Restaurant review, Colbert, London.

Chris Corbin and Jeremy King are on a roll. In the past 10 months, they've opened three major restaurants in central London. The Delaunay flung its doors wide in the Aldwych in early December; its black marble pillars, station clock and calorific cake trolley shouted Vienna in its heyday.

The 220-seat Brasserie Zédel, just off Piccadilly, opened in June, breathing new life into the subterranean ballroom that was once the Atlantic Bar & Grill; it was a gilt-&-brass-&-marble dream of belle-époque Parisian brasserie, with the unexpected bonus that it was cheap as frites. Last week they opened Colbert, on one of London's key sites: in Sloane Square. Not only are they pitched at the intersection of Chelsea, Belgravia and Knightsbridge, they'll have a guaranteed nightly crowd from the Royal Court theatre, milling in, stage-struck, at 10pm.

First impressions are slightly disappointing: it's nicely old-fashioned but nowhere near as glamorous as The Delaunay, nor as theatrical as Zédel. Colbert is low-key and monochrome, with its 1930s-style Parisian look: lovely chessboard tiles, dark wood décor and red banquettes. The bar is gloomily lit but has a marble top to lean on, and wood-panelled booths in which to discuss Sartre's L'être et le *éant. The first-night clientele wasn't exactly a literary salon, however: they included Jimmy Carr, Tim Rice and one of the original Pan's People dancers.

The menu – well, as a devotee of Corbin and King's retro-Mitteleuropa project, I felt I knew the menu before I opened it. Sure enough, the usual suspects were there, as they might have been in the 1930s: Croque Monsieur, Croque Madame, Croque Grand-mère, Croque Oncle Tom Cobley et ensemble, Fine de Claires oysters, caviar with blinis, oeufs sur le plat done a dozen ways, and the fruit tartes and coups that one greets like old pals. Inexplicably, there was no sign of Choucroute l'Alsacienne, a Corbin-King signature dish.

I couldn't find a starter I fancied (radishes with Normandy salt and butter? Ham with celeriac remoulade? Steak tartare?) and settled for a Salade Niçoise. It's not a manly starter, but it yelped with freshness and looked brilliant: the pungent anchovies laid reverentially over the long, rain-washed beans, the glowing pink tuna tucked inside lettuce leaves, the quarters of boiled egg perfect in their orange-osity. Angie's prawn cocktail was served in a silver chalice rather than the traditional glass coupe, in a 3:2 prawns-to-lettuce ratio, and were coldly refreshing in a decidedly not Thousand Island dressing. Both starters were first-class assemblages, if that's what you want to start an autumnal supper with.

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