Restaurant review Goode & Wright, Notting Hill, London.

Did I dream it all? The clothes pegs, the pink rabbit, the raw duck, the Magritte painting (Ceci n'est pas une pipe) and the Amelie connection? I woke at 2.15am, sweatily alarmed that I might have hallucinated the whole thing. But no, I'd been to dinner at Goode & Wright, where it all really happened. Mind you, I'd had my first shot of absinthe while I was there, so you can understand my concern.

Absinthe is, of course, the drink of decadence, the wildly alcoholic, wormwood-and-anise spirit beloved of Rimbaud and Verlaine, Wilde and Hemingway. It was banned in France in 1914, after being accused of ruining lives. "It makes a ferocious beast of man, a martyr of woman, and a degenerate of the infant," wrote one critic. "It disorganises and ruins the family and menaces the future of the country." So, naturally, I brought my older children along to try some with me.

They make a big fuss of preparing the stuff at Goode & Wright – 'they' being Jimmy Tardy, the charismatic Parisian waiter who presides over the restaurant like a cabaret turn (he even sings) and once worked at Les Deux Moulins in Montmartre, made famous by the film Amelie.

Jimmy brings a whole off-licence of paraphernalia to your table – four thin bottles of the spirit, plus cordials, schnapps, sugar, champagne – and an absinthe 'fountain', a samovar with four taps, which drips cranberry-flavoured water over a flaming sugar cube on a slotted spoon over a glass of the toxic syrup to make a classic 'Green Fairy'. I tried one. It was damnably strong and very like pernod, except for a fugitive aftertaste of grave-soil and charnel houses. Sophie's Fontaine Flower added elderflower and champagne, and tasted tart and serious. Max's Crazy Bellini (with added peach and champers) was softer, sweeter and delicious.

The cocktail-making theatricals brought other diners to our table to see how it worked. It almost eclipsed the fact that Goode & Wright is a restaurant. Located at the grim end of Portobello where it meets the Westway, it's a cute, mignon bistro, starkly designed with wood-panelled walls, dangling globe lights, monochrome diamond floor tiles, half-curtained windows (below which sits a fluffy pink lapin), a handful of Magritte paintings and lots of clothes-pegs. A gypsy theme? No, it's how they serve the bill, pegged to a business card.

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