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• Blowing hot and cold

It's not often you sit down to a meal where the water in your glass is warmer than the soup in your bowl, but this can happen at Le Commensal. I guess this kind of thing is bound to happen in a place that unashamedly tries to cater for what it hopes will be a mass market in people who will - because some of them are veg*ns for ethical reasons - be opposed to the notion of mass marketing in the first place. It hasn't quite got its act together, but some of the dishes on offer were first-class, the seitan bourgignon being among my favourites. Some of them were rubbish (don't go anywhere near the spring rolls) and - as is usual anywhere north of the Mason-Dixon line - do not expect anything billed as "spicy" to have any spice in it at all, for it will not. Having said all that, Le Commensal is trying in the present to be the fast-food restaurant of the future, when we've all turned our backs on McDonalds for one reason or another. It isn't doing so badly.