Princess of Shoreditch

This handsome venue gets decor right by not doing very much at all to its 250-year-old corner premises, filled with light from large windows on two sides. Walls are plain white and tables square and solid and the only obviously designed touches are a custom-made wooden bar and a spiral staircase that links the downstairs bar to the upstairs dining room. It gets service right, too, with bantering, friendly bar staff ensuring a proper pub mood and aproned waiters raising the tone upstairs in the dining room.

The drinks include a clutch of ales from the South-east, including East London Brewery's Nightwatchman, and the wine list goes for interesting tastes over establishment favourites and is aware of current trends: the wine of the month when we last visited was from the Lebanon.

But don't let the barstool bonhomie deceive you. The Princess also has aspirations to be a serious restaurant, following current mores on seasonality and sourcing (lots from Scotland) and going for a little more complexity than the average gastropub (on the restaurant menu particularly). Prawn and lobster cocktail comes with caramelised lemon, and brandy jelly; and salmon with smoked haddock fishcake and a tarragon reduction. We've had some great food here, full of flavour, nicely presented and conceived with colour and texture also in mind, but the occasional niggle, too - some seriously over-salted fishcakes, for example - which matters a little given the restaurant-level prices.