London,

Assemblage

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60-62 Commercial Street, E1

Phone: 020 7247 1445

Opening hours: Lunch Tues-Sun noon-2pm. Dinner Tues-Sat 7-9pm (last orders)

Nearest tube: Aldgate East

Cuisine: Other

Average price: Set price lunch £20/£26 for two/three courses. Taster menu £65 or £90 with matching wines. Sunday lunch £30 for three courses. A la carte, a meal for two with wine, about £135 including 12.5 per cent service.

Laudable ambition: chef-proprietor James Knight-Pacheco, a former runner-up in BBC2’s The Restaurant

In last week's review of The Lady Ottoline gastropub a mention of some of the works of novelist Aldous Huxley in the introduction caused the Harden brothers, compilers of the eponymous restaurant guide, quickly to tweet their discomfiture - maybe even panic - at the thought that no one would be able to understand or follow the copy.

Hold on to your hats, Hardens, because this week I am invoking Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, aka "the Dada Baroness".

Along with many others, including Marcel Duchamp, Pablo Picasso and Kurt Schwitters, German-born Elsa created two- and three-dimensional compositions of found objects, an artistic process that in the mid-20th century was labelled "assemblage".

James Knight-Pacheco, whom you might have spotted as runner-up in the second series of Raymond Blanc's BBC2 reality show The Restaurant, has made the reasonable point that assembling found objects is what chefs do on a daily basis. And called his new restaurant in Shoreditch Assemblage. Whether he pronounces the name with a French or English accent, I don't know. Probably English, as another aspect of his "philosophy" (as he puts it) is that the majority of the produce used at Assemblage is sourced from independent suppliers in the South-West of England.

Only a limited number of found objects - tables and chairs being the most relevant - are currently decorating the premises, where uncovered brickwork, black paint and bare boards create a fairly bleak environment. Wires protruding from the walls, however, indicated that last week - opening week - Assemblage was a work in progress.

Tableware including plates from Villeroy & Boch in fancy-schmancy shapes and contorted cutlery - for a left-hander the knife for bread and butter was unusable - point to both Knight-Pacheco's dreams and also his CV, which includes stints at Gordon Ramsay at Claridge's, The Square and a few months at Blanc's Le Manoir aux Quat'Saisons.

The set lunch menu was not in operation so we had to chose à la carte, an expensive route to take in the middle of the day looking out, as I did, at Codfellas Fish & Chips on Commercial Street and, during the Pinterish pauses in the meal, slightly longing to decamp there.

Our amuse-bouche, or what the Taster Menu calls Primer, was described as "James's take on pumpkin pie". A spoonful of mousse, dessert-ready in its sweetness, sat in a spoon-sized dimple in a rectangular white plate with a flat, narrow stick of pastry laid on top. Both Beth and I took one nibble and stopped. It was an appetite killer.

"Have you finished with your amuses, ladies?" trilled the waitress as she removed the almost untouched potential pie filling.

Duck and pheasant terrine was a small dark cube of pâté crouching on a path of a partly floral garnish, bringing to mind the sort of thing that, when I was a child, I used to enter into the East Horsley Flower Show in "Garden on a Plate" class.

Toffee popcorn, prune purée, pine nuts and something like lemon curd were dotted and spread about. The terrine itself was sweetened with either figs or prunes.

The title Almonds & Egg introduced a duck egg poached sous-vide with a mound of nubbly almonds and pieces of the Somerset ewe's milk cheese Fosse Way Fleece. The glaucous appearance of the egg white was not much of a come-on. The following day I had to fry an egg hot and fast in lots of olive oil to get a bronzed crinkly frill and a reminder that I do like eggs. 

From the four choices of main course - cauliflower cheese, sea bass, venison or Dover sole - we chose the first two. Even at £29 I might have gone for the Dover sole until I saw it was described as poached, in other words probably cooked sous-vide, or boil-in-the-bag to use a less technical and not quite accurate term. Clumps of cauliflower fried in breadcrumbs were the unanticipated but quite agreeable presentation of that vegetable along with a kind of cauli hash brown, leeks and a not-pungent-enough English-mustard cheese sauce. Sea bass was nicely seared but overcooked, flabby, innocent of flavour and befriended by two purées, one of butternut squash, the other of potato.

Sautéed batons of salsifis were a bit of a saving grace.

Desserts of carrot cake with cinnamon ice cream and duo of chocolate became highlights of a meal I wish I could have liked more. Set lunch menu at £20/£26 for two/three courses - now in play - including ham hock terrine and pan-roasted pheasant breast looks considerably more alluring in both content and price.

Winners of The Restaurant TV show where the prize was to be involved in restaurants not quite of their own have all abandoned the ventures. It has to be handed to James Knight-Pacheco that he has opened in London under his own steam - and that of his business partner Alicia Whitby - with laudable ambition. And the wine prices are reasonable.

Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.