Seven up

Between Six and Eight wasn't one of nightclub owner-turned-restaurateur Ron McCulloch's better ideas. Only two months after opening, the seventh-floor restaurant at the entrepreneur's eight-storey Leicester Square nightspot, Home - which itself opened last October - shut its doors for a makeover. Enter Seven.

The interior is much the same as its linguistically challenging predecessor - pale green chair covers, cocoon-shaped banquettes, dark wood, slate greys and creams - and the view is still there in all its glory: uninterrupted views of Big Ben and the London Eye. But the menu has been reinvented.

The fine-dining restaurant originally sold itself as a "global-experience menu", but critics were less than kind. "The concept didn't go well with the venue," says general manager Gareth Hill. "We realised quite early on that it wasn't going to work."

Now, under a new chef, Richard Turner, who lists Michel Roux and Marco Pierre White as past employers, the 120-seat venue offers modern European dishes. "We're not trying to break new ground here," says Hill, who has dispensed with woks and other "global" food apparatus in his kitchen.

Typical dishes include starters such as a crab soup with saffron and roast piquillo peppers (£7), seared carpaccio of beef with green beans and Parmesan (£6.75), and poached peppered salmon with fromage blanc and brown shrimps (£7.50).

Main courses range from slow-roasted suckling pig with apples, stuffed cabbage and mustard jus (£15), to baked hake with clams, chorizo, white beans and romesco sauce (£15), and rare seared tuna with caponata, crushed potatoes and balsamic dressing (£14.50). Desserts are more traditional, including warm chocolate tart, tiramisó and lemon tart (all £5.50).

While most dishes fall into the modern European comfort bracket, the menu flirts with luxury in the oscietra caviare (30g) with blinis, at £45, and chargrilled native lobster with a warm potato salad (£22).

Hill is keen for Seven to be known as a stand-alone restaurant and, while not completely disassociating it from the club floors below, would rather any editorial kept mention of the club "to a minimum". Clubbers are mostly 18- to 24-year-olds and they are not what the restaurant is about, says Hill.

Both McCulloch and Hill hope the restaurant will appeal to everybody, especially tourists. They will undoubtedly marvel over the bird's-eye view of London, particularly in the summer months when a further 48 seats will be placed on the decked balcony wrapped around the seventh floor. "Summer and lunch will go very well together," predicts Hill. n

Seven, 7th Floor, One Leicester Square, London WC2H 2NA. Tel: 020 7909 1177