Food & Drink: Join the slammer set

EATING OUT: It's been dubbed the hot new centre of south-west American cuisine, but is Santa fe really worth the hype?

Santa Fe, New Mexico is said to have more restaurants per head of population than any US city. It's also the crucible of south-western cooking, a chilli-riddled blend of native American, Spanish and down-home American cooking that takes Tex-Mex to a higher plane. Also taking in Arizona, Colorado and Utah, this New Mexican wave takes the basic mix of corn, beans and chilli and applies them to an evolving range of vibrant, innovative protein-rich dishes. Santa fe in Islington is said to be London's hot new spot for this cuisine that starts with quesadillas - the floppy, floury tortilla sandwiches - and could set the desert sky as the limit to its invention. In fact, it has settled for providing the slammer set with something more interesting than refried beans to eat, and with more to recommend it than absorbant properties, at prices that don't make it an exclusive night out - nor one with unreasonably high expectations.

Backed by the couple who set up and sold the Seattle Coffee Company, and with Rocky Durham, an instructor from the keeper-of-the-flame Santa Fe School of Cooking (with a bleach-blond Gary Rhodes hairdo) imported as executive chef, it seems to have the credentials to show London what it has been missing. And they're not planning to stop at Islington, but to pioneer a chain of restaurants serving south-western food.

Behind a rather classy cupola left behind from the listed building's origin as an early cinema, the prototype corral looks ok in three colours - dusty blue, laterite red and creamy adobe - with robust tables and chairs and a concrete floor that could withstand a stampede. Which is what there seemed to be for tequila shots, margaritas and cocktails at the bar.

That was as far as I got when I first went. Everyone else had hit the trail before me, and the restaurant doesn't take bookings. After two messy- looking but spot-hitting margaritas in three quarters of an hour, and despite the promise of a table from one beautiful T-shirted boy on the door and the concern of another when a bartender knocked over a glass at my feet, hunger got the better of lust and my friend and I went elsewhere.

At the second attempt, the full, frantically noisy extent of Santa fe was revealed. I ended up at the far end of the higher of two levels dedicated to dining, well away from the Cuervo gold rush at the bar. But I was still prey to the smell of seared flesh and thump of disco music that characterises every undistinguished American restaurant with adequate air conditioning and an over-amplified sound system. Here of all places, they could play Dan Hicks and his Hot Licks or Commander Cody and his Lost Planet Airmen. When they've taken the trouble to install appropriate lavatory seats made of barbed wire encased in perspex, why not chose suitably witty music too?

A none-too-cold margarita didn't bode well, though the menu promised a little more than the theme-bar surroundings. There's a glossary to clear up queries about chilantro (coriander) and Galisteo (the village where Rocky's mum lives) and a range of dishes weighted in favour of the familiar guacamole, Caesar salad and steak and fries. But there's also chilli-fired salmon with tropical fruit salsa and fiesta coleslaw, and Rocky's pot roast beef with guajillo chilli sauce and roasted garlic mash to kindle curiosity, and keep the waitress busy answering more questions.

Straight off we hit paydirt with chipotle shrimp and corn cakes. At first it looked like we'd just got dirty dishes scattered with red grit deposited by a desert dust storm. The kitchen had seen fit to sprinkle the plates with paprika the way some do with cracked pepper, or icing sugar on desserts. Nevertheless, the fried shelled shrimps and the blackened but floppy corn pancakes were a fine combination. The remaining smoked chilli buttery juices were appealing enough for me to ask for bread to mop them up with. "We don't really have bread," said the waitress, who nevertheless put in a special request and came back with exceptionally good toasted rosemary focaccia. Quesadillas may be a Tex-Mex staple, but a soft, floury tortilla folded over garlicky mushrooms was well received, though it did nothing to convince that Santa fe is mould-breaking.

Unlike that of the man next door who considered his steak more raw than rare, our main courses gave no cause for complaint. Pueblo pork loin chops, a decent chunk of meat in a barbecue sauce a little like Daddy's came with a slab of eggy and nutmeggy corn pudding with red and green peppers inside it, and a heavily-cinnamoned apple, sultana and pine kernel chutney. Though all of this substantial plateful was sweet, the spicing was varied and subtle.

Chicken Galisteo, chargrilled, was, the consort said, about as interesting as grilled chicken breast gets, the black beans the best of this type of bean I've ever had, and the salsa satisfactory rather than revelatory. We'd ordered an extra garlicky, buttery corn bread which, despite almost identical composition, tasted pleasantly different to the corn pudding. But following on from the corn cakes in the starter we were losing count of the different forms corn came in. Anyone with an aversion to the jolly green giant, beware. "There are more kernels here than in a Confederate army," quipped the consort coming up with the best corny joke we could muster. More niblets appeared in the calabacitas, a vegetable side order that seemed short of the summer squash it promised as the main ingredient.

We could have given up before pudding; their imagination certainly had, and all they offer is cheesecake, brownies and ice-creams. The squidgy brownie with cinnamon ice-cream was an unnecessary but not unwelcome finale. We probably should have had coffee, given where the money for Santa fe has come from. Without it, but including a margarita and glass of wine each, the bill came to pounds 30 a head for food that was good of its type and left us feeling well corn-fed.

Santa fe, 75 Upper Street, London N1 (0171-288 2288). Daily noon-11pm. Around pounds 15 without drinks. Major cards. Disabled access