Don't mezze with a good thing

Authentic Middle Eastern cuisine is flavour of the month. But all the perfumes of Arabia cannot disguise a pretender

There's one born every day. A new London restaurant, that is. But they're not often Lebanese, even though interest in north African food has moved along the Mediterranean until Middle Eastern has become the cuisine of the moment. The arrival of a Lebanese restaurant is temptingly welcome; when it comes with an excellent pedigree it's irresistible.

There's one born every day. A new London restaurant, that is. But they're not often Lebanese, even though interest in north African food has moved along the Mediterranean until Middle Eastern has become the cuisine of the moment. The arrival of a Lebanese restaurant is temptingly welcome; when it comes with an excellent pedigree it's irresistible.

Following the success of Pavillion Noura in Paris, Noura Brasserie in "Belgravia" has opened in the form of "refined homemade Lebanese cuisine" - slightly extravagant with the truth on two counts. The kitchen of a 100-seat restaurant is not my idea of home. Over the road from Victoria Station is borderline Belgravia in my A-Z. In decor, Noura is more restrained than many Lebanese restaurants. This one's a smart study in beige and charcoal grey.

The day before our visit the Food Standards Agency had unhelpfully warned of the theoretical possibility of sheep becoming infected with a disease deadly to humans. I was joined for lunch by another committed carnivore prepared to tuck into an animal she believes is blameless. More than half the main courses consisted of lamb, but there was little offal to put our confidence in the meat industry to the ultimate test.

Chicken features and so, occasionally, does beef, as in bastourma, spicy smoked raw beef. For piscivores there's sea bass, Dover sole, mullet and prawns. But it is also sensationally good for vegetarians, who can enjoy the wonders worked with aubergines, spinach, and chickpeas. To vegetarians, eating meat must seem as perverse as smoking. How can we explain why we put up with the risks when the most obvious answer is to give it up? Because we find the lure of flesh irresistible, never more so than when it is expertly cooked over glowing coals - one of the attractions of this cuisine.

At Noura, however, there were no enticing smells coming from an open grill. The kitchen's out of sight, and the thrill of the grill is mediated by the anonymity of the decor, waiters of old-school gallantry and a menu that covers familiar ground.

The meal began as usual with a plate of pickles: chunks of giant radish stained red, long green chillies and olives. The bread put packet pitta to shame, being round and puffed up with warm air, with a sweetness to the dough. To run amok among the mezze dishes and come up with a well-balanced cross-section is time-consuming, costly and best suited to more than two people. At the suggestion of the staff, we had the set lunch menu for £12.50, consisting of six mezze plus a plat du jour.

This meant forgoing chicken livers, falafel, foul moudammas and 40-odd others for the usual line-up of unobjectionable versions of hoummos, moutabbal (puréed aubergine), tabbouleh and, best of the cold four, stuffed vine leaves. These had a high ratio of pine nuts to rice, lots of parsley, with the leaves themselves lending an almost aniseedy taste instead of being tough and tasteless wrappings. It was the casings on the cheese samboussik and the fatayer (spinach parcels) that fitted that description more closely.

We'd also ordered sfeeha, described as small Lebanese pizza, but bearing no resemblance to the Italian, or even to Turkish lahmacun. These small circles of dough, edges pinched to form four corners, provided the meat missing from the all-vegetarian mezze selection with a juicy nugget of finely minced lamb.

Main courses were a high-standard kebab twin-pack - one of chicken marinaded in yogurt for piquancy and milky tenderness, the other a kofta of minced lamb with parsley. With it was a grilled tomato and an innocent-looking dollop of yogurt which, on closer inspection, had been made grainy from the huge amount of minced garlic. For the rest of the day I had to talk through clenched teeth. That evening I found plenty to make me clench them.

Stuffed cabbage leaves were soft and buttery, filled with herby snippets of meat, and accompanied by a green pepper rather dully stuffed with rice. I don't know whether the person I was lunching with usually eats with more restraint than gusto, but we agreed the food had not been imbued with any greater allure than we'd found in other Arabic meals.

Pastries provided a sweet, but also unexceptional ending. Desserts such as milk and orange-blooms ice-cream or rosewater and lemon atayef (Lebanese blinis) filled with clotted cream and syrup, or caramelised bread pudding with clotted cream might have been more beguiling.

Noura Brasserie is undoubtedly the real thing. The latter half of the menu is in Arabic; the air-conditioned, smoke-extracted setting on the ground floor of an office development is one that the international businessman is inured to. On the way in you may have to negotiate a gaggle of smokers exiled to the street from the corporate HQ glimpsed through Noura's back window.

In south London you must get past a doorman to access the latest representation of Middle Eastern atmosphere and will then find all the smokers inside the ominouslypunctuated So.uk. I travelled the same evening to Clapham more in hope than expectation that this theme bar could create a more heady Arabian-influenced mood than Noura.

After we'd been lucky to find space to sit down on a low banquette in a room overflowing with soigné youths, we had to beg for attention to get a drink and then had it knocked over us. From a menu which my friend condemned as an M&S-style round-the-world range, only starters were available. We ate a clashing combination of hoummos and other dips with bread, Thai meatballs and monkfish in beer batter, hunched over a low table and, even before our skirts had dried, left this noisy and inept piece of fakery.

Noura may not be the most exciting exponent of Middle Eastern cooking, but for £20 to £40 a head the risk of disappointment is low. Shame that So.uk was so busy. Full of So.ukers. There's one born every minute.

* Noura Brasserie, 16 Hobart Place, London SW1 (020-7235 9444). Daily 9am-midnight. Lunch dishes £8.25-£14. Set menus £18.50-£28.50. Dinner typically £30 without wine. Disabled access. All major cards. So.uk, 165 Clapham High Street, London SW4 (020-7622 4004)