Robert Hardman

THOSE who follow the so-called style gurus will know that, just as scented candles are the new chocolate and black is the new brown (or is it the other way round?), so Vietnam is the new Thailand.

People who like to 'travel' as opposed to `go on holiday' are all banging on about the Joys of Vietnam. It carries the crucial `undiscovered' tag, it has cultural credibili- ty, and it has that frisson of danger still associated with the war. Thailand, once the designer-label destination of the Far East, Is now, well, really rather common.

I have not been to Vietnam. I know sev- eral people who have. One of them was there during some very nasty floods and came down to breakfast one morning to find two bodies floating in reception. Most, though, describe it as a stunning, must-see experience.

But if Thailand has lost its glamorous edge, its popularity has certainly had an influence on British dining. Lemon grass and green curry are in the supermarkets and Thai restaurants are springing up all over the place. Thai pubs are doing a roar- ing trade.

And so, in time, we can expect a profu- sion of Vietnamese restaurants. At present they are few and far between, but a new one has just opened off the King's Road in Chelsea.

It was a holiday in Vietnam, needless to say, that gave Steven Loveridge the idea of a Vietnamese restaurant in London. The owner of the Terrace, the modem British joint off Kensington Church Street, he sensed a market for Vietnamese food in a Western setting. The result is the Red River.

The most high-profile Vietnamese restaurant in London is probably Nam Long, the noisy South Kensington joint best known for its cocktails and its clientele of braying suits, who like to round off a day's Nasdaq-ing with several rounds of whoopee juice dressed in little umbrellas. The food is pretty average but, by then, most people have forgotten what they ordered anyway.

Nam Long leans towards North Viet- namese cuisine with its Chinese influences. Red River, on the other hand, takes its cue from South Vietnam — more herbs and Indo-Chinese/colonial French influences but less in the way of hot spices.

It is also refreshingly low on City squawk- ing. In fact, when I dropped in on a Friday night earlier this month, it was pretty quiet full stop. You enter halfway down from a large bar area and halfway up from a base- ment dining-room. Both are decorated in soft browns, with low lighting and a few pieces of the sort of Oriental bric-a-brac you might find in the home of someone who had once done a stint in Hong Kong.

Red River is not an authentically Viet- namese restaurant, but it does not really set out to be. The chef (Sam Metcalfe) is English and the manager is Italian, although there are one or two Vietnamese staff.

`Starters, like all our food, are designed to be shared. Try three between two,' says the menu. With most starters above the six quid mark this is a little cheeky, but Topaz and I were hungry and went for three anyway.

The roasted quail stuffed with spicy chicken and peanuts was meaty, tender and full of mild but interesting flavours. The lime-cured fillet of beef salad with bean sprouts and mint was particularly good soft beef with a carpaccio texture and juicy beansprouts. 'All very fresh, very cleansing,' Topaz concluded. The Balinese chilli squid was less impressive and doused in too much vinegary cucumber. In search of something spicy, Topaz decided to follow with the green chicken curry. It is a Thai rather than Vietnamese dish but is included in the menu to cater for those who want something hotter than the milder staples of the South China Sea. It was not hot enough for her taste, although she liked the Bounty Bar levels of coconut scattered all over the place. 'I've had better in Thailand but it's all right,' she concluded.

My crispy duck confit with pak choi was considerably better than the crispy duck that you find in the average Chinese restau- rant. There, it is usually a stringy old bird which the waiter mashes up before anyone can have a decent look at it and everyone then wraps up the remains in pancakes with plum sauce. Mine was a very decent piece of duck that would have passed muster in a French restaurant as plain confit de canard had it not been for the somewhat insipid pak choi.

For pudding, which we did not really need, we shared a coconut creme caramel which was really just a decent creme caramel ordinaire with more lashings of shaved coconut showered all over the plate.

The atmosphere, however, remained quiet, verging on the flat. It was not enough to make me pine for the bedlam of Nam Long, but it lacked something. The tinny sound-system in the bar, tuned into a radio station that was churning out crackly chart hits, hardly added to the limited sense of occasion. It seemed to be for the benefit of whoever was doing the washing-up rather than for the punters. Sugary oriental tunes or no music at all would have been preferable.

Nor does the long row of banquette tables that dominates the dining-room cre- ate the sense of intimacy to which the decor plainly aspires. There were a couple of inglenook tables, which would be good for a party of eight, but everyone else seems rather exposed. 'It's a Tuesday-night place, not a Friday-night place,' Topaz decided.

It certainly makes a good lunching refuge for the King's Road shopping brigade (who may remember Red River's previous incar- nation, Charco's). A set lunch of £12.50 for two courses is not bad value in those parts. My dinner bill of £101, including a £20 bot- tle of Brouilly and 12.5 per cent service, was not excessive for that part of town.

The food is an interesting addition to the area and should appeal to those who find the average Thai meal an eye-watering experience. I can certainly see Red River becoming a regular haunt for Chelsea locals. But for those seasoned travellers keen to relive the exotica of their holidays in Ho Chi Minh, it will seem no more Viet- namese than the happy-hour hell up the road at Nam Long.

Red River, 1 Bray Place, Chelsea, London SW3 3LL; tel.. 020 7584 0765.

Robert Hardman is a columnist and corre- spondent for the Daily Telegraph.