PJ's Grill

There's another PJ's in Covent Garden, which always seems to be doing decent business whenever we've walked past it. But this South Kensington spot remains the signature branch, its wide frontage beckoning diners into a woody room that's quite handsome in a slightly posh, slightly timeworn way. Kensingtonians, Chelsea-ites and other denizens of west London have been coming here for 20 years, made to feel at home by personable staff, a faintly upscale atmosphere and walls of polo ephemera (the name refers to a long-forgotten 1930s movie called Polo Joe; owner Brian Stein is a keen player). Certainly, it can't be the food that's drawing the crowds. With 18 starters, 14 mains and six salads, the lunch menu is long enough to raise suspicions that the kitchen may be cutting the occasional corner; a forlorn opener of soggy pasta and bland crab, its lack of flavour part-hidden by a surfeit of chilli, did nothing to disperse them. If anything, a special of toughish pork fillet wrapped in parma ham and then absolutely suffocated by mozzarella was even less appealing. Disappointing, all told.