Marina O'Loughlin on restaurantsRestaurantsReview'Where is everybody? It's a question I continue to ask as the food arrives: I can't find fault with any of it'

This is quite the plate of food: stark, almost bleak in its monochrome simplicity. Everything is shades of pale: waxy potatoes, pearly cod, espuma in a colour that Farrow & Ball would probably call Stornoway Sound, tiny dots of darkest grey. But it's also remarkable in its flawlessness: the cod cooked just so, subtle maillard brushstrokes on top, flesh as tender and yielding as a truffle. The potatoes have been smoked; not the full essence de barbecue, but enough to give them personality. And the espuma is potato foam, as soothing as fine vichysoisse, as airy as a quip. Those dots? Black olives, desiccated into crunches of pure flavour.

I don't normally get so food porny (my word count won't let me), but it's clear we're not in any common-or-garden wine bar. To backtrack: I've been a fan of this corner site off Carnaby Street since it was La Trouvaille, much-loved by the earliest wave of networking web-foodies, back when meeting anyone off the internet was regarded as the weirdest of all possible behaviours. Latterly, it wasn't anywhere I'd go for food, but the winelist was a corker, and it was a wonderful place for an off-radar outdoor seat on a hot city night.

Then it closed for refurbishment and exciting rumours started to surface. Exciting enough to give me the kind of sweaty-palmed breathlessness that makes me wonder if I'm not actually a very sad person. I studied the semiotics, only discernible to the nerdiest: Cevennes onions served with pear; unpasteurised butter; and the bread – loose-crumbed, dark-crusted, fermented sourdough. It all pointed to one person: former lawyer, now Michelin-starred produce fanatic, Mikael Jonsson of Hedone fame (and, coincidentally – or not? – one of that same first wave of foodie bloggers).

So I book as immediately as my clammy paws will allow, anticipating a ravening pack of star-chasers and fearing I'm late to the bloody party (damn you, the internet). So off I hurtle, past a buzzing scene in the wine bar downstairs, to find… nothing. Not a soul. Just the pal scoping the menu in a room that looks like an abandoned Ikea room set. Where is everybody?

It's a question I continue to ask as the food arrives – four set courses for 40 quid (at lunchtime a giveaway £23 for three). I can't find fault with any of it, not the fat spears of tender white asparagus (I can't remember the last time I ate this in the UK when it wasn't tinned or jarred) bathed in a hollandaise so light it floats on to the tongue; there's the most fleeting hint of aniseed from tarragon and fragrance from cardamom. Simple, perfect. Or rosy salt marsh lamb telling tales of happy sheep; seared, fatless tranches contrasted with slower-cooked patties that have the palate-coating, fatty texture of fine rillettes. There's a squirt of something seaweedy for bitter relief and clever harmony. And dessert! An abstract citrus artwork: squiggles of intense curd, lozenges of silky sorbet, sharp, creamy ices – grapefruit, orange, lemon, lime, the sour-sweet clarity punctuated with saffron-infused shards of meringue. Blimey.

So I go back to eat at the bar, and have a bit more of a wallow in a winelist that focuses on the natural and biodynamic (special mention to a luscious trebbiano from Emidio Pepe). "Bar snacks" are every bit as unimpeachable: speck cotto (cooked smoked ham) as pink and velvety as rose petals; the finest two square inches of pork belly I've eaten, meat softened by its own fat, crackling thin and brittle as sugarwork. And that bread, always that bread.

I sneak upstairs; it's a Saturday evening and the lovely young staff have served three tables all night. Sure, it's still early days, but where are you all? Queuing for burgers? You're all mad. Get down to Antidote – Jonsson's not in the kitchen every day, but his verging-on-maniacal perfectionism has clearly rubbed off on Chris Johns, who is. This is how it should be done.

Antidote 12a Newburgh Street, London W1, 020-7287 8488. Open Mon-Sat noon-3pm, 6-10.30pm (wine bar noon-11pm). Set lunch, £19 for two courses, £23 for three; menu du marché, £40 for four courses; all plus drinks and service.

Food 8/10
Atmosphere 6/10
Value for money 8/10

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