The Independent from London, Greater London, England • 46

6 Independent London Friday 29 July 1994 out and about, sport p7, cinema p83 theatre pi 0, exhibitions pi 1, clubs, comedy, dance music mm GGq Ibsppans HQQSBD goftoBQGi mm Photograph: Kayte Brimacombe herself alarmingly full By the time she got round to the Cajun chicken with prawn paella, served in a messy orange jumble of rice 'n' chunks without any garnish or salad, she was approaching bursting-point The prawns were really tender and spky, she enthused, but I could tell she was flagging, being a mere girl in this testosterone-rich extravaganza. Gamely plunging in, I had the rib-eyed steak with attendant bits and pieces. It was peppered with spices, and came with garlic-potato mash, tobacco onions and something called gingersnap gravy. (Memo: Real men don't eat sauce; they eat gravy). If they'd added some roofing nails or a stick of dynamite, it couldn't have been more manly.

This was a main course with hair under its arms. It was a riot of strong flavours in which the flavour of steak trailed a long way behind everything else. After 20 minutes you feel like you've been smacked around the chops by an expert pugilist: We were both so exhausted that we couldn't bear to have a pudding. But next time I go (accompanied by a dozen oil riggers) I must try the "raw berry shock with peppered melon" which sounds as if it separates the wimps from the jocks. More ranch-house disco than chapel, more Baton Rouge diner than Vieux Carre saloon, the Chapel Lafayette belabours you with sensations without raising your spirits.

40 for two, including half-a-dozen spritzers. Chapel Lafayette, 374 North End Road, SW6. Open Ham -1230am daily. Major cards. Tel: (071) 362 00212.

2116). What started out as a purposely funky restaurant has, two years on, admitted it is a bar, so for die remainder of the summer it is unlikely that the Dog House will be serving solids. This is somewhat of a waste of a deft chef, but not a total write-off. According to one of the owners, they are now concocting a snacky menu, involving "Thai influences" and The working tide? Dog's Dinner. Silly but fun, and genuinely hospitable.

Open 5pm-11pm Mon-Sat. John Walsh in an occasionally Cajun restaurant with a decidedly macho menu 0 spent last week suffering from a virulent form of food poisoning known as the Wrath of Khan (brought on by an ill-advised visit to an Indian takeaway on the Walworth Road), so it was with some trepidation that I ventured back into the world of exotic cuisine and went for dinner at Chapel Lafayette, a new place devoted to something called "composite Cajun The restaurant is in an old church hall across the road from St John's Church, Ful-ham. The hall's former status is announced in stone-carved lettering over the door; its next-door neighbour is a disused municipal baths, similarly flagged in stone. Together they are remnants of a kindlier age of community prayer and carbolic soap, circa 1910, when the North End Road and its environs was a neighbourhood rather than a site of grotty supermarkets and carpet warehouses. The new-look chapel is got up in a brutally modern style, from its bashed-copper fascia to its walls of bare concrete.

The starkness of the decor is self-consciously churchy, its heavy Puritan furniture accessorised by wall sconces and stuffed birds in glass domes like mini-shrines and a ceiling mural in debased Tintoretto style. Everything else about the CAMDEN: A famous executive from that Tory flagship of free enterprise, TVam, once insisted a group of smokers be moved at the Underground Caff, (214 Camden High Street NW1, 071-482 0010). When the manager offered to move the executive instead, he is said to have flounced out, and issued a memo saying no staff could entertain at the cafe and expect reimbursement. Who knows? The waiter might have gone on to sit on the Independent Broadcasting Authority The Underground Cafe" is, in effect, the basement of the good, its identifiable constituents (beetroot, tomato, cucumber, shallots, coriander did I miss anything?) fizzing pleasantly on the tongue. My companion ordered the grilled calamari with mixed leaf, guacamole and salsa and reeled with surprise at the vast wobbling Leviathan that appeared before her.

It was priced like a starter (4.50) but dished up like a Luciano Pavarotti Meal-inrOne. Just one slab of it could have doubled as a rubber bathing-cap. She thought it was delicious but pronounced service. This would be as obnoxious as it sounds were the Green Street chef, a young Antipodean named Peter Gordon, not seriously talented. Not every chef can put sea bass on cous-cous with harissa and make it taste anything less than bastardised.

In Gordon's hands, it's delicious. So is most of what he cooks. Staff, while terminally groovy, are perfectly pleasant. Approx 20. Open lunch Mon-Fri.

Major credit cards. SOHO: Yo! Drink flavoured vodka at the Dog House (187 Wardour Street Wl, 071-434 gumbo, no crawfish etouffe, no beignets As a sop to the original 'Arcadians" who came from Canada and found themselves lost in the bayou and forced to eat eels and swamp-rats, which they blackened with spices to mask the taste the Chapel offers a single "blackened" dish, namely salmon with warm greens, herb vinaigrette and black bean sauce. Jolly ethnic, I must say. I tried the beet gazpacho, or borshcht as it is more generally known (maybe this is some Cajun-Russian variant); it was daily. Booking advisable (if difficult due to language).

Amex, Visa, Access. MAYFAIR: The Fifties youth gave us coffee bars. The Sixties youth gave us boutiques. The Seventies youth gave us wholefood restaurants. The Eighties youth gave us chic restaurants.

The Nineties youth are giving us private clubs. Instead of signing on, our young trendies are signing in. One recent enclave for belongers is Green Street (3 Green St Wl, 071-409 0453), which deigns to admit the public for its weekday lunch dine. But we gave ita whirl. The "composite Cajun" menu offers a decidedly butch selection of American dishes -Caesar salad, calamari with guacamole, oysters with chilli minionette, barbequed pigs' trotters, back ribs, in plum sauce, rib-eye steak, spicy duck sausage but they carry only the mildest whiff of real Louisiana swamp cuisine.

I wouldn't want to drag die Trades Descriptions people to Fulham Broadway, but the Chapel's fare is about as Cajun as my Aunt Bridget. There's no 071-437 1539) once gave this history of the dish: in an effort to promote milk consumption, an official asked a group of Cantonese villagers to experiment with milk recipes. The winning entry was cooked in a wok. One need not, however, order fried milk at Fung Shing to appreciate that this is one of the best Chinese restaurants in the country. Try the poached carp, served whole in its cooking liquor, which can then be ladled over the tender flesh and rice.

Sizzling platters are for tourists. Approx 20-25. Open lunch and dinner place, however, is young and zappy the bar glows with an electric green light, and dispenses cocktails in dubious taste (one's called called Priest and Little Boy), the seats are low-slung and the clientele includes an alarming number of male hipsters in their late 20s, drinking botded beer and looking like an ad for Man At Given this broken-backed configuration young-and-groovy bar area, dark-and-con-fessiond eating area -it's not a place where anyone over 35 would feel terribly disposed to Camden Brasserie. Both stand up to bullies and serve decent nosh, in the ase of the can! with an Italianat spin: grilled aubergine, courgette and bell pepper with pesto and grilled polenta or grilled calf's liver or rocket salad, wine stewed fruit compote with yoghurt. The gently worn theme of the decor will survive current refurbish-ments.

Open lunch and dinner daily (all day. Sunday Access, Visa. CHINATOWN: Fried milk is one of the quirkier Chinese specialities. The owner of Fung Shing, (15 Lisle Street WC2,.