Restaurant review The Ledbury, Ledbury Road, London.

What is there left to say about the restaurant everyone's been talking about for the past couple of years?

The Ledbury just can't seem to stop getting plaudits. Two Michelin stars, highest climber at this year's World's 50 Best Restaurant awards, and now the 2013 Harden's Guide has it ranked as the best-rated top-end restaurant in London (displacing Le Gavroche), while Food and Travel Magazine last week named it London Restaurant of the Year.

It did, in fact, open in 2005 (as sister restaurant to The Square), but chef Brett Graham has been on a steady – if more recently steep – incline to stardom. So why review it now? Well, The Ledbury has managed to make that elusive leap from flavour of the month to culinary superstar, where so many others have failed. And while trying the new kids on the block is fun, I want to tick off this modern classic. My esteemed erstwhile colleague Terry Durack called it "seriously good" in its first year, and by common consent it has got better since.

It's taken a while, as booking a table is not easy. The past two times I've tried I had to book so far in advance that when the evening came, a work deadline or child emergency precluded it. Vexed by others' tales of mythically terrific meals, I finally get a Tuesday 9.30pm booking.

The hushed reverence that greets us as we enter is almost a parody. Not that the staff are snooty – far from it, our waiter indulges our anguished delay over choosing between the tasting menu and à la carte. I do wish he'd pointed out, however, that we could have had the epic-looking tasting menu in the same time as the three-course à la carte offering. Because of the late hour, and it being a school night, we are worried about still eating after midnight.

I choose the plainest dishes; for that, surely, is how to judge somewhere with such a stellar reputation. A tomato salad, then a piece of grilled fish. Mr M chooses a posh take on cheese-on-toast with onion soup to start, then pigeon. For these lowly ingredients we will be paying £80 each, not including drinks. I swallow hard. And that's before I've put any food in my mouth. This is where I think about what my parents would say to such flamboyant expenditure; and about last week's grocery bill for four (yup, £160).

Then the heritage tomato salad with goat's curd, dried olives and green tomato juice arrives. Each component is so delicious, so ripe and rich in flavour it makes me giddy. A grey-green pottery plate is the perfect backdrop for this riot of colour and flavour; two crisp cylinders contain the curd and are edged in granules of olive. Just, wow.

Read more at http://www.independent.co.uk