Death by apostrophe

Bord'eaux Grosvenor House hotel, Park Lane, London W1 (020 7399 8460) Meal for two, including wine and service, £120

I wish I had been at the meeting where they decided the name for this restaurant, if only so I could go around slapping people, shouting: 'Oi! No!' It's such a small thing, isn't it, that apostrophe between the 'Bord' and the 'eaux'. Apparently it is meant to suggest a balance between land and sea, or some such other rubbish. All it makes me think is that somebody has been seriously overthinking this. Bord'eaux - and that's the only time I will deign to type the name - is meant to be a Parisian-style brasserie serving rustic food. The problem is it's a Parisian-style brasserie serving rustic food in a glossy hotel on London's Park Lane, and it just doesn't pass. It's a transvestite with a heavy five o'clock shadow. It's William Hague in a baseball cap at the Notting Hill Carnival. It's just plain wrong.

Not that this is exactly surprising. 'Characterful' restaurants in bland hotel spaces can't help looking like a theme-park version of themselves, and that's what's happened here. Oh, they've got the stuff, all right. No expense has been spared to get the stuff: the slabs of ornate wood panelling, the antique tiled floor clearly shipped in from somewhere else, the engraved glass panelling and the brass rails. But the space is so vast, so echoey, that it ends up looking flat-pack and false. Once upon a time this was another restaurant entirely. (Nico Ladenis's dining room, as it happens). Some time in the future it will be another restaurant entirely again. And there's the irony. The Parisian brasserie is meant to stink of tradition and history, is meant to have deep roots that burrow down into the culinary soil. And yet this one looks like it's waiting to be blown away by whatever great idea the food and beverage manager of the Grosvenor House has next.

The only thing that's not wrong with it? The food. I ate a great lunch, just in the wrong room and at the wrong price. It's no surprise that everything was as it should be on the plate. Chef Ollie Couillaud has form, even if he does shift around a bit, from La Trompette to the Dorchester Grill to Tom's Kitchen and now to here. He knows what he's doing, and here it all is: fruits de mer, from £30 for two up to £70. Escargot and lobster mayonnaise, fish soup and chèvre salad, onglet and duck confit, and cassoulet and so on.