L'Anima's a pale spirit next to Locatelli, while Smiths impresses with the simple

Every country I know in the Western world has succumbed to the appeal of television chefs, but I wonder if they are quite as dominant anywhere else as they are in Britain? Rarely does a night go by there's not a cooking show on one of our major channels, all starring cooks ... and, usually, restaurant owners ... who've become familiar friends in many a foodie's sitting room.

There's plenty of fine dining to be had across the country, but Britain is a small place and the bulk of the restaurant scene is centred in London. Thus if you're dining out in the capital, it's hard to avoid the influence of television on restaurant choice and style of food. It was something I couldn't help pondering as I enjoyed business lunches this week at two restaurants featured recently on the BBC.

First, Smiths of Smithfield, owned by John Torode. For the past few months John's been omnipresent on my TV as the MasterChef judge who whittled down more than one hundred amateur cooks to one brilliant winner. I've never been one for reality TV, but this ... for me ... is compulsive viewing. It seemed that anyone who liked food at all was gripped by MasterChef fever, and by the end of all those episodes you practically feel that you know John and his fellow judge Greg Wallace. So what could make more sense than heading to Torode's place soon after the series wrapped?

I'd been here many times before, but rarely to eat. Smithfield Market is a stone's throw from my company's headquarters, and its casual, warehouse-style bar and cafe on the ground floor is one of "the usual suspects" for leaving drinks or quick work lunches. We rarely hit the staircase, however, which ascends to wine tasting rooms on the first floor, a casual dining room on the second and formal on the third. I met colleagues on the second, which is boisterous and casual, yet still upscale enough and with efficiently brisk service to impress on a business lunch. Torode is most famous for his way with beef, and Smithfield itself takes its place in history as London's main meat market. Thus I kept it simple.

Sirloin steak. Chips. Spinach. The beef was cooked to a perfect medium rare, as requested. Flavourful, tender, obviously of the highest quality. But I have to say, the show stopper was the bowl of chips, which ... besides a cone of golden perfection served with mustard-mayonnaise sauce by an old street vendor in Bruges ... may be the most perfect I've ever tasted. Crispy with mouth-delighting fat on the outside, soft and floury inside. A monument to the power of culinary simplicity. For a bit of variety, I'd started with the baba ganoush, the cold, mashed salad of eggplant (aubergine) and spices common throughout the Arabic world. It was as competently handled as the classic British main. I suspect the menu's sticky toffee pudding would have been a crowning glory to the meal but fortunately a busy afternoon saved my waistline from that particular indulgence.

Much deeper into the city is L'Anima. Chef Francesco Mazzei has been getting a lot of fabulous press lately, regularly mentioned in the same breath with Giorgio Locatelli, long London's king of gourmet Italian cuisine. Mazzei was recently tipped to win his first Michelin star for L'Anima; his failure to make the list earlier this year started a debate about whether restaurants cooking anything other than French are disadvantaged. It was that story, broadcast within a fascinating BBC show on "Michelin Madness" that pointed me toward trying L'Anima, rather than returning to Locatelli's place, when a push-out-the-boat dining invitation came along. The verdict? A lovely meal, but with patchy elements and lacking some of the magic that makes Locatelli still reign supreme for me.

That said, it's fabulous to see a southern Italian (Mazzei's Calabrian) raising what's long been considered humble peasant food to high art, and many of the flavours were exquisite. I started with a veal and pistachio ragout on stracci, a flat, broad, hand cut pasta similar to papardelle. I thought of the Michelin show as I considered that menu description. If a chef's so keen to celebrate his native cuisine, why's he using the French "ragout" rather than his native "ragu"? Is it a bid for sophisticated polish? One bite, frankly, and I didn't give a damn. I could have stopped here and been happy. This dish was everything spectacular about southern Italian cuisine. The intense flavour of the veal in a bright marriage with sweet, ripe tomatoes, made slightly exotic by the toasted accent of the nuts. The soul-soothing, childhood-evoking comfort of al dente pasta. The lift of sharp, pungent aged cheese of the highest quality. I could eat a bowl of this every day for the rest of my life. (And, I suspect, I have ancestors who did.)

I moved on to Sicilian rabbit. Essentially a simple stew, moved to a higher plane by the gorgeous presentation ... deconstructed, with each bit of meat and every beautiful vegetable arranged as a work of art on the plate ... with a knock-your-socks-off sauce that captured and intensified the essence of this little used meat. (And set me to wondering whether I can get some at my local farm shop. Surely we should be cooking with this more.) I should have stopped there, because it was on the sweets that Francesco let me down.

Italians, I will admit, do not rank amongst the best dessert makers in the world. It's far more traditional to end a meal with fruit, or some sweet wine and simple biscuits, than anything from a pastry chef's kitchen. Southern Italians do have a few aces up their sleeves, however, most notably cannoli (ricotta or cream stuffed tubes of fried pastry), cassata of ricotta and dried fruit and zabaglione (a marsala-laced custard). Mazzei's menu was steering clear of local tradition here, with only one option close to that familiar list: Liquorice zabayon. Thinking this an odd combo, and again irritated by the French spelling, I opted for the Gianduja cake with fior di latte ice cream. This was, sadly, deeply average. The cake was so lacking in flavour it was only its colour that hinted to me I was supposed to be getting chocolate. The ice cream was good, but there wasn't enough of it to compensate for the disappointment of the main event.

But it was more than a bad dessert choice that keeps me from raving in delight about L'Anima. The atmosphere is unappealing. Stark, white and clinically modern in the ground floor of a characterless modern office building, with acoustics that send noise rocketing around the place and make conversation difficult. The big problem, however, is service. It's slow, disjointed and with a cool disaffection. There was little interest in us, no chat, few smiles, little effort to explain a menu filled with interesting tit bits. Their gravest offense, however, was on the drinks front. We were never offered a pre-meal drink, and it took three requests before a wine waiter turned up to take our order. Yes, that beautiful veal ragu was laid in front of me before I had even had the chance to order the bold red wine that tradition and common sense said it demanded. This was even more criminal because L'Anima has perhaps the best Italian wine list I've ever seen, allowing me to go for a delicious and rarely found Greco di Tufo (suspected by historians to be the "Falernian" so loved by the ancient Romans). Fortunately, the wine waiter was quick once he got to us, and my veal didn't remain unaccompanied for long.

In summary, L'Anima has great food but is let down by it's soulless atmosphere and service. A pity, since "soul" is precisely what the restaurant's name means.