A restaurant situated in one of South Kensington’s premier shopping streets could probably get away with charging ladies-who-shop high prices for run-of-the-mill food. What a pleasant surprise, therefore, to find real culinary ambition and assuredness lurking amid the designer dresses and big-name bags.

The Venue
Joe’s is chic but relaxed in that modern boutique hotel style. The walls are beige, the chairs either black bentwood or red leather. Starched white napery suggests, quite correctly, that this is more than just a coffee-and-cake or burger-and-chips kind of place. A wall of shelves displaying wine bottles, books and magazines gives an artfully clubby feel, and sensibly divides the 60-cover establishment into two rooms for added intimacy and versatility.

The Atmosphere
On a weeknight evening, fellow diners are surprisingly thin on the ground and comprise gaggles of females recovering from another round of intensive retail therapy, and local, well-heeled couples. The staff are as chic as their customers, totally competent, and smiley rather than snooty, keen to recommend chef Maria Elia’s signature dishes.

The Food
This place knows its customers; the succinct menu of six starters and six mains features elegant combinations, plenty for vegetarians and fish fans, and a scattering of luxury ingredients. This isn’t the place for steak and kidney pudding or spotted dick.

Crab, vanilla and asparagus salad (£8.25) is a typical example. The crabmeat (white only, of course) and thinly sliced, al dente vegetable are bound in vanilla-flavoured creamy dressing, and artistically presented on a rectangle of grey slate. Artichoke hummus with crudités and fennel seed grissini (£5.50) arrives looking like a modern art exhibit with baby carrots, slithers of fennel, radishes and cucumber batons upended at various angles, the hummus on the plate providing the adhesive. It’s not style over substance, however, as the hummus is deliciously different (although one couldn’t necessarily pinpoint that that difference is the inclusion of artichoke), and the fennel seeds in the grissini work brilliantly.

As for mains, even the ultimate man-food, steak, gets the girly treatment. A char-grilled rib eye (£18.50, cooked medium to well done as requested, with no eyebrows raised) arrives cut into elegant pieces and mixed with green tomatoes, rocket and shaved parmesan. It’s delicious but a bit of shock for anyone expecting steak on a plate. The salad is dressed but a spot of jus or gravy wouldn’t go amiss. There’s great flavour from the roast tomatoes.

Talking of the dear old love apple, ‘Textures of tomatoes’ (£13.75) is real picture-on-a-plate stuff. There’s a shot glass of chilled soup with Thai basil and a good chilli kick. Keftedes are okay, not-very-tomato-y, falafel-like fritters. Labne, billed as lemongrass and green tomato jelly in tomato skin, seems to be mainly about cream cheese. There are teeny cubes of tomato jelly, too, but the undoubted star of the plate is a warm tomato baklava with crunchy filo, rich feta, toasted nuts (and, thankfully, no sign of honey). Tomatoes of every hue and dimension dot the ensemble. Not every component hits the spot but it’s great fun and an inventive plateful.

Puds are, perhaps, best of all. The selection of ice creams (£1.50 a scoop) only runs to three but they are all interesting and all of perfect consistency. Stracciatella (vanilla with flecks of chocolate) is creamy with quality chocolate; salted caramel has deep caramel flavour and colour and, thankfully, not too much salt; whilst banana simply tastes strongly of banana. Lavender marshmallow, chocolate sponge and mascarpone ice cream in salty crumbs (a bargain at £3.50) sounds scary but looks beautiful and works even more so, with a succession of expertly balanced textures and flavours taking turns on the tongue.

The Drink
The global wine list features five Champagnes and sparkling wines, thirteen whites, sixteen reds, two rosés and a pair of dessert wines. Despite the South Ken address and glamorous clientele, a Chateau Batailley Pauillac from Bordeaux is the priciest option at a relatively modest £80. Entry level is a tad high, though, at £19 for red (a clean, toffee-ish quaffer of a cabernet/malbec from Argentina) and £22 for the white (Roero Arneis, 'Vigne Sparse', G. Almondo from Piedmont - equally enjoyable). Four of the five sparklers are available by the glass, and a dozen still wines by the 250ml carafe, which is a decent proportion.

The Last Word
This is a class act where style never dominates substance. Chef Maria Elia fearlessly combines interesting flavours and textures and never forgets that many of her customers are figure-watching females. Prices are fair for food and ambience of this quality and, in a street where a shirt can cost three figures and a handbag four, they almost constitute a bargain.

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