When beer would have been better than wine

Maybe it was the rustic gastropub-like surroundings. Maybe it was the extreme smokiness of the smoky bacon. But I couldn’t help feeling after lunch at one of London’s hottest new restaurants 32 Great Queen Street in Covent Garden that I’d have been better off with a beer.

32 GQS is the newly opened sister restaurant (if restaurants can be said to be feminine) to the much lauded Anchor & Hope near Waterloo and has been equally lavishly praised. It’s good - but not go-out-of-your-way-to-get-there good. I ate with my publisher and our main dish of skate, bacon and runner beans read slightly better than it tasted.

Runner beans being at their best at the moment I was expecting ultra-tender, freshly picked, jewel-green beans when what we got was khaki-coloured beans that tasted as if they had been heated up from the night before. The cooking of the skate too was less than precise but the dish was salvaged by some really rich-tasting smoky bacon which I’m sure came from some rare breed pig of impeccable pedigree. It cried out for something like a strong golden ale or lager rather than the perfectly serviceable Macon Lugny we drank with it (which did however go rather well with a more seductive first course of sautéed courgette, cauliflower, mint and goats curd).

Hype is a problem with new restaurants. They’re only just settling into their stride when the critics turn up. The crowds haven’t yet arrived which means that the kitchen (still supervised closely by the chef who drew up the menu) copes pretty well. Once the reviews come out the numbers increase, the invariably exhausted chef feels it's safe to leave a few of the services in the hands of his or her underlings and the quality tends to become more uneven. There’s a good restaurant struggling to get out of 32 Great Queen Street but it's not quite there yet.