Unless you are completely blasé, some things provoke a bout of soul searching. How would it feel if you were eating out four or five times a week over a three month period and pretty much everywhere you visited seemed to be a great restaurant? It may be cynical but you would expect at least a third of all those eager newly-opened restaurants to be merely good rather than great. There is also plenty of room for self-doubt – perhaps it’s becoming increasingly difficult to tell exceptional from ordinary? Perhaps everything is blurring and familiar benchmarks can no longer be relied upon? This state of affairs is as worrying for a restaurant writer as the gloom of a fisherman who finds that whenever he goes fishing he always catches fish.

All the restaurants that stick in the memory this spring have something in common – they all serve exactly the kind of food I like to eat, raising the galling prospect that my personal likes and dislikes may be becoming mainstream. The time has come when honest restaurants serving good food like Hereford Road, Wild Honey, Le Café Anglais, Hix Oyster and Chophouse, are suddenly run of the mill. And now Quo Vadis, the Hart brothers latest venture, offers more of the same. Leoni opened his restaurant in 1926 and quickly built up a reputation for style and glamour - fast forward 82 years and once again the place is buzzing. This old stalwart has just re-opened after a major, but sympathetic, refit. The Harts have done a terrific job. The 1920's design elements have been retained and merged with modern comfort. The place is slick once more and best of all the menu is British – yet another of those all-embracing, all-enticing, super-Brasserie menus. The Harts may have made their name with Spanish restaurants but they grew up in a country house hotel in Rutyland and Quo Vadis has a good idea where it's going - carefully sourced, British produce, simply cooked - very commendable.

Unfussy starters like crab mayonnaise; razor clams griddled with garlic and parsley; asparagus and butter; brown shrimps on toast; an Old Spot pork terrine with sauce gribiche; or steak tartare, are done very well indeed. There is good meat - a 28 day aged Lincoln Red rib of beef for two is served with chips (the chips are excellent); veal sweetbread with tartar sauce is a joy - perfectly cooked, buttery, tender, and mercifully plain, maybe "best ever". There is fish – skate with capers and lemon; grilled turbot. There are roasts – saddle of lamb or magnificent squab pigeon. Puds are exemplary - summer pudding; treacle tart; profiteroles with vanilla ice cream and chocolate sauce. The right mix of familiar and indulgent.

Service is slick and there's a sympathetic wine list. First courses cost between £6 and £12.50; mains £17 to £25; sides £3 to £4; and puddings £6 to £7. Given that this a classy, chic, be-seen-in Soho dining room those prices are very competitive. Uncannily, like nearly all of the current crop of restaurants, Quo Vadis is very easy to like.

Charles Campion

Quo Vadis, 26-29 Dean Street, W1 (020 7437 9585) 

If you are venturing as far as Taste in Regent's Park this week, please support the Action Against Hunger cake decorating competition Thursday 5.30pm, when Tom Parker Bowles and I will be competing with Michel Roux Junior and Pascal Aussignac. And on Friday I can be found clutching copies of Charles Campion's London Restaurant Guide in the Waterstone's Book Signing Lounge between 2.50 and 3.30pm!