Texture, Portman Square, London

After a disappointing visit to Texture, Richard Cree begins the campaign to ban test tubes

I have a restaurant fantasy. Unlike many restaurateurs and chefs, it doesn't involve the head of AA Gill on a platter. In fact, it's much less dramatic and involves the establishment of a restaurant regulator—Ofrest or some such—to impose strict criteria on anyone running a restaurant. Top of its agenda, ahead of rules on locally sourced, seasonal ingredients, or instilling strict limits on the number of restaurants allowed to offer "tapas style" menus in one city, would be a blanket ban on anything involving test tubes and any dish so complex it requires a waiter to explain how to eat it. In this strict new regime, giant-sized portions of wonderfully rustic, peasant food would win the most coveted culinary gongs.

This fantasy loomed large at Texture. Having ordered a French Jerusalem Artichoke starter, it was all I could do not to walk out in disgust as the waiter carefully explained how I should start by drinking the "tea" from the test tube, before moving on to pickled, roasted and raw artichoke. I stuck with it and through gritted teeth, drank what tasted like the washing-up water used to clean the pan the deliciously roasted artichoke had been cooked in. Oh dear.

The overall impression of Texture, a restaurant and champagne bar run by Icelandic chef Agnar Sverrisson and French-born sommelier Xavier Rousset—who met while working under Raymond Blanc at his sublime Le Manoir Aux Quat' Saisons—is of a place that tries too hard. It comes across as a lot of style being used to disguise a lack of substance. What's all the more irritating is that Sverrisson is a chef with an incredible technique, who is clearly capable of producing amazing dishes across a wide range of styles.

But while I'm all for recognising great chefs as artists, and however much I enjoy all the trickery and the fancy twirls, I go to a restaurant to eat food and drink wine—and I like to leave feeling full. A feast for the eyes is pointless if the stomach is left raging.

The rest of the meal got better with slightly more "honest" cooking on display, although the sense of a missed opportunity was confirmed by a side dish of cauliflower cheese, sent out by the chef "as a joke" after a menu misunderstanding. It was one of the best dishes on the table and certainly the best cauliflower cheese I have ever eaten.

With a great deal of attention paid to the ingredients, Sverrisson keen to play up his Icelandic heritage, and a star sommelier in Rousset—although why he insisted on serving an eventually lovely Mersault ice cold is beyond me—there is hope that Texture will start to fulfil its promise. But first it has to stop trying so hard. And ditch those bloody test tubes.