Coquine

You have to be impressed when a restaurant is full, midweek, in the midst of a mini-typhoon, and it is particularly impressive in this bit of London. At the west end of the Old Brompton Road restaurants are a penny a dozen, yet Coquine was properly heaving, its chi-chi banquettes lending a particular feeling of cosiness – even intimacy – thanks to their proximity. We spent the latter part of our evening giving menu tips to our neighbours, which created a nice sense of conviviality.

I had the miso cod (£11.75), which was fresh enough to give that unerring impression of silk, and so perfectly cooked that its flakes slid apart like a masterclass in the physical universe. It was a triumph. I said to the waiter (and I never do this), 'That was just delicious,’ and she replied with a suave yet thoughtful, 'Thanks, we’ve been working on it for a long time.’ Like it was physics, or an Arctic seed bank. Everybody in here seems very invested, and I mean that in therapy-speak, not as in a small-business development loan. My pal T had the scallops (£8), which looked a tiny bit prissy, perhaps, like a starter for a wedding, but were delicious once you speared into them, soft, classy, with a nice saffron-y topnote.

I carried on with the guinea fowl (£16.50), on a bed of spinach, but not in a fussy way, and a generous side-cloud of mashed potato. It tasted pretty good, too, the bacon it was wrapped in lending a nice extra flavor and succulence. T had the lobster burger (£14). It was discreetly sweetish, and subtly intense, which gave me to think, again, 'This fish is very fresh.’ You think that should be a given, for fish, in a restaurant, which you’ve actually paid for. Normally, I would sooner bank on the chef being able to translate the Iliad.

For pud we shared the flash fried Oreos (£6). You have T to thank for this discovery; I thought it sounded weird and wanted plain ice cream (what am I, 12?).

It was incredible from top to bottom: the crunchy biscuit interior had fully retained its crunchiness, whereas I often find fried confectionary claggy (the last time I had a deep-fried Boost in Edinburgh I felt distinctly sick afterwards, although this may well have been alcohol-related). Anyway, the fried cookies were profoundly delicious, as if the chef had reinvented not just the biscuit genre but also the Oreo. The filling had a wonderful consistency of molten creaminess. It tasted very distinctly doughnuty, and yet utterly right and proper, as if this biscuit had always been a pudding, as if only an idiot would eat it bereft of batter. Two blobs of coffee icecream laced with crushed Oreo cookie completed the triumph. By the end I totally loved it in there. And, three days on, I have considered the gastropub prices for the quite superior cooking and ambiance and I love it yet more. So it can’t just have been a sugar high.