Hitting a bad night might have been an explanation for my experience at The Marquess Tavern, but some reviews posted on the web would seem to scupper that theory.

However, I did have two meals of notably differing quality at the newly opened Chelsea Brasserie attached to The Sloane Square Hotel.

On the first evening, when we were more or less the only customers in the 140-seater restaurant (which is why I went back), chef David Karlsson Moller - previously senior sous-chef for four years at Henry Harris's Racine - was sending out dishes which confirmed one's belief in the worth of French bourgeois cooking.

A few nights later the standard of cooking was uneven and some of the servings what you might call stingy.

The place itself lacks allure. Peter Langan ( founder of Langan's Brasserie) said never use the colour green in a restaurant and spectral light cast by dozens of green glass shades hanging from the ceiling at Chelsea Brasserie proves him absolutely right. Also, rectangles of mirror inserted into bare brick walls provided a visual equivalent of hearing the screech of chalk on a blackboard.

Crab bisque with tarragon and Armagnac chantilly was delicious and thus lots more of it the first time round was most welcome. Champignons à la Bressane is just a more delectable way of saying mushrooms on toast.

It is admirable to offer raclette, but it is infinitely better melted on a raclette-melting machine than arriving as a puddle of molten cheese on a boiling hot plate. The baked red onions with it were good.

Partridge with glazed chestnuts was not flattered by the red cabbage bathed in fat set beside it, but calves' liver with sweet-and-sour shallot and Alsace bacon was a fine assembly and the bavette de boeuf bercy as flavoursome as this cut can be. Ravioli of butternut squash with sautéed wild mushrooms featured pasta with the pliability of a sheet of wax - not a success.

Vanilla ice-cream was served with a miserable amount of prune-and-Armagnac sauce, but the most annoying example of what seemed like pointless penny-pinching was the incredibly thin slices of baguette in the bread basket. And each time they were brought back we had to answer the irritating query: "Is everything to your liking?" Since you asked, not entirely.