Destination that begins a gastronomic journey

If I had not been required for professional purposes to visit Platform, the poison-dipped business end of pitchforks would not have got me beyond the door. On a muggy Thursday evening, the dim-lit downstairs bar was heaving with a restless kinetic energy. It was a Yates lodge without the glamour, a Wetherspoon without the grace, my idea of hell on earth.

I was disappointed because, from both its web presence and its exterior, I had been taken by the rail-terminus iconography of the place, which draws on its location close to London Bridge station. As a teenager travelling across Europe, I became besotted by major train stations, and eating in them: The way Munich terminus was a city within a city. There was the famed brasserie at Gare du Nord in Paris, where people met each other for cluttered fruit de mer, assignations arranged while each was on the way to somewhere else.

And what do we get? At Platform, we get a Friday night out in Guildford by way of Hieronymus Bosch. Still, I had a job to do, so I made it upstairs to the restaurant, where the signs were still not good. But when I got to the table and looked at the menu, everything perked up. Platform cannot do desserts; it is not worth wasting words on them. What it can do is meat. As they proudly proclaim, the place is co-owned by a farmer, who delights in the name of Barney Butterfield. Cue usual menu notes about the pampering of livestock. What matters is that they get the whole animal in and use as much of it as they can.

Best of all were warm slices of confited beef, with the sort of tumescent, just-crisp amber fat to make a cardiologist wince, and sweet, dark, fibrous meat served with wild mushrooms and the bitter crunch of watercress. Not far behind was devilled chicken livers, in a dark puddle of powerful cayenne-boosted sauce. It soaked into the thick-crusted bread beautifully.

The grouse was not the best you could get in London. It was a little well-mannered, the gamey flavour a touch understated, but it was not a waste of a great game bird. Punchy gravy, proper game chips, braised cabbage. The only thing missing was the bread sauce. A good one gives a plateful of grouse a bit of bottom. At £24 (Dh139) a pop, it was keenly priced for this season.

A tenner cheaper was my braised lamb belly, the meat cooked until it fell apart on the fork, the skin just starting to crisp up. It was good to see this cut on the menu, better still to see it described so. It is indulgent — and cheap. Mine came with a stew of lentils and mint and, on the side, a salad of tomatoes and shallots, just the thing to cut through animal fat.

There are jokes to be made here about Platform being a destination in itself, rather than the beginning of a journey, but I have my pride. Leave it at this: The reason for coming here is all upstairs. A meal for two at Platform costs £110 (Dh638).