Maybe not even that much, but the line between beaten track and wasteland is very fine. It's at the start of a dead zone with the Whitefriars Church looking down on you and a mild depressing upward slope in front of you. Suddenly the glitziness of the stretch down to Dame Street feels a long way away. From the outside it's not quite right either, I would have said.

The wrong font maybe, the wrong colour, a neon blue light that nowadays, to me, signifies public toilets.

They should be glad they didn't ask me. They're doing just fine without my poxy advice. When I rang on a Tuesday, they barely had a table for the Thursday night and when we arrived the place was buzzing. It's bigger inside than it looks, maybe seating 60. There are more subtle notes of neon in the lighting and the room is warm and comfortable. The place is owned by an Irish butcher and an Indian restaurateur. The butcher supplies top-quality meat, the restaurant guy brings his experience. The combination has produced an unusual and interesting menu. Before I came I thought that this was a steakhouse and a quick look at the menu seemed to confirm that assumption.

But there is also a complete vegetarian page offering a good variety of options. Not just a steakhouse then.

Something a bit more ambitious that gave us the opportunity to test their kitchen.

It was only when we were waiting for dessert that we realised that we had in fact not really tested their kitchen all that much. We started with oysters, which were available Rockefeller style (cooked with spinach) or natural. We had them natural and they came with wedges of lemon and nothing else. They were perfectly fresh and silky. An antipasti plate had good prosciutto, fantastic very dry smoked salmon, semidried tomatoes, artichoke and grilled courgette and aubergine. This was an interesting mix, less meatheavy than you would normally expect. The grilled vegetables were good on texture and had picked up nice flavours from the grill but were unseasoned. We had a basket of bread with these.

Having looked with interest at the extent of the menu and admired its ambition, we both ended up eating meat. Unadorned grilled meat that was cooked on both sides and plated. An 18oz T-bone was a bit of a monster, a cartoon steak as big as the plate, but somehow all seemed to disappear. Apart from the bone. 12oz New York striploin was tidier but no less delicious. They were both nicely charred on the outside, medium rare inside.

In terms of texture and flavour they were close to perfect. They came with Bearnaise sauce, maybe a shade vinegary for purists, and well balanced champ. A mix of vegetables and bean sprouts was much better than we thought when we saw it, quality fresh ingredients just cooked enough. A side salad was a nice mix with a great dressing. An order of spinach had good natural flavour but again was unseasoned. We drank a bottle of Mudhouse Pinot Noir, which had a lot of juicy strawberry freshness and managed to stand up to a fairly robust meal.

We ordered a dessert plate for two, a representative selection from the menu. There was a date pudding that was lovely, homemade ice-cream that was fabulous. Lemon tart was good on flavour, bad on stodge. Chocolate mousse was more sweet than dark and a maceration, as my chef companion called it, of berries was lacking flavour maybe for seasonal reasons. The service was slick and friendly, the two people on the floor coping very well on a busy night. Darwin's has been here for a year and a half. Word is obviously out and judging from the night we were there, they have a loyal clientele. It is nice to see a place which prioritises quality of ingredients and smooth service at very respectable prices doing so well. Despite imagined shortcomings.