'Oh, come on," I said to Drummond. "Can't we do a bit better than 'It's good'?"

He prodded at the roast cod on its bolster of truffle mash with its sauce of a reduction of balsamic vinegar zig-zagging like a mountain road all over the plate. 'Texture . . ." he said at length. "The texture is just right. And texture is very important." That was it. Oh well.

Cod. Truffle. Mash. Balsamic. It's a litany of what's been moving and shaking around the capital's kitchens for some time, a mantra of high and medium fashion. Well, who's to say that they don't taste nice when they fall into talented hands?

It has been agreed for some time that the hands of Jean Christophe Novelli are awash with talent. The man, it was generally said, can cook - even if, at one time, you weren't quite sure where he was cooking. He was here, there and everywhere. Hardly a week went by without another outpost of the Novelli catering empire opening up, or so it seemed, with the books, the articles, the TV appearances filling in the bits between. It was wall-to-wall JCN.

Then came - what shall we say? - a period of readjustment. It seems, perhaps, that Jean Christophe did not have the same flair for high finance as he does for haute cuisine. Hubris took a hand. He abandoned the takeover/makeover trail, sold off the outposts of empire, and retreated to the kitchens of his original, highly-praised enterprise, Maison Novelli on Clerkenwell Green, along with some of his longer-serving team, and that's where you find him now.

I reviewed it when it first opened a few years back, and generally liked what I found, particularly in the cheaper, simpler brasserie on the ground floor. The higher-flying cooking in the dining room on the first floor was confident, rococo stuff, a bit convoluted and rich for my taste, although undoubtedly individual, bouncing with flavours, and carried off with the flair of the supremely confident.

Anyway, having followed the ups and downs of JCN's Hale-Bopp path, I went along to Maison Novelli to see if style or substance had changed as a result of his experiences. Actually, that's not quite true. I had already dropped by for lunch, just to see how things were getting on, and was agreeably surprised. Gloriana, with whom I had dined on that day, is a stern vegetarian, and was pretty bowled over by her unmeated dishes; two first courses, as it happens. Two first courses may seem a little on the light side, but mingy portions have never been one of JCN's faults. My food, too, showed an appreciable simplification without quite returning to the brasserie bonbons of former times.

Drummond and I were out for a closer critcial scrutiny, to see whether the master's hand had lost its cunning in the fancy cooking department. Certainly, he has lost none of his taste either for the eclectic, exotic mix of ingredients or for eye-seducing plate display. Novelli's dishes are the gastronomic equivalent of Versace's catwalk pyrotechnics, although, in place of gauzy materials, he employs bushels of chervil and other light-leafed herbs to froth up all over the place.

Drummond had what was called a crown of avocado and gambas prawns with a citrus vinaigrette, followed by the cod, mash and balsamic dish of the day. I ranged a bit wider in my choices: spiced aubergine and Greek yoghurt tian, mixed leaves and roast red pepper dressing, and then chicken with Masala curry vegetables, lime pickle and dried mango. See what I mean by JCN's love of the eclectic and the exotic?

I couldn't get a lot of sense out of Drummond. Certainly he enjoyed what he ate greatly, and he has wide enough experience to know when the food is good, but "Good", and that little observation about texture, was about it for critical comment.

Actually, he's quite right about texture. You get the right texture when the cooking techniques are finely honed. Drummond's cod was cooked to the nano-second to keep the sweet, firm-fleshed delicacy of the fish, which is not quite as easy as it seems. My chicken oozed juice and flavour while being without a trace of pinkness (even harder to achieve than with fish). And the sablé biscuits that formed several floors of my towerblock pudding of wild strawberries and crème légère (very summery) were crisp and snappy, as they should be. So, you see, the technical niceties were strictly observed, too.

I don't think that there's much you can say about the style of avo and prawns. This was a clean-cut reworking of a classic, and the prawns were notably good. The cod, truffle mash, balsamic business, well, likewise. There's nothing strikingly original about it. There are dozens of versions of the dish going the rounds, but this was done with style and a sense of flavour.

My spiced aubergine and yoghurt tian was interred beneath a hill of greenery that looked very pretty but did not add much in the area of harmonious flavours. The aubergine end of the dish, however, was top-notch: lovely clear flavours, not over-spiced, but justly so, all made seductively sloppy by the yoghurt and the sweet pepper goo that was slicked around the plate.

I see no need to repeat the virtues of the chicken. The vegetables with it had been lightly curried. The spicing did not have the sure-handed clarity of, say, Paul Merrett at The Greenhouse or Vineet Bhatia at Zaika, but the dish was exceedingly pleasant, soothing, easily eaten - easily eaten a second time round, I dare say, although perhaps not if you're going on to pudding afterwards.

We did do a bottle of very classy rosé - Chteau St Marguer - but then, at £33.75 a bottle, so it should have been classy. It filled out the bill to £97.20. If you take that, and the water and coffee, away from the total, you get £54.95 for the food. That's not a small sum. But this is cooking with style and a good deal of panache, lighter than formerly - and, for my money, more fun.