Percy & Founders, restaurant review: 'The food is adventurous but the décor makes you feel like you're in a Victorian hospital waiting room'

1 Pearson Square, Fitzroy Place, London W1 (020-3761 0200)

Tons of wood panelling, handcrafted, brushed and burnished to extremes of smoothness, give the place a bland, antiseptic air

The first curious thing about Percy & Founders is the address: technically, it doesn't exist. Although they sound like ancient and familiar destinations, Pearson Square and Fitzroy Place don't figure in the A-Z of London or on Streetmap. You discover that it's part of a spanking new development of shops, offices and residential units on the site of the old Middlesex Hospital, near Oxford Street.

The second curious thing is the name, an arch combination of penile slang and constructional ambiguity (in that it means both the originator of an institution and the act of sinking, collapsing or falling down). In fact, it refers to Hugh Percy, the Duke of Northumberland, and his philanthropic associates who together founded the hospital in 1755. Still odd though, isn't it? Why couldn't they just call it The Middlesex?

'They' are Open House, a new company from the directors of the Cubitt House collection of upmarket pubs in central London, of which the most celebrated is the Thomas Cubitt in Pimlico, a place that seems always packed to the gunwales with rich young hipsters. A great deal of money has been thrown at Percy and his blasted co-Founders: it's a huge complex, with a bar, a 'reading-room', an open kitchen, a private dining room and – amazingly – the hospital's original chapel, handsomely preserved and beautiful to behold through a glass screen in the old stone archway.

The eating area – room for 200 covers – is dispersed around the central bar so as not to resemble a refectory. It's been very subtly done – too subtle for some tastes, I suspect. Tons of wood panelling, handcrafted, brushed and burnished to extremes of smoothness, give the place a bland, antiseptic air.

In the cocktail bar, run by the charming Alessandro from Bergamo, we drank a No 10 Martini made with Potocki rye vodka, a Lady Percy (gin with egg whites, sage and lemonade – delicious) and a Basil Brush (Grey Goose, apple juice, passion fruit and basil syrup – fabulously herby), and wolfed down some fine bar snacks: roasted potato skins with salt cod, courgette wafers with Iberico ham. But again, the décor... the wood-on-wood ceiling and floor, the pale tartan sofas and caramel-leather chairs make you feel like you are in a hotel lobby – or a well-appointed Victorian hospital waiting room. It's so bland.

What the place desperately needs is a lot of people. Will they like the food? We did. The menu is small – five main courses – but the preparation and cooking, by Aaron Ashmore (who's worked under Marcus Wareing and Angela Hartnett, and was Roman Abramovich's private chef) and his team, are adventurous. Tuna tartare was a miracle of freshness, the fish folded around spring onion and spicy avocado, and served with wasabi and mustard. A lobster and prawn Scotch egg offered an arresting variant on an old favourite. I've encountered a dozen Scotch egg avatars (most notably venison and black pudding ones) and was surprised by how well shellfish worked here, how it contrived to taste like fishy sausage meat. The yolks were a deep, tangerine-hued orange, a visual treat.

My crispy short rib had been through a labour-intensive process, in which the beef was roasted until off-the-bone tender, then rolled in breadcrumbs and fried. The resulting tranches looked more like rectangular rissoles than the chef probably intended, but were very tasty.

Main-course roast chicken was a meal-in-one: a fat drumstick and a substantial breast, supplemented by a chicken pie in the form of a Cornish pasty, with a smear of mushroom-purée ketchup. The breast was juicy and tender, though slightly let down by the jus ("too much like gravy concentrate"). My stepson, Albert, awarded his dry-aged sirloin steak eight out of 10, but complained that the truffle chips should have been allowed to be just chips. My lamb dish contrasted a supple roasted breast with two fingers of loin cooked sous-vide in a cabernet sauvignon marinade. They were delicious (though I prefer lamb out of an oven than a water-bath) and served on a bed of champ, the Irish potato-and-spring-onion mash.

Among the puddings were 'Percy's mistresses', an effortful nod to the fact that the Duke of Northumberland once had a girlfriend called Madeleine (geddit?). The little cakes were warm from the oven and sublime with maple syrup butter. I tried the crêpe soufflé out of interest, having never come across the combination before. The orange soufflé was fluffy, the wraparound crêpe nice and light; it was a treat despite the dish's resemblance to a pale yellow omelette. There's a lot to enjoy at Percy & Founders. I suspect it will be packed out during the summer, when they open up the bar's concertina windows to the passing trade, and Lord Percy's bloodless demeanour starts to pulsate with life.

Food ****
Ambience ***
Service *****

1 Pearson Square, Fitzroy Place, London W1 (020-3761 0200). Around £34 per person, before wine and service