Restaurant review, Quality Chop House, London.

I'm currently spreading happiness wherever I go. Or at least wherever I go among the old and sentimental. I'm like a Stones fan who has sneaked an early listen to the greatest hits album and is going around telling other fans the new tracks are as good as anything the band ever recorded. Only I don't have to lie. Because in answer to the traditional restaurant-lovers' greeting, "Eaten anywhere good lately?" I'm able to respond with a hearty "Yes! The Quality Chop House has just reopened. And it's terrific".

The reaction is always the same. A big loopy grin, the recollection of some long-ago boozy lunch, sometimes an anecdote about the after-hours behaviour of the Chop House's roaring-boy chef/patron. And then the inevitable follow-up question: have they managed to make the seats comfortable yet?

The answer to the last is, no, not really. But you can't have everything. The QCH has been in business since the 1870s – nearly as long as the Rolling Stones – but the fondness it inspires among a certain type of chattering-class chowhound dates from its early 1990s incarnation. In 1989, the 'Progressive Working Class Caterer', as the famous old window signage has it, was reopened by ex-Caprice head chef Charles Fontaine, and became the dining room of choice for Guardian journalists and the other rackety types who were colonising Clerkenwell.

The perfectly preserved interior, with its cramped wooden pews and anaglypta walls, was always the draw, but also the drawback. Those wooden benches and cramped, shared tables were built for speed, not comfort. The Chop House eventually fell off the radar, Fontaine moved on, and after an ill-fated reincarnation as a meatballs joint, it closed down last year.

The youthful new owners have done what they can to freshen the interior up, within the constraints of the Grade II listing. Some clever upholstery has softened the seating a little, but the result still feels more Charles Dickens than David Collins. One of the two tiny dining rooms now functions as a wine bar, offering a lovingly curated list – unsurprisingly, given that one of the new owners is Will Lander, son of the writers Jancis Robinson and Nick Lander. But while wine is at the heart of the operation, it certainly isn't the only attraction; the dishes that appear on the all-day menu sound so good, they make you want to weep – Longhorn mince on dripping toast, for example – and there's a daily-changing choice of chop, with a glass of wine, for £13.

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