The Outsider

The Outsider's façade, paradoxically, tells you everything you need to know by conveying absolutely nothing. It is dark, reticent, bedecked in grainy grey tones like the smoky gauze of a Parisian widow. Inside, it is unequivocally composed, sophisticated and refined; chic, not showy. This vestige of self-conscious refinement extends to the service: the staff are impeccably turned out but don't demand your attention; wine is not poured, but smiles are sprinkled with abandon. We both begin with little slabs of slow-roasted pork belly and tender scallops, dotted here and there with dainty fronds of watercress (£6.40).

They say that the perfect marriage is one founded upon compromise. These people clearly have not dined at The Outsider. This dish – atypical of its run-of-the-mill surf-and-turf cousins – is unbridled, uncompromising perfection. The pork was grainy and firm, compact but richly flavoured; the scallops, having merely flirted with the pan, were yieldingly soft and sweet, pliant pearlescent beauties. The utopia of man and woman elegantly embodied in eatables. Venison is a stately meat and receives appositely fine treatment here. The cut itself – fillet – was cooked to a jewel-coloured brilliance, like a hunter's boot spattered with blood; it abdicated to the bite with such tender civility I almost blushed.

Tradition, as should now be quite obvious, is not The Outsider's strong point, for innovation is the name of the game. This game in particular was bedded with two fat chunks of celery and enrobed in a silkily dark meat-juice-rich vanilla jus and – lo – what perfect bedmates they made! Nestled upon a wide cushion of nutty, sweet root-vegetable mash, the cut was richly endowed with the finest trappings.

The theme of perfect innovative marriages shifted seamlessly into pudding. Chocolate and coffee pavé with molasses ice cream was the doyen of the dessert table. This was a neat slab of the smoothest, most potent chocolate mousse, spiked with the darkest coffee, but foiled by the smoky creaminess of molasses ice-cream.This inspired touch lifted the dish from regular French patisserie fare to dinner-table elegance: the dark depth of the molasses echoed the bitter obsidian of the cocoa-coffee convection, but cut it with intense sweetness and the mollifying calm of ice-cream.

The playful, almost sensuous artistry of texture and flavour is sublime at The Outsider. Witticisms of taste combination and jokes on one's expectations abound – venison and vanilla, really? – a perfectly entertaining evening on all counts.