Fifth Floor at Harvey Nichols, London, SW3

Terry Durack is impressed by Harvey Nichols' Fifth Floor - after a fashion

Like most restaurants within fashion emporiums, Fifth Floor is really a lunch spot. It's for ladies who lunch, ladies who shop, boys who shop, boys who lunch while ladies shop, and ladies who like to lunch with boys who know how to shop.

At night, it's hard not to feel out of place, like a shoplifter with bad timing. There is not the same sense of the possibilities in life afforded by lunch, knowing that you have been shopping and will be shopping again just as soon as the table is cleared.

Ever since the mid-1990s, when the very talented Henry Harris first set up the kitchen here as a temple to Modern British gastronomy, this has been a place of and for conspicuous consumption. When Harris departed in 2000, Fifth Floor lost its mojo, and has been trying to get it back ever since. Chefs have come and gone, and, in 2002, the dining room underwent a bravely futuristic hi-tech makeover, which is still quite entrancing today.

Mid-way through last year, the spotlight returned with the arrival of Finnish-born Helena Puolakka, last seen at the popular neighbourhood restaurant Sonny's in Barnes. Her star-studded CV includes time with Gordon Ramsay, Marcus Wareing, Pierre Koffman and Pierre Gagnaire.

When I dined here just before Christmas, the room sparkled, the shopping bags rustled, the sauvignon blanc demanded to be drunk, and the lobster, truffle and ratte potato salad begged to be ordered. But then, that was lunch. This is dinner.

Oddly, for peak hour on a Friday night, the room is less than a quarter full. The whole world seems to be in the adjacent bar, however, and loud screeches, chatter and pulsating music tumble through the open adjoining door.

Much of the à la carte menu reads, understandably, like lunch food. There is an endive, Roquefort and pomegranate salad; escabeche of red mullet; scallops with preserved lemon with anchovy millefeuille; and a crispy parcel of cod, poached egg and spinach. Slinkier stuff can be found on a £55 seven-course tasting menu, while a simpler market menu offers good value with two courses for £19.50.

A cream of watercress soup (£7.50) served in a large, stylish white bowl is uncompromisingly good - deeply verdant and silky without being cloyingly creamy, with a focussed peppery flavour. The idea of serving it with a wedge of grilled Poilane bread spread with a lush, chive-studded egg mayonnaise works a treat, springing, no doubt, from Puolakka's Scandinavian upbringing.

The Finns know a thing or two about marinating fish too, and an escabeche of red mullet (£10) served with a little dice of pickled beetroot and a swish of horseradish emulsion is subtle and nicely formed.

With its faux skylight glowing a luminous blue, and walls clad with fibre optic-filled tubing, the oval dining room feels like a computer-generated architect's model. Its stark modernity is in direct contrast to the formal, old-fashioned service, the sort more at home in a traditional hotel dining room. There is much use of those odd, rectangular opaque glass plates, the sort that make me think I am in the bathroom rather than at the table.

Robert Giorgione, the proprietorial sommelier is a fount of knowledge on every wine on his 34-page list, right up to the '82 Chateau La Tour at £1,200. Commendably, he steers me off my first choice of New Zealand Pinot Noir to one 10 quid cheaper, a delightful 2002 Isabel from Marlborough at £33.50.

It's light enough to cope with a main course of neatly sliced roast monkfish tail (£19), yet gutsy enough to handle the sauerkraut, Morteau sausage and smoked pork belly that comes with it. This dish seems to be left over from nouvelle cuisine, when the French were busy doing choucroute with fish and bouillabaisse with chicken - anything to stir up the status quo - but the various elements seem too prissy to pull together as one confident and harmonious platter.

According to one of the many waiters, the home-smoked organic salmon (£18.50) is the chef's signature dish. Salmon, hot-smoking, Scandinavia - that makes sense. It is a pretty, ladylike dish, the soft pink salmon draped over warm romaine lettuce and fennel, with a punchy jus that tastes of roasted vegetables. But it proves to me once again that hot-smoking is extremely difficult to do without leaving salmon tasting more of smoke than salmon.

To end, the "crispy parcel" of English apple and vanilla rice pudding (£7.50) strikes an odd note; crisp filo pastry parcels seeming as out of place as extreme shoulder pads on the fashionable floors of Harvey Nichols. Or are they coming back in already? It's hard to keep up.

Helena Puolakka is a talented and meticulous chef, but her cooking feels a little fragmented. Some of it is light and pretty, some of it a bit dated, some of it deliberately retro, some of it lunch food, some of it dinner food. Some of it works, some of it doesn't. I guess that's fashion for you.

14/20

Scores 1-9 stay home and cook 10-11 needs help 12 OK 13 pleasant enough 14 good 15 very good 16 capable of greatness 17 special, can't wait to go back 18 highly honourable 19 unique and memorable 20 as good as it gets

Fifth Floor at Harvey Nichols, 109-125 Knightsbridge, London, SW3, tel: 020 7235 5250

Lunch daily, dinner Mon-Sat. Dinner around £130 for two including wine and service.

Second helpings: More dining with retail therapy

Yo!Sushi Selfridges Birmingham, Upper Mall, East Bullring, Birmingham, tel: 0121 600 6712 Simon Woodruffe's computer-belt sushi empire now extends to 24 outlets. This glossy operation in Selfridges ultra-mod Birmingham store serves up sashimi, sushi and maki, as well as hot chicken katsu curry and salmon teriyaki.

Anthony's at Flannels 68 Vicar Lane, Leeds, tel: 0113 242 8732 Anthony Flinn of Anthony's has now opened a second, more casual, brasserie in the Flannels fashion store. Come for brunch, lunch or afternoon tea, and don't miss the steak and hand-cut chips and lemon tart with ginger ice cream.

Ladurée Harrods, 87-135 Brompton Road London SW3, tel: 020 7730 1234 Last year, this famed French tearoom and patisserie opened its first branch outside Paris in Harrods. It's an elegant space in which to sip tea and nibble macaroons, or to lunch on well-crafted salads, omelettes and foie gras terrine.

Email Terry Durack about where you've eaten lately at t.durack@independent.co.uk