Sea Containers, London SE1 – restaurant review

Why do you go out for dinner? What is it that’s important to you? I, like many of my fellow “foodies” – how I abhor that word – will travel miles and endure terrible discomfort to experience the perfect whatever-it-is. (I once drove for hours through Provence, past abandoned villages, up dirt tracks, to the top of a mountain in order to eat the perfect goat’s-milk-fed roast pork at communal trestle tables in a place that reeked of animals. The farmer played the mouth harp to me for so long that I missed my plane home. And I don’t regret a second of it.)

But this is niche stuff, I know. In a Twitter conversation with Stosie Madi, chef/owner of the excellent Parkers Arms in Lancashire, she described yer hardcore foodie as “a limited luxury”. Everyone else just wants a nice night out. And what contributes towards that the most is service. Yep: surveys frequently report that bad service is the UK’s biggest restaurant bugbear – people appear to be more ready to forgive indifferent food than an indifferent welcome.

Anyway, I’m banging on about this because when a useless server recently ruined a potentially fine meal, people got themselves into a high old tizzy. So today’s review offers the contrary: a place I’d happily not return to if it weren’t for one gal working the front of house like a fairy godmother. Brieanne Gallant, known as Brie – catchphrase “I can make that happen” – is basically charming the bahookie off anyone venturing into the new multimillion quid Mondrian Hotel for dinner at the gnomically titled Sea Containers (after the landmark building’s original name). It’s a knock-your-socks-off redesign, but we can’t tell because we’re plonked behind the service till. Until Brie breezes in and takes command, whereupon it’s all beer and skittles. Or, rather, Tokaji and yuzu ceviche.

As is usually the deal with high-profile hotel launches, there’s a Name attached: here, it’s one Seamus Mullen, a big noise in NYC. I’m not sure what “culinary director” means: swanning around intoning, “Raw! Or wood-grilled! No, both!” like someone in The Producers? He’s neither in the kitchen nor doing his trademark Spanish here. Etxebarri apart, the menu style most reminds me of modern Australian: the cult of fire and the ingredient as king. The wood-fired grill is the star of the open kitchen, a knowingly peasant touch among all this expensive urbanity.

And, oh, the vast, grilled pork chop (“It feeds up to three people”; oh no it doesn’t), its bone standing proud, its gently smoke-scented, lightly thyme-kissed snowy-pink flesh (a Cumbrian/old spot crossbreed) cut into thick slabs beneath a flourish of the perkiest watercress. What a thing it is. There’s sharp, cidery vinaigrette studded with grilled apple for brightness. I’m imagining my teeth sinking into this as I write, and it’s causing me to pine quite badly.

There’s a flatbread, spread with a sweet mulch of slow-cooked onions, squelchy sobrasada and Mahón cheese: blistered, cracker-thin, two small raw eggs cracked on top to gently cook (or not…) in its heat. But it’s the backnote of orange peel that lifts the assembly into something special. There’s kale, too (of course there is), but here it’s made into such a clever salad – raw, shredded, dressed with yoghurt and dill, and laced with apple, avocado and pecans – that we forgive its Gwynethish hipness. The only thing that falls flat is a decorative arrangement of raw tuna dice, avocado and cucumber in a bracingly sharp dressing: international hotel food at its least engrossing.

Designed by Tom Dixon to reference a transatlantic liner, there’s no doubt that the hotel is an utter glamourpuss, from the copper cladding that clings like an Alaïa frock to the building’s interior curves, to the surreally vast chain links in the lobby and the yellow submarine floating above the restaurant’s central bar. But it’s not really my kind of thing – too oligarchy, footballery and fashion bizzy. After dinner, Brie shows us up to the Rumpus Room, a semi-private bar at the top of the building where the twinkling vista draws gasps. But this sedate, glittering playroom doesn’t deliver my idea of a rumpus – we’re about the wildest things in the place.

Terrible foodie (gah!) that I am, I’d tolerate the glitz and bling for another bite of that chop. But I’d really be coming back for more Brie.

• Sea Containers 20 Upper Ground, London SE1, 020-3747 1000. Open all week, noon-midnight. About £45 a head, plus drinks and service.

Food 7/10
Atmosphere 6/10
Value for money 7/10

Follow Marina on Twitter.