And so my quest for a bad restaurant goes on – somewhere I can properly crap on, sending you into the weekend glowing with relief that you are not a restaurateur. It’s been months now since I last did a stinker. It’s unheard of. But I just seem to keep striking gold.

This week, I suppose you will say, I have not tried anything like hard enough. For I went to Wild Honey, new offshoot of Arbutus, the Frith Street place I raved about last year, where Anthony Demetre weaves his slow-cook magic and straddles better than anyone else the boundary between new techniques and old recipes.

But what I was hoping for, you see, was a classic example of “overstretch”, leading to a massive disappointment by comparison with Arbutus. And if not that, then at the very least to discover that one can have too much of a good thing. And also I do go to Arbutus a hell of a lot, and the menu doesn’t change all that much, so there was a chance I would find the menu all a bit familiar and tedious.

And then there was the site: where Marco Pierre White’s Drones used to be. Never liked it. Seemed all wrong that a place named after (I assumed) Bertie Wooster’s club should come under the ownership of someone so unWoosterish as Marco.

An evening from hell, I was certain. I also knew it for a fact – I forget how – that the great Fay Maschler, may her name be used for a blessing, would be in that night, which might well, if I was lucky, lead to a paralysing nervousness in the kitchen and concomitant disasters on the plate.

Didn’t happen. All was wretchedly good. The room looks a lot better than it used to, softer, and there’s a marble-countered bar at the front now, for drinks or overspill eating. I suppose the lighting might be said to be a little bland, a shade darker might be nice, and then maybe candles on each table for prettiness. Also, the front door is a bit stiff.

The menu did look familiar, but when I belaboured the waiter about it he pointed out that almost all the dishes were, in fact, new. I said it must be the typeface that made them look old (the font is the same as the one used at Arbutus). He said that was quite possible. I told him he had better see to it something was done.

We took my old friend Henry Dimbleby, who runs the healthy fast-food chain Leon, and his wife Jemima (who have appeared previously in this column as “Jermaine and Nikki”, because I thought if I called then “Henry and Jemima” you’d think I’d made them up), and they loved it, too.

Henry thought his soupe au pistou was bang on and lectured long and rivetingly on the subject of his bavette with bone marrow – explaining how such tenderness in a traditionally fibrous cut could only have been achieved by the “sous-vide” method of 12 hours and 8 minutes’ cooking at precisely 56.43 degrees followed by a flash in the pan for browning.

Wild rabbit and foie gras boudin blanc was a lovely thing, I thought: pale and light and summery on its pillow of broad beans, peas and savory. And the leek vinaigrette was made with baby leeks, which enabled it to escape that texture of fag-packet cellophane one associates with the dish. And there were rich, deeply flavoured gnocchi with anchovy, tomato and Cornish pollock (oh, the sustainability!). And we shared a pretty little black pot of Elwy Valley lamb, made from shoulder and sweetbreads, which was a lovely zig-zagging together of the light and the dark qualities of the animal.

But I didn’t want to do a good review. So I went back with A.A. Gill. Adrian practically invented the shitty review. He can find turd where others find only gold, and could surely help me find a way to whack Wild Honey.

To be fair, it wasn’t my idea. I didn’t just wind him up and point him at it. It was he who called me, asking if we fancied Wild Honey for supper, he already having a reservation for that very evening. I could only assume he had been blown out moments before by Jeremy Clarkson, Joan Collins or Christiane Amanpour, or possibly all three, but I am not proud, and anyway Rachel is a fan of his (she’s only little), so off we went.

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