When the River Café is mentioned, who do you think of? Ruth Rogers and Rose Gray. Possibly Jamie Oliver and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. If Theo Randall, head chef for the past 10 years, wasn't exactly an unsung hero, he was hummed extremely quietly.

Randall joined The River Café in 1989, two years after it opened. Apart from foraging trips to Italy and a year out absorbing the vibe at Alice Waters's Chez Panisse in Berkeley, California, Randall has been cooking in Hammersmith for 15 years. It would be surprising if he had not been hankering after a place of his own for some time now.

What is perplexing is his choice of a windowless, low-ceilinged dining room in an American-owned Park Lane hotel.

Corporate backing for a chef has definite financial advantages - and here it puts Randall in possible future competition with Richard Corrigan at Grosvenor House and Alain Ducasse (rumoured) at The Dorchester - but seasonal, rustic, woodfired, basically simple Italian food sits very oddly in such an environment.

Why didn't he find a backer and lease a big, rambling pub?

At the InterContinental, which is completing a £60 million refurbishment, you must go into the hotel lobby furnished with lowslung monster chandeliers and turn right into a space which makes you swear you've gone down a flight of steps because it is so like a basement.

The designer's decision to paint the 124-seater room dark brown, furnish it with bronze leather banquettes and decorate it with a row of candles in red glasses above the bar and pictures reminiscent of a computer nerd's abandoned screensaver is not advantageous. Some hotel functionary must have insisted on the recorded music which thumps feebly in the background.

Only a display of antipasti, cakes and tarts on the long bar and the heads of chefs bobbing about in a partly open kitchen gave a clue that anything gastronomically particular was going on.

Our waiter, who would seem to be Italy's answer to Mr Bean, laboriously explained that Antipasti meant first course, Primi meant middle course and Secondi was the mains. That established, we ordered.

One of three of us had a meal that turned out to be a surprise in that what was assumed to be a cold first course - bagna cauda - turned out to feature warm cooked vegetables, and what was believed to be a warm main course - poached langoustines - arrived stone cold. This did not lead to happiness.

River Café cooking style is often as much about assembling fine ingredients, including heavenly olive oil, as what is done with them. The warm vegetables with the anchovy sauce - not served in a little dish over a burner as is customary - were beautifully prepared and another starter of Devon crab with fennel, celery and bottarga was irreproachable and generous, too.

The best of our chosen antipasti, though, was calamari in padella, tiny pieces of squid mixed into delicious fresh cannelloni beans, the juices bumped up with anchovy.

Best of the main courses tried was wood-roasted Anjou pigeon on bruschetta with pancetta, Castelluccio lentils and braised cavolo nero. You're sure to find the recipe in a River Café cookbook but you probably don't have a wood-fired oven at home. This may make the £26 price more digestible - all main courses are either £26 or £27.

Mr Bean invited us to follow him across the restaurant to look at the desserts on display. We declined. The last thing you want to do threequarters of the way through a meal is get up and traipse about, winding your way through tables, even if you are brought face to face with the sight of the famous flourless chocolate cake, chocolate nemesis.

A request for fresh fruit brought a plate with part-peeled Clementine, sliced apple and pear, walnuts and big raisins still on the branch. Enough people eat out enough of the time to make it worthwhile for restaurants to come up with healthy desserts. And then undo some of the good work with, as here, fantastic chocolate truffles. Of course, dark chocolate is good for you.

The sourcing of wines is not confined to Italy - maybe another hotel decision. Mercifully, the traditional hotel giant mark-ups are not applied.

I was pleased to discover that last week was the soft opening period. Even with 50 per cent off the food, Theo Randall seemed expensive. And his real competition, Francesco Mazzei at Jeremy King and Christopher Corbin's St Alban in Regent Street, will be opening very soon.

InterContinental Park Lane, 1 Hamilton Place, W1 (020 7318 8747)
Open for lunch daily, noon-3pm (3.30pm Sunday), dinner Monday-Saturday 6.30pm-11pm. A meal for two with wine, about £130 including 12.5 per cent service.