Pont de la Tour squanders fine view with poor service

There are two major problems with business lunches. The first is the challenge of staying true to the healthy ethos of Weight Watchers when you're presented with a menu of tempting delights. The second is the fact that you always seem to pay double for that lunch, working far more hours into the evening than you actually took for the meal. Finally flipping off my email at 10pm tonight was, however, probably a fair trade for Thames-side dining in the open air on the finest day of the summer so far.

The Pont de la Tour is a London classic that's been featuring on the short lists of the rich, famous or simply expense accounted for many years. It's greatest claim to fame, so my host informed me today, was that the Blairs took the Clintons here during their first presidential visit so they could play at being normal, middle class couples. How things changed... The politicians are gone, but the venue has hung on and still packs the diners in thanks to its long-standing reputation and its magnificent location on the south side of the river directly below Tower Bridge.

The restaurant is a long, narrow one, making the most of its frontage in one of the old warehouses along the river. On clement summer days, two rows of tables stretch along the full length of the restaurant beneath an awning. Oddly, once they placed the tables they seem to have forgotten about the view, as they'd made no effort to arrange chairs to appreciate their best asset. They'd set our table for three so that two of us had our backs to the river.

The outdoor dining effectively doubles the capacity of the place, though today there was nobody dining inside and not all the outdoor tables were booked. Even with that reprieve, the staff didn't seem to be able to handle the requirements of the diners. I have rarely had service so slow. This spilled far beyond a continental attitude allowing you to linger over lunch to pure neglect. All glasses empty and two requests made before someone finally topped up wine, 30 minutes waiting for someone to take our order at the start, 40 waiting for dessert menus, another 30 waiting on the bill. This is NOT the place to go if you need to be out promptly.

Did the food make up for the service? Not really. It was extremely good, but to the same standard I have come to expect at any high-end French restaurant in the city. Dishes were beautifully presented and perfectly cooked; I was particularly happy with a fillet of sea trout that balanced a crisp, blackened skin with a moist, flaky interior. My starter of crab was tasty and generously sized. But neither were anything surprising or innovative, nor did anything on the menu fall into that category. Dependable and basic, you could have been in any one of a dozen restaurants in London. Desserts were the only thing that pushed towards a high point. I had a strawberry meringue fool that achieved a balance of tart, sweet and creamy, and my companions both had something similar to a very rich chocolate brownie with clotted cream, a bite of which had me wishing I'd thrown caution to the winds and gone for the high fat choice.

So overall, very average. If you're dying for a view, grab a few drinks at a riverside pub. Then get some French food that's better served and altogether more pleasing at The Bleeding Heart or Orrery.