Restaurant review: Gail's Kitchen.

11 Bayley Street, London WC1 (020 7323 9694). Meal for two, £75

From time to time I get emails from television producers who are gagging to capture on camera the intense, laser-guided, obsessive-compulsive business of being a restaurant critic. Like physicists attempting to identify the Higgs boson, they want to record the exact moment of "opinion", of prejudice or love being forged in my cholesterol-drenched heart. They are convinced there is something to witness. In reality there is nothing to see, save for a middle-aged man with too much hair – too much, frankly, of everything – plundering feverish and sweaty platefuls of food while gossiping filthily with pals.Occasionally I nick bits of food off their plates. Sometimes I glance at a menu. I'm always thinking. You can see that in my eyes, because thinking is Hard. I'm trying to work out what the hell to say about the latest clumsy, malicious violation of a classic recipe. This would make for very poor television.But there was a moment during my visit to Gail's Kitchen. A point, four or so dishes into lunch, when I stopped, knife and fork held aloft, and stared quizzically at a bowl of roasted butternut squash and carrots with a few bitter buttered greens, some raisins and pine nuts; a dish of winter with a spring in its step. We were, I said to my companion, being fed exceptionally well. And up to that point, very little with a pulse had been involved. The food was remarkable for being meat free and unshowy. There was no dismal wow factor, but there was quite a lot of gosh. Quickly we returned to our conversation.

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