A return to Maze disappoints, while the Restaurant at St. Pauls is a find

Maze is, perhaps, a concept too redolent of boom times to mature well through a recession.

The idea is French tapas, the motivation is variety. This Grosvenor Square-based outpost of the Gordon Ramsay empire suggests that by sampling a profusion of small, exquisitely prepared dishes you can have all the elegance of fine dining with the quantity and range of bar food. The prices, of course, go with the elegance. Obviously, the scheme has worked, because Maze boasts sister establishments in New York and Melbourne. I loved it when I first visited, liked it on the second foray, but found myself cooling precipitously toward the place by the end of the third try.

We were there to try the recession-friendly tasting menu: four courses for £28.50, add matching wines to bring the total to £40. It was a Monday night and the place was about a third empty. Yet the staffing levels seemed set for a full house, with more than a score of waiters, bus boys and sommeliers in sight. We settled in to our table and expected to be swaddled in attention. Bring on issue number one: The service was as slow as if they'd been pitifully understaffed. We waited 20 minutes or more between courses, which might work in a normal restaurant but isn't logical when you're working your way through little bites designed to be tasted in succession and designed not to be too filling. Frankly, by the time another course arrived, any feeling of being full from the last had evaporated, and I think we both quietly wished we'd bumped up to the six course menu so that we'd have felt a little more satisfied upon our departure.

The food is still exquisitely presented and the combinations innovative. The best part of the meal was actually the wine flight. Rather than having a range of wines selected by the chef to match the food, you chose from trios grouped into categories. The red flight, the white, the mixed, etc. We went for the Spanish, featuring two whites and one particularly delicious red from the Duero valley. All three were unusual, interesting and presented by a sommelier who was excited by the choices and his chance to tell us about them. Our complaint here? All the flights were glasses of three, rather than quantities designed to match the numbers of courses.

But it's not a wine bar, it's a restaurant, and the tastes in the food no longer impressed me as good enough to stand on their own without the tapas gimmick. John Dory with Jerusalem artichokes in a creamy sauce was good, but someone in the kitchen hadn't prepped properly, leaving crunchy grit in the vegetables. "Barbecued" salmon was a raw rectangle that had been briefly flamed by a chef's blowtorch. Not a problem for sushi lovers, but not the anticipated main course. Several dishes had elements that enhanced the presentation but didn't actually taste very good, like a stick of rhubarb sheathed in gelatin. Pretty as a Murano glass bead, but flavourless and unpleasantly globular in the mouth. For no dish did I think "I'd love to have a full sized portion of this," although a lamb roast that fell in shreds off its bone came close.

I was rather embarrassed later in the week, that the place I selected with little thought for a business lunch beat the carefully chosen, special occasion Maze hands down. The Restaurant at St. Paul's is in the crypt of the mighty cathedral, hived off to one side and separated by solid walls from the tourists' cafe and gift shop. The space has architectural grandeur, without doubt: Soaring groin vaults, massive slabs of stone, someone's grandiose 18th century tomb draped with weeping angels visible just through the door. A clever designer has built different levels into the space, giving the dining room a sense of theatre and cutting down just a bit on the echo off the lofty roof. (Be warned, this is not the place for a quiet chat.)

Australian Chef Candice Webber is inspired by all things British and has put together a seasonal menu that celebrates all that is good and unique about the food of this island. Rather than pointing to the number of Michelin stars here as denial of that old myth of bad British food, I'll hold this place up as testament to just how good ... and worthy of attention ... the native cuisine here is.

I started with a rabbit roll; sausage made with rabbit meat (a gamey taste somewhere between chicken and pork) rolled in the lightest of puff pastries. Delicious. Across the table, my colleague was raving about her chicken livers in a rich sauce ladled over pieces of toast. For mains, she had steak from a cut called the hanging tender, which evidently has an almost liver-y taste because it's from a bit of the body that does so little exercise. My taste revealed something rich and cooked just enough to preserve the flavour. This is what beef should be. Meanwhile, my plaice allowed me to think I was being much healthier, and was also beautifully prepared. Given how good the first two courses were, and the minute difference between two courses for £20 and three for £24, we opted for pudding. The apple crumble across the table was gorgeously presented in a modern tower, but tasted as traditional as that prepared by someone's grandmother in the country who really knows how to cook. I opted for the cheese, given the presence of Stichelton, that delicious unpasteurised Stilton that's one of a kind.

This is the kind of food that makes both your stomach and your brain proud to be British. Which makes sense, frankly, when you're eating a stone's throw from where Lord Nelson is resting for eternity. Rule, Britannia. And give me another slice of that Wensleydale, while you're at it.