Hibiscus

When Hibiscus first opened, it was stunning, but our recent meal disappointed on many levels. Perhaps this could be put down to the summer holiday season.

Undercooked, chewy quail, and veal kidneys with a spaghetti junction of nerves and veins suggested insufficient hands on deck; then again, our Scottish girolles were among the cleanest wild mushrooms we've encountered. Equally dismaying, however, was the sheer failure of Claude Bosi's famously daring combinations of ingredients and concepts to please the palate: toasted rice and fresh and candied almonds provided no crunch or flavour contrast to a bland, creamy 'royale' of supposedly aged parmesan; crushed, minty peas and pistachio lent colour contrast but curiously jarring texture and flavour to a tartare of salmon with coconut velouté; crisped shrimp shells and salty potato wafers proved an umami overload on duck-fat sautéed kidney; and a single, screamingly acidic apricot half drowned out the delicate girolles.

On the plus side, we loved the moist granary bread and the faultless desserts. Perfectly poached peach with a frangipane 'stone' was beautifully offset by a delicate almond milk ice; a rich yet flaky bakewell tart with flavour-packed cherry gel indicated an angelic pâtissier.

The atmosphere in the olive-toned dining room struck a nice balance between the overtly formal and almost relaxed. Yet a gentle buzz of excitement from a motley crowd, stimulated by successive arrays of startlingly designed crockery, couldn't quite dissipate our sense of sampling food fashioned for the terminally bored. We hope this is a blip as we've enjoyed many meals here in the past.