Launceston Place, 1a Launceston Place, London

May I offer you a small pre-review before I serve the main review? What with the current trend for pre-desserts and post-appetisers, it seems appropriate, and will cost you no extra. So your pre-review today is Kensington Place, closely followed by the main review of Launceston Place. Both iconic 1980s Places have recently been taken over and revamped by D&D London, and both have installed young chefs who are barely older than the restaurants themselves.

When chef Rowley Leigh left Kensington Place after 20 years, doomsayers predicted Death & Destruction. Instead, D&D (which stands for Des Gunewardena and David Loewi of the former Conran restaurant group) freshened the whole place up, threw white cloths over tables, and painted and upholstered the funny multi-coloured chairs. Best of all, they called in young chef Henry Vigar to do his thing. His thing, it turns out, is light-hearted, flavour-packed, seasonally driven and gracefully plated.

Tonight, however, I am on the other side of Kensington Palace, at what was once Diana, the Princess of Wales' favourite lunch spot. This is not exactly a selling point for people who love good food, but I am curious to see what D&D has done with this quirky, misshapen corner building. It's still quirky and misshapen, but the small dining-rooms are now darkly romantic, softly carpeted and lined with statement art. It has the air of an intimate and cosy salon, as Hepburnesque girls take coats and waiters cruise by with trolleys and trays.

As at Kensington Place, there is now a next-gen chef in the kitchen – Tristan Welch, who cooked at Pétrus with Marcus Wareing. His three-course set menu for £35 looks like real value, especially with all the pre- and post- freebies thrown in. I like the potato crisps and chic, grey herring-roe cream, and a heavenly warm velouté of cauliflower, topped with a cool crème fraîche foam and dark truffle oil.

A deeply flavoured, verdant green, lightly peppery nettle soup hits the zeitgeist with its hand-foraged produce and hi-tech garnish of snap-frozen horseradish "snow". Even better is salmon "smoked at the table", which sounds complicated – and illegal – but is actually quite simple. Silky house-cured salmon is draped over a cress and turnip salad and brought to the table inside a glass dome filled with oak-scented smoke. The salmon takes on a lightly smoky quality in the three minutes before the dome is lifted.

The main courses are a step down in excitement. Veal – which I will only order if, like this, it is English – is a pleasant, conservative dish, the rump sliced over a warm potato salad with attendant puddles of sweet shallot foam, and lush, paper-thin leaves of tongue. A rich cherry-berry 2005 Sarrazin Givry (£38) from the predictably refined list fits it nicely.

In spite of myself, I order the Princess Diana soufflé of Ragstone goat cheese. It's attractive, blonde and well-raised, but it's a dismal main course for a hungry bloke – even with a quenelle of mustard ice-cream slipped in at the table, and a delicate "sandwich" of lacy Melba toast and lightly smoked egg cream and cress to the side.

To finish, a substantial apple charlotte for two is served as granny might; crisp and buttery toast outside, with tender Cox's Orange Pippins melting inside. A side-dish of house-made clotted cream is a treat.

So two icons of the 1980s are back, and better than they have been for some time, with cooking that has something I was not expecting: real personality.

At Launceston Place, Tristan Welch applies hi-tech stuff such as Pacojets and smoke guns to great British produce without making the technology or the chemistry the star, something that neither Ferran Adria nor Heston Blumenthal have yet managed. But that's the next generation for you. n

16/20

Scores: 1-9 stay home and cook, 10-11 needs help, 12 ok 13 pleasant enough, 14 good, 15 very good, 16 capable of greatness, 17 special, can't wait to go back, 18 highly honourable, 19 unique and memorable, 20 as good as it gets

Launceston Place, 1a Launceston Place, London W8,tel: 020 7937 6912. Lunch, Tues-Sun; dinner, daily. Three-course dinner, £35 a person, plus wine and service

Read Terry Durack's new column at independent.co.uk/eat

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