Embassy, Mayfair

Restaurants, it might surprise you to learn, come in different genders. Conran restaurants are masculine. Marco Pierre White's empire shifts between macho (Quo Vadis) and flirty (Mirabelle). The Ivy is a boy's club, no matter how many women are present, while Nobu is a girl's hangout regardless of how many men are there.

Tonight at the new Embassy in Mayfair, it's girls, girls, girls; dressed in cream lace see-through tops, floaty shawls over micro-minis, ivory cheongsams, stilettos and glittery eye shadow. Restaurants with bars, dance floors and private members' lounges such as this (we don't call them clubs any more) are created for girls: they're safe houses with food and music; refuges in which to socialise; backdrops against which to be admired. The boys are human wallpaper – you have to have them, they look nice, and they add something to the room.

Or maybe you don't have to have them. At the next table, eight boyless girls in tight dresses and black catsuits with diamanté belts skip the entrées and go straight to the main courses. My guess is the girls aren't here because of Garry Hollihead's track record as a chef (Sutherlands, Les Saveurs, Mortons and L'Escargot), but because of co-owner Mark Fuller's track record as a clubster (Sugar Reef, Red Cube and the original 1980s Embassy music club), not to mention third owner Gina Campbell Clough's track record as manager (Pharmacy, Dakota).

They're hoping to move, post-dinner, to the downstairs bar, but the management's on to their ploy, and they may end up facing the dreaded velvet rope and the doorman instead.

This club-on-the-side concept means the restaurant runs to a faster beat-per-minute than most. It's almost hyperactive – there is a lot of going to the loo, a lot of walking to the table while talking on the mobile saying where you are, and a lot of squealing with delight at seeing friends. It's sweet how excited some people get about going out to dinner.

In contrast, Hollihead's menu is calmly sophisticated. Dubbed "French and British renaissance", it is positively belle-époquean with its roast langoustine thermidor, venison Wellington, and lobster newburg with marsala and brandy. With the classics as a base and a real professional in the kitchen, it's hard not to enjoy the results. Most dishes sampled are very pretty, precisely plated with an elegance of flavour that's hard to find in the mish-mashy food of today's bistro. They're also very round, by virtue of those scone-cutter things chefs use to mould and discipline the sorts of food you didn't think you could mould and discipline. A perfect disc of salmon tartare (£8.50) is lifted out of its seen-it-all-beforeness with a crisply fried oyster and a pretty pea-shoot salad. A creamy, house-made boudin blanc (white sausage, £8.25) on a startlingly green puddle of cabbage is as light as a mousseline, rather than being rich and heavy and dragged down by reduced veal-stock sauces.

Chicken Rossini (£19.50) is a play on the old beef tournedos topped with foie gras. I prefer the fatty, creamy taste of foie gras with that of the leaner, well-rested chicken, and I like the use of braised celery, a true renaissance vegetable. Not the tenderest of meats at the best of times, the roasted and sliced breast of pheasant done in the Austro-Hungarian archiduc style (£14.50) feels tight and mean, while the undercarriage of lentils isn't happy in the rich, creamy sauce. An accessible wine list starts at £14 and careers around the world to include something for everyone. The 1999 Rodet Pinor Noir's warm fruitiness flirts with both birds.

To arrive at 8pm and be facing your main course at 9.05pm, however, is not allowing time for the best part of dining out – the settling in, the ordering of an aperitif, the perusal of the menu, the delicate negotiations with one's partner, the study of the wine list. Food shouldn't arrive before you've had time to look forward to it.

When I can draw breath and take in the surroundings, there's a lot to take in. Marble floors, glass panels, leaf motif columns, leather balustrades, sueded chairs, long tablecloths, skirted tables and tall wine glasses paint a pretty picture in shades of beige and gold.

Puddings are from another age (rice Jubilee, chestnut Mont Blanc, crêpes Suzette) but are sufficiently renaissanced to be as formed and graceful as the entrées. My apple charlotte (£5.95) is too elegant to have ever seen the inside of a nursery. A mint-green tower of paper-thinly sliced tart apples perches on a circle of golden sponge in a pool of custard, capped off with a glorious little feather of sugared rosemary.

This is hard-working, cleverly contrived food, classically based and stylishly executed. Hollihead aims high and is compromised only by a tendency to do a few things more for effect than reality. Mark Fuller's remix of the restaurant/bar/club concept is hedonistic, glamorous, young, and surprisingly intimate. It's part Grace Kelly and part Top Shop; a kind of Mirabelle for moppets.

In fact, there's a huddle of 20 or so party girls waiting behind the velvet rope outside as I leave. Obviously news of the salmon tartare with beignet oysters and pea-shoot salad is getting around.