You’ve all seen Sketch even if you’ve never been there. It’s the precursor for the instagram generation; twenty years of flamboyant aesthetics that have been copied a billion times for every bouji, over-the-top restaurant, bar, and cafe that appeals to the type who walk into buildings filming, continue filming and now film themselves eating. Downstairs is the floral Glade made famous on Made in Chelsea, the original all baby pink space of The Gallery, the neon graffiti of The Parlour, and the igloo East Bar with those space egg toilets. Up one flight of stairs and it’s the shiny jet-black loos, another set of stairs and it’s the Lecture Room and Library, glass-panelled, gauche and trippy, with arm chairs for seating, padded white linen table tops, and ornate decorations.

It’s a different clientele upstairs. Three Michelin stars and a price point to match will do that to a room, especially when it transpires the house champagne is £55 a glass. I count eight nibbles; tarts of pickled celeriac, rolls of cured duck and foie gras, a mussel in a turmeric heavy sauce that tastes more korma than yellow curry and a downright disgusting shell of sea bream and passion fruit that crunches like autumn leaves underfoot. Various biscuits, from a quite unpleasant carrot one, to the sable that tastes just like Ritz sandwich crackers, to one that I think is seaweed but could have just about been anything. There’s a watermelon cube that’s been compressed with negroni. I ask for more as petit fours. Four more appear two-and-a-half hours later when we’re paying up. For the perplexing nature of the food throughout the meal, the service was perfect.

Pierre Gagnaire’s cooking has always had a fever dream quality to it and here is no exception. Bread rolls come with a traditional French butter, a lemon butter that’s like licking Fabreeze, and a dill pickle butter that has the qualities of a Big Mac. That’s a lot butter for some very average bread. And then the second splay of courses, ranging from impeccable langoustines on the most perfect of lentils kissed with curry, a sausage of duck with creamed corn, to a fairly average scallop with sauce gribiche. Whilst I’m still undecided about the scallop with cold egg sauce, I absolutely never want to try cold aubergine with mozzarella and grapefruit again. It has the feel of something a drunken vegetarian would pull together after a night out.

They’d ran out of ideas by main. Sea bream was overcooked, with metallic saffron onions and metallic spinach puree. On the side is a cold foam of boullabaise every bit as bad as it sounds. And risotto, technically perfect risotto, with truffle sauce and artichokes. A great dish by itself, without the warmed up passata in the bowl, or the tomatoes on the side which tastes vaguely like a Keralan curry. There’s no cohesion, no semblance, no relationship, a statement backed-up by the burnished grapefruit bread which has turned-up. There’s one dessert of pear, ginger and Baileys. It’s totally forgettable.

There is wine and port and coffees that start at a tenner each and a bill in the hundreds which is to be expected for a three star restaurant. We had a great time for all the reasons except for the food; the room, the service, the booze and the company, but the food is never three stars. It’s wild and chaotic; a place of overindulgence and decadence. It’s just a shame that the food isn’t really all that good. Still, at least they have the toilets.

5/10