Brompton Bar & Grill

BB&G 'embraces the concept of what the market desires in menus, ambience, style and value,' says the website. Indeed. Despite modern appearances, this market rejects contemporary notions of healthy eating, and the pavement outside is thronged with Marlboro smokers. Indoors, a patrician clientele squashes into a room covered in an eclectic collection of pictures, for hot and plentiful food that's much better than you might expect for a Knightsbridge kind of caff. Staff cope well. There's a core menu of whitebait, grilled ribeye, calf's liver, cheeseburger, grilled tuna and chicken; there are security blankets of dauphinoise potatoes and scrambled duck egg with mushrooms; and fashionable revivals like crispy pig tails. It's sophisticated comfort food, sometimes messing with ingredients to no advantage. Hot, crisp, deep-fried quails' eggs, like mini sausage-less scotch eggs (plus a trendy salad of peas, pea-shoots and micro leaves), with grain mustard-spiked mayo, was a fattier and less pretty starter than simply boiled quails' eggs. A vast bowl of fish stew, as rich, oily and ruddy-hued as our neighbour, was packed with big chunks of fish, mussels and clams, and topped with saffrony rouille on toast. Pudding selection is a little perfunctory, but by then we'd had enough. If you're looking for hearty alternatives to Knightsbridge's salads and sushi, this is the place.