Local eats: Chelsea

It's especially tough on a Sunday night in London to find a riotous place to eat. I know because I spent two hours driving around looking for the right spot. A ridiculous number of restaurants were empty, sedate, or just closed. I was with Crazy Jane, her chap and a friend we'll call the Dirty Blond. We had just spent the weekend being hedonistic pigs and didn't want to stop.

Then we hit upon Pucci Pizza on the King's Road. Jane and I both did a stint in Chelsea in the Eighties, when Pucci's was the bad girl's cafeteria. You ate, you danced, you were on display. Despite the plastic vines on the ceiling and the house wine that tastes like Ribena with a kick, I've seen (or rather glimpsed, for it is one candle away from pitch dark) more celebs in that restaurant than anywhere else. On the wall they have the cheesy-local-restaurant clip frames full of sozzled regular customers past and present, except they are people like Diana Ross, Simon Le Bon, Grace Jones and old Georgie Best. Sophie Dahl and various It types have all waitressed there. Pucci's is the last remnant of once-hip Chelsea.

Amazingly, the actual Pucci was in, sitting at the owner's table by the kitchen, with two pretty girls. It was as if the last 15 years had never happened.

The loud trance that was playing when we arrived kept getting louder. By the time we left at 11.30pm, Pucci was dancing. This was a respite from Sunday night, indeed. The Dirty Blond said it felt like the sort of place people who live and work in Ibiza go to.

As soon as we came in, bruschetta was put on the table, and we ordered some pizza bread with tomato. It is the cheapest thing on the menu. It lacked a crispy underbelly. They need to crank up the heat in the pizza oven, because the pizza and calzone, two of our mains, were soggy-bottomed as well. The calzone was the size and shape of an inflatable travel pillow and its filling lacked distinction. Jane's Chelsea pizza was fine, the Parma ham was good quality but there was more cheese on the hi-fi than her pizza. I had the spaghetti vongole - the clams were many, without shells, and not big on flavour. Jane's chap had spaghetti bolognese and said there wasn't nearly enough of it.

We were about to order some tiramisu, but the class war raging at our table was getting out of hand. By now we were a table divided. Jane and I were happy, erstwhile Chelsea clubber bunnies, whooped up into high spirits by bad progressive house music and the now endless shots of lemoncello Pucci was waving in our direction. The gents were disgusted by the 'intellectual vacuum' of Chelsea. I remember now that they are both former communists with a hatred of inherited wealth.

In truth, Pucci's isn't really for posh people. It's for vain people who go out a lot and like to eat late (the chef doesn't leave until after midnight). The rich only come if they are ravers too. But Chelsea is an acquired taste. And for two excommies, the allure of Pucci's was hard to find. For any shallow sybarite, though, its appeal is loud and clear.

Pucci Pizza
205 King's Road, SW3 5ED