoy Tom Dixon’s design as the main event, forfo not too much money either. The winew list is short and predictable (sstarting off with El Pico red or white, at £5 a glass and £20 a bottle, described merelym as a “blend of Chilean Grapes”, a bitb basic even for a corner shop). When I aasked if there was any cheese, I was told,tol no, they had no cheese, alas, not in a merrily Pythonesque spirit.

ForF food alone we would have just as soonsoo have gone to a Côte or a Turkish grill.gri More to the point, just around the corner, a 90-second sprint, is Boyd’s Wine Bar and Grill, 8 Northumberland Avenue, which serves classic food and glorious wine in a splendid marble hall. I adore that place, even if it doesn’t have a direct view of the Duke of Bronté. They do have cheese, though.