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• June 12, 2007 - 12:07pm

One of London's most ambitious eating and drinking projects of the past decade has developed into an unstoppably successful operation, over four floors and 15,000sq ft (around 1,400sq m) of converted warehouse. It has been claimed that the perpetually packed ground-floor bar serves more beer per square foot than any other in London (you can also eat breakfast, brunch and lunch down here); on super-busy nights, the first-floor cocktail bar fills apace. Like the spaces below it, the second-floor Dining Room carries an artfully industrial look, bare brick walls contributing to a (deliberately?) terrible acoustic. Still, the City workers and Clerkenwell thirtysomethings who make up an agreeably mixed clientele don't mind (those that do have the smarter, calmer, British-slanted Top Floor). A starter of bucatini pasta with tender crab had its subtleties overwhelmed by a creamy chilli sauce; grilled mushrooms and poached egg on sourdough toast also disappointed, the bread slightly old and the egg overcooked. Happily, the mains were better: a generous, succulent portion of duck with pak choi; and cannelloni with a velvety blend of butte
ut squash and buffalo ricotta. The old meat marketeers look on bemusedly from their trucks and trailers, but the beat goes on.