Telephone: 020-7235 9444
Address: 16 Hobart Place, London SW1
Rating: 14/20

It's not often that you come across a menu in Arabic in London. Actually, only half of the menu at Noura is in Arabic. The other, conveniently, is in English. As I compared the two, I could not help being struck by the flowing elegance of the Arabic script and by the apparent brevity of the entries. I couldn't understand a word of it, of course, and so was duly grateful for the accompanying Anglo-Saxon prolixity.

But even when rendered into our more prosaic alphabet, the names of the dishes on Noura's menu still had a magic for me - habra nayeh, batinjan el rahib, mouhallabieh, moutabbal, foul moudammas and the inevitable tabbouleh and hoummos. Such romance from dried broad beans, chickpeas, aubergines, burghul and... raw lamb? Well, why not?

We eat raw beef, or at least we used to. I could have chosen the asbeh nayeh, or raw lamb's liver to you and me but, sadly, Betty wouldn't stand for it. She wasn't tempted by the lamb tartare, either, come to that. Strictly a tabbouleh, hoummos and moutabbal girl is Betty: sober, safe and sensible. Still, while the raw liver dishes of this world excite the jaded palate of the eternal luncher such as myself, perhaps the great, commonplace pillars of Lebanese cooking are better yardsticks by which to judge overall quality.

For Noura is not your average sleazebag, soak-up-the-lager kebab house. For one thing, you'll find it on the corner of ultra-plush Hobart Place and whatever that road is that runs down the back of Buckingham Palace. It is large and pretty palatial in its own right, in an ultra-chic brasserie kind of way, what with mirrors, glass, stainless steel, bare wood, bar and open kitchen, and bevvies of eager waiters lorded over by ma?tre d's of somewhat fierce mien. Their manners, however, were courteous and charming.

So, even before you get to the more adventurous items on the menu, Noura, which incidentally has a sister operation in Paris, has laid down a marker that it is one of the new breed of upmarket non-European eating places. I prefer the term "non-European" to the word "ethnic". It's pretty cumbersome, admittedly, but at least it isn't quite so vague. Nor, for that matter, does it carry a load of historical baggage.

Anyway, after years of being confined to the ghetto of flock wallpaper, cheap eats and catering for the gastronomically undemanding (not to say desperate) in the middle of the night, all manner of Indian, Chinese, Thai, north African and eastern Mediterranean restaurants are now breaking out and moving on to the sunlit uplands of chicdom.

I applauded the virtues of another Lebanese restaurant, Alwaha, a few months ago. Noura takes the process several stages further, in terms of location and design, at any rate. Still, as we know, design for living and design for eating are not necessarily one and the same thing.

Noura makes it easy for the novice in matters Lebanese. There is a plethora of set menus - 15 of them, in fact, ranging from the basic selection of six mezzes at £8.25 to the gourmet menu at £28.50 per head, by way of all manner of grills and thrills. Such sophistication and consideration for the consumer shames virtually every European brasserie or restaurant in this country, most of which are content to offer one prix-fixe menu, albeit one usually available only at lunchtime, and to leave it at that. However, Betty and I went our own way, and came out no worse off than we would have done had we gone the fixed-menu route.

The raw lamb tartare was a wonder, pounded to a silky smoothness, delicate and rich at the same time, lifted with a nip of raw onion and eased by the delicate sweetness of the garlic pur?e. The foul moudammas (aka, dried broad beans stewed with tomatoes, garlic and olive oil) was a well-defined, elegant version of a dish that can be harsh and mealy if the beans are of poor quality and not cooked with enough care. Both aubergine dishes were as good as you'll get. And the mouhallabieh, that soothing Lebanese variation on rice pudding, was a mysteriously silky and fabulous forkful or two.

I was, however, slightly disappointed by the tabbouleh. I know that the ratio of chopped parsley to burghul is supposed to be 1,000:1, or something like that, but this one seemed to be just about all parsley, and could really have done with a spoonful more of the crushed wheat element. The hoummos, too, wasn't quite top-drawer stuff - it certainly was not as good as that served at Alwaha; overall, the spicing didn't quite have that zippedy-doo-dah freshness that makes the heart sing.

Still, all in all, Noura put up a pretty dandy showing. The breads, hot and all puffed up from the grill, were outstandingly good and came with disarming regularity. As far as I can make out from the bill, they were free, too. In fact, we managed to eat ourselves to a standstill for £33, and never got as far as the grills or puddings, sadly. To the £33, we added £18 for a bottle of perfectly tolerable Lebanese ros?, Ksara Gris de Gris. So, in terms of state-of-the-chic brasserie eating, Noura represents pretty good value for money. And pretty good eating, too, come to that.

· Open All week, 7am-12 midnight. Menus Various, from £8.25 a head to £28.20 a head; lunch (six mezze, plus dish of the day or mixed grill and coffee), £12.50. Wheelchair access (and disabled WC).