Restaurants

Plateau is about occasion dining. The occasion in question here is impress-the-client business entertaining, Canary Wharf-style. Which means expense-account prices, a serious wine list, attentive, well-orchestrated staff and a wall of views to gleaming tower blocks. Decor and food both represent safe modern luxury, the former reflecting Plateau’s Conran origins (though it is now owned by D&D London). The furniture and lighting are stylish if no longer cutting edge (nor ‘futuristic’ as the website claims). The restaurant food aims to be fashionable, but in ingredients rather than technique – dishes include tuna with ponzu onions, and pig’s trotter with Yukon gold potatoes. The cooking is reliably well-executed, and prettily presented. The bar menu is cheaper and more Mediterranean in character, to an extent that seems distinctly unseasonal in winter, when you can’t get a good plum tomato for love nor money. We were disappointed by crab rolls no better than you’d find at a good Vietnamese restaurant for a quarter of the price, though our partridge was excellent, and pork chop with orzo pasta flavour-packed. Plateau is certainly worth considering, at least if someone else is picking up the bill (particularly for the £9.50 bloody marys).

Time Out Eating & Drinking Guide 2009