There are years to open sparkly restaurants in the City of London and credit-crunched 2008 isn't one of them. Pacific Oriental is a pretty ambitious undertaking, though. The restaurant is set in the cavernous former HQ of NatWest and combines the glamour of the ’20s Orient with the marbled grandeur of the Square Mile.

Pacific Oriental is really two restaurants. Downstairs offers Thai street-style food, while we opted for the pan-Asian fine-dining menu on the glass-fronted balcony above. We were especially intrigued by the promise of food 'inspired by the Pacific Rim', an area that, if my calculations are correct, encompasses everywhere in the world apart from Togo and the Isle of Wight. It’s a lot of inspiration. The choices were intriguing too, with Japanese staples given a European swirl, alongside an array of fresh sushi and sashimi.

To start, I ordered the chilled avocado and lime soup with poached quail egg. It was mainly a gesture of defiance against the midsummer downpour outside, but a largely futile one. The soup was limey but lacking zest — think guacamole robbed of its tang and then run over by a steamroller. Jonny had more luck with his seared smoked salmon, although complained that the marinade slightly overpowered the fish. But judging by the sudden disappearance of the accompanying tempura oysters and plump asparagus spears, there were no other major issues.

My main of roast monkfish with clams, chorizo and galangal broth was an easy choice. I've always loved monkfish, partly for its wonderful texture and partly because someone has to: it looks like a sub-sea Shrek and has a bigger mouth than Jose Mourinho. Despite being dubbed 'poor man's lobster' (presumably by a member of the Astor family) monkfish is far from cheap, so the generous chunk of fillet felt like fair value. It was tasty, succulent and gone in about 60 seconds. By contrast, the broth completely flummoxed me. It came in a little pot piled high with baby clams and chunks of chorizo, but was fiddly and too sweet. It brought back memories of childhood beach holidays spent hunched over rockpools with a tiny net and, frankly, the net would have come in handy.

While I was beachcombing, Jonny tucked merrily into the crispy pork belly. It was served on a spring-onion mash and was complemented by a flavoursome shallot and coriander jus. The pork was perfectly cooked and came with enough crunchy crackling for several Sunday lunches, and I wish I’d ordered it.

My companion’s choices were seriously showing me up, so the new plan was to refrain from ordering pudding and just eat his instead. He went for the mangosteen summer pudding and got it right again. It was a wonderful deep purple; tart but with a lingering sweetness, and just rather lovely. And it came with enough clotted cream to seriously annoy your doctor.

Here was the perfect harmony between east and west that Pacific Oriental is clearly striving for, but doesn’t always attain. Still, anyone looking for an elegant escape from rain and recession could do a lot worse: the service is friendly and attentive, the cooking never less than adventurous and the wine list practically into a second volume. And, for those whose sorrows are particularly resistant to drowning, there’s always the 60 — yup, 60 — types of saki to speed the process. Philip De Semlyen