Annex 3, London W1

The first thing you need to know about Annex 3 is that it marks the West End debut of the entrepreneurial threesome behind Loungelover and Les Trois Garçons, two of east London's most fashionable destinations. The second is that the "3" in Annex 3 is pronounced in the French way. To rhyme with the "gah!" that will involuntarily escape as you step across the threshold and take in its garishly decorated interior. Talk about a dîner du chien. This is the kind of restaurant that makes you reach for the Gaviscon before you've eaten so much as a mouthful.

If Les Trois Garçons is a camp romp around an antiques market, this is a white-knuckle ride through a junk shop of exuberant bad taste. The reception area is papered with mismatched strips of 1970s floral wallpaper. The central dining area is a futuristic playpen, its snakeskin tables, Perspex chairs and gold leather banquettes arranged around a neon-lit toy carousel. Every surface is painted, papered, bejewelled or mosaiced. The effect is dizzying, like sitting inside a boxful of Quality Street. Or, in the words of one of my guests, the artist Paul Davis, "a rough Sketch".

Once the old stomach has settled, though, there's something admirable, if not exactly loveable, about all this tat, sorry, eclecticism. The design feels like it has been created for the fun of it - not because some corporate marketing team has dictated that opulence is the new minimalism. Some of the details are lovely; we admired the fleamarket paintings, and the dozen different vintage chandeliers. But some of it simply doesn't work. The wine list, for example, is printed on reflective silver paper, rendering it illegible in the gloom, and the low-slung plastic chairs instantly transform their occupants into munchkins.

Still, the "if you gild it, they will come" philosophy seems to have paid off. Without any publicity, the place was already busy in the first couple of weeks, attracting a rather smarter, less downtown, crowd than the team's Shoreditch operations. On the night I visited, I spotted a glossy-mag editor and a youth TV commissioner among the tables of PR girls and account executives in the charmed circle around the carousel. Meanwhile we were relegated to what felt like Siberia, in the murky entrance area, where the combination of low lighting and clubby music left us squinting and shouting "eh?" at each other like a party of OAPs.

The menu reads as though the owners collapsed in a heap after the last gewgaw was in place, all energy spent; the anaemic-sounding offerings on the list have none of the va-va-voom of the décor. Most of the dishes are French bistro staples given an Asian twist. So, braised belly pork comes in a ginger broth, steak tartare with lotus root crisps, and there's a lot of soy sauce and Japanesey shavings of radish and ginger.

Some pretty decent bread and butter apart, carbs are in short supply. This is food for people who don't really eat, as our starters confirmed. A crab salad comprised two scant spoonfuls of white meat - heaven forbid they should include the brown stuff that actually tastes of something - with a few molecules of ginger and apple. A terrine of foie gras - also gingered up - delivered no more than a pleasantly smooth texture, and absolutely zero flavour. Only one dish stood out, the most straightforwardly Oriental offering, a garlicky tangle of sautéed wild mushrooms and tofu in an aromatic soy broth.

Mains, generally presented in starter-sized portions, were better, and indicated that the kitchen does know what it's doing. It's just that what it's doing seems irrelevant in these circus-like surroundings. Thanks to the variegated tableware - every plate is different - the food looked unappetising, notably some fillets of lemon sole in beurre blanc, which tasted fine, but looked like a heap of tripe in custard. Confit duck needed the moisture imparted by the accompanying vinegared cherry tomatoes, while a perfectly cooked but tiny fillet of seabass left its recipient crying out for something more substantial to accompany it than a few fingers of roasted salsify.

There's no chance of carb-loading on the desserts, which included a virtually calorie-free frozen carpaccio of fresh pineapple with ginger and a decorous coconut panna cotta that resembled designer hospital food. "This is a birds' restaurant," concluded one of my disgruntled male companions, still hungry at the end of the evening. The only element that seems designed to appeal to straight men is the waitresses, in figure-hugging wrap dresses, who obviously haven't been selected for their intensive silver-service training.

At around £50 a head including wine and service, Annex 3 is cheaper than Les Trois Garçons, and like its East End forerunner, it's somewhere people will go for the vibe rather than for the food. Whether it will age very well, though, is another matter. The décor is a bit of a one-off joke, and I can't imagine the fashion and art crowd taking up residence in the way they have done in the team's existing venues. In fact, it would probably do just as well as a bar - an All Bar One for people who want a bit of E1 boho glamour without leaving the comfort zone of central London. E

Annex 3, 6 Little Portland Street, London W1 (020-7631 1700)

Food:
Service:
Ambience: (or if you like that sort of thing)

£50 a head including wine

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