Some vigorous string-pulling went on to get us a table at The Admiralty, London's newest ultra-trendy restaurant. It has a brilliant address - Somerset House, The Strand. Somerset House is a magnificent civic palace said to have 1,000 rooms and it's where, as any keen reader of detective stories knows, you go if you want to establish if the dastardly Rupert Cavendish is the real son of the Duke, or is masquerading as the Marquess who died at birth . . . in other words where the births, marriage and death records are held as well as various valuable art collections.
I went with Financial Times foodie writer Hugo Arnold, who pulled the strings, and his wife Sue and their tiny baby Ruby who proved to be our real passport at The Admiralty since the Italian waiters all got down on their hunkers to goo at her and the maitre d' made sure we had a fine corner banquette so that there was room for her seat. Ruby turned over and went to sleep as soon as we sat down so that's the end of the baby angle in case you were worried.
To get to The Admiralty you walk though a splendid and huge enclosed courtyard rather like the Royal Hospital Kilmainham which is very dramatically lit at night. You can also go in the back door, from a terrace overlooking the Thames where there is also an open air cafe, The River Terrace Cafe (not to be confused with The River Cafe). This would be just the ticket for lunch on a warm day but looked chilly the night we visited. The Admiralty is yet another restaurant from the Gruppo chain - Oliver Peyton's eating empire that includes Isola, Coast and Mash, all totally different to each other, all killingly smart and hard to get into.
The Admiralty, which is just six weeks old, is decorated to look as though it might have been there since Nelson's time, with dark, aged walls hung with obscure prints and bits of dead animals.
The dining room walls are a wonderful shade of terracotta, no doubt mixed 20 times by the interior decorator, Solange Azegury, and, in the bar, a sludgy olive green inspired possibly by the back passages of some huge and depressing country house.
By contrast the banquettes and chairs are in a flirty Tiffany blue soft leather and a band of the same colour surrounds the one page menu card. The staff, busy at their polished granite work stations (in the only colour to have now - a sort of browny red that comes from somewhere like Zimbabwe) look extremely neat, if a bit queasy, in pale lime shirts. The whole thing would be too severely trendy for words if it wasn't for the row of chandeliers, in the form of galleons in full sail dripping crystals, that sway gently from the ceiling.
Cuisine du Terroir is what's on offer on this determinedly French provincial menu devised by head chef Eric Guilbert, who has done stints at Tante Claire and the famous Tour D'Argent in Paris.
That doesn't mean terrifying food, although it might, if you didn't know how to tackle some of the dishes - not the food but the actual table ware. The Terrines du Jour, for instance, come in two hefty ceramic dishes that you can cut chunks from and pass around while my dessert of chocolate mousse arrived in a big stainless steel vessel, a dog bowl really, from which I served myself onto a plate.
The tables have stand-up shelves at one end to accommodate a clutter of little individual copper pans that the various sauces for our main courses came in which added an element of palaver to the meal but still, we ate superbly.
The short menu - five or six choices for each course - is based on the cuisine of the Landes region, which is roughly below Bordeaux and home of confit of duck. It's rich, aromatic, very comforting food like roasted rabbit served with a lavender sauce, pot-roasted squab pigeon with garlic and thyme and slow cooked salmon and artichokes as main courses, all perfectly cooked with intensely flavoured sauces. The starters are fabulous. Sue had the terrines and foie gras together, a £17 starter best accompanied, we were advised, by a glass of Montbazillac. They didn't say that the glass would cost £9. The foie gras came in a very generous slice, thickly crusted with butter and with toasted bread, not brioche, which we all preferred.
My starter of scallops with bacon and cabbage was rather mean by comparison with four small discs of scallop served on ribbons of cabbage with, I must say, the most amazingly smoked bacon - nothing like our own shrivelled slices, or boring American strips, but strap of it, half fat, have solid pink meat.
Hugo was hugely impressed with his chilled pot au feu, which was exactly that. A beef stew, perfectly cold with brilliantly coloured vegetables lightly gelled around nuggets of tender meat. Desserts were the only letdown. The chocolate mousse tasted as good but no better than Cadbury's 90 calorie Light Mousse, with crumbs of real chocolate added, while Sue and Hugo's shared tarte tatin was welded to the plate with its hardened syrup although the rounded chunks of apple on it were pure mouthfuls of autumn.
Two other things stand out - the butter which was fresh and very creamy, and the espresso which comes in a glass cup to show off the depth of the froth they manage to get on top.
Our bill, including a lot of wine, came to £236. Expensive, but we all left feeling as though we had had a thoroughly good night.
On to J Sheekey, then, a genuinely old London restaurant off St Martin's Lane, that has been serving up seafood since the gay 90s (the 1890s that is) to show business people and Covent Garden market traders. Two years ago it was snapped up by the Caprice Group, which also owns The Ivy, that famously difficult to get into restaurant where, we are led to believe, celebrities dine in their dozens.
The idea is that if you can't get a table at the Ivy, then try J Sheekey instead. It's equally stylish and it's a good bit cheaper too. We booked a few days in advance for two, and were able to change it to three just an hour before sitting down. It's a big place with steamed up windows so you can't see what is going on inside. You walk into plenty of buzz with waiters in long aprons rushing around and champagne bottles sticking out of ice buckets at lots of the tables.
Being a Saturday night it was very full and there was more hustle than bustle with the waiters seeming to be always there, removing glasses and plates and bottles from the table just as soon as we were finished with them.
The most popular dish here seems to be fish and chips, followed by prawns and whitebait which are served in commendable heaps. Sarah loved her smoked eel starter and roasted halibut to follow while Diarmuid was just as pleased with a leek and wild mushroom tart and scallops risotto. I had jellied eel and found it perfectly disgusting, followed by an odd dish of veal sweetbreads stuffed into two tough ravioli and served up with a whole baby lobster in a big copper pan. Sarah and I shared a great espresso ice cream while Diarmuid made light work of a huge plate of iced berries covered in a hot white chocolate sauce - a favourite at The Ivy apparently.
The bill came to over £50 a head and though it was interesting, with lots of very good looking people to stare at, I wouldn't rush back.
The Admiralty Restaurant, Somerset House, The Strand. London WC2R 1LA. Tel: 020-78454646
J Sheekey, 28-32 St Martin's Court, London WC2N 4AL. Tel: 020-72402565
