Restaurant review, The Modern Pantry, 47-48 St John’s Square, London.

I know myself well enough not even to attempt a New Year regimen; but after all the festive indulgences, I'm craving crisp, fresh produce and zingy flavours to blow away the cobwebs. Hence The Modern Pantry. The London restaurant/café run by Anna Hansen has, over the past couple of years, established itself as A Good Thing, spawning an excellent cookbook. In fact, Hansen has been awarded an MBE in the New Year Honours list for her services to the restaurant industry.

Her style of global inspiration and clever ingredients (signature dish: sugar-cured prawn omelette with green chilli, spring onion, coriander and smoked-chilli sambal) is what I crave.

When I worked in Clerkenwell many moons ago, there was just a scruffy warehouse on the square where The Modern Pantry now sits. It thrums with folk either entering Hansen's place, the Zetter Townhouse or Bistrot Bruno Loubet (both of which are ace). The quiet, elegant façade has a wide glass door on to the square. On this blustery January evening, though, the door is locked and we're sent to a little side door, to enter the ground-floor café through the back.

Fair enough – a constantly swinging door probably makes it too cold for those sitting near the front. But the maître'd approaches us with a rather grumpy manner, before marching us to the front desk to check our reservation, then marching us back to our first position. He then loftily gestures towards a table. Not exactly the most effusive of welcomes...

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