Tony Tobin @ the Dining Room, Reigate

Celebrity chefs have shown how fast they can cook on television. But, Terry Durack asks Tony Tobin, when it comes to eating out, what's the rush?

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It's hot, and bright, and you can feel a little trickle of tension at the back of your neck, but you keep your cool. There's an audience out there, after all. Suddenly somebody gives you all this fresh food – a duck leg, pecans, pineapple, courgette flowers, tiger prawns, Chinese black beans, mustard, spring onions and peanut butter – and you have to pull it all together and try to make a meal of it in the shortest possible time.

And you're off, and all you can hear is your heartbeat echoing the ticking of the clock. Start with courgette flowers stuffed with black beans, tiger prawns and spring onions. Go on to crispy aromatic duck with pine-apple chutney and mustard mash. Finish with a flourish – pecan pie with peanut butter ice-cream. Phew. Another night in the kitchen at Tony Tobi @ the Dining Room successfully completed.

What must it be like for a chef to work for a Celebrity Ready Steady Cook? If your boss can turn a Mars bar, a cod fillet and a packet of noodles into a meal in 20 minutes flat, you'd have to be a pretty smart act yourself to keep up. Especially when the boss isn't just the executive chef, but is now the co-owner to boot. With the help of financial partner, Peter Wood, founder of Direct Line insurance, Tobin recently re-financed himself out of the kitchen and on to the floor of what was the Dining Room in Gatwick-handy Reigate.

A discreet doorway leads directly to carpeted stairs and a recently made-over first floor of chocolate-brown carpet, softly glowing wall lights, gentle art, marble fireplaces and restful furniture. There are couches to lounge on, and a little bar to snuggle in, and seemingly hundreds of young staff members who don't quite know what to do with their hands and feet.

Honestly, the next time someone says I can only squeeze into their restaurant if I come at 7pm, I'm going elsewhere. It's all very well them staggering the bookings in order to save stress in the kitchen, but what about stress in the dining-room? I am sick of sitting in an empty restaurant for the first hour of my evening. This early, the staff have nothing to do, so they come at you like blow-flies and have to be constantly swatted away.

Worse, it's deathly quiet, and all whispery. What it needs is – yes, it needs Ainsley, to pop in with his big grin and loud shirt and his hello, lovely, welcome, lovely, how are you tonight, alright? Lovely, lovely. A dark-suited Tobin plays it cool, taking coats and orders and going out of his way to not be a celebrity chef. Admirable, but sometimes you just want personality and presence.

The £24, two-course weekend menu roams the world like Michael Palin without the dysentery, and without any borderless mix'n'matchiness of fusion either, each dish being culturally distinct.

Even so, some artistic licence is explored. A "jellied ham hock terrine" is more terrine than jellied, like a dense porky pâté de campagne, classically served with a tangy celeriac remoulade.

A second starter of seared scallops and Thai spiced crab cake proves the kitchen has real nous. Big fleshy scallops are seared so they still retain a lightly jellied wobble, and topped with crisp, shredded deep-fried greens similar to Chinese "mermaid's tresses". The base is a rich golden crab cake, and the lot is drizzled with a hot, sweet chilli syrup. Stop there and you're ahead. But no – and this is where I'm thinking the chef has a bag of ingredients and will get disqualified if he doesn't use them all – there are toothpaste stripes on the plate of what seem to be mashed potato and red and yellow pepper sauces.

I will say one thing for these celebrity chefs, they are quick. Way too quick. The main courses arrive less than three minutes after the starter plates have been cleared away; a sure sign of a kitchen champing at the bit and wanting to get those annoying early bookings over and done with before the real people start turning up for dinner. Or maybe the spirit of Ainsley inhabits the kitchen, shouting, "Five-four-three-two-one, lovely, now Stop Cooking."

Once I get over my crossness, I dig into a bowl of lamb and apricot tagine – good, long flavour, tight and chewy meat – and a cold, moulded patty of bulghur on the side.

Crispy aromatic duck is, in fact, a decent pan-fried confit of duck leg sitting on fairly gluey mustard-seed mash in a moat of glazed pineapple and sultanas (ie pineapple chutney). Duck good, plate a mess.

To finish, cute doughnut balls filled with Bramley apple purée are homely, and a parfait-like dark chocolate and date terrine is pleasant without being particularly datey.

By this stage, both rooms are full to bursting with dressed-up, cashed-up locals who look as if they are just revelling in the sheer cosmopolitaness of it all. Because in spite of erratic timing and self-conscious service, it is still a good night out, with its salon ambience, adventurous food, fine glassware, balanced wine list and (relatively) fair prices. Even without green pepper and red tomato audience voting cards, these people are smart enough to know who's really winning.

Tony Tobin @ the Dining Room, 59A High Street, Reigate, Surrey, tel: 01737 226 650. Lunch Sun-Fri, dinner Mon-Sat. About £100 for two with wine and service