MARK Hix's second London restaurant following last year's opening of Hix Oyster & Chop House is an ambitious statement of intent. On the Soho site that was the short-lived but rather beautiful looking modern Japanese Aaya, Hix has opened a spacious 90-seat dining room with a basement bar.

Hix’s mini-empire, which he' rapidly built up since his departure from Caprice Holdings in the summer of 2007, is completed by Hix at the Albemarle which he overseas for Rocce Forte at Brown' Hotel and Hix Oyster & Fish House in Lyme Regis.

The menu of hearty British comfort food is this time overseen by Kevin Gratton, who re-launhced Scott' in Mayfair under Hix for Caprice Holdings and alongside oysters and 'Hix cure' smoked salmon, features such off-piste delights as cod's tongues with girolles, salt marsh mutton, kidney and oyster pie and Yorkshire parkin with clotted cream.

Down in the basement lies clubby lounge-bar with a drinks list overseen by Nick Strangeway. Upstairs designer Martin Brudnizki has retained much of the feel of the original room in what's more of a frugal but stylish redecorating job than a total redesign, the glass dividing walls remain, the high ceilings now decorated with mobiles from Hix's Brit Art mates, the stylish Danish leather upholstery and tables and chairs cleverly reworked for their new purpose. It's not cheap but then neither are the restaurants of Hix's former employers Caprice - an edgier, less stuffy and more informal and infinitely more fun version of which this pleasingly seems to want to be.

www.hixsoho.co.uk

The latest Soho small plate Italian on the block, you can't help but compare Polpo with Bocca di Lupo, which opened in the same vicinity last year, serving so-called 'Italian tapas' and working the critics into a collective lather with its good looks, buzzy ambience and the cut of its bijou portions. If Russell Norman, formerly the operations director at Caprice Holdings wanted to avoid the comparisons for his first restaurant then perhaps he shouldn't have hired Tom Oldroyd as head chef, who previously worked under Jacob Kenedy at the aforementioned.

Polpo looks great, its deliberately distressed decor more reminiscent of Brooklyn-hip than any bacaro you’d stumble upon in the backstreets of Venice, this despite all the talk of Venetian inspiration or the Blue Plaque outside that announces the building was the one-time residence of one its famous sons, the 18th century painter Giovanni Antonio Canal -aka 'Canaletto'.

It’s great to see Norman enjoying himself and the informality of his new baby in jeans and a t-shirt that shows off his tattoo after years of schlepping around buttoned-up in a suit. There's already a great buzz about Polpo and it will only get busier despite food that doesn't yet live up to the hype - at least not when the place is full and the kitchen under pressure - as it was when I visited. At the moment compared with Bocca di Luppo, the cooking's not cutting it, but then to be fair neither are the prices.

www.polpo.co.uk

More bar than restaurant, Pix is billing itself as 'London's first true pinxto bar'. The Basque answer to tapas, seen at its best in the bars of San Sebastian, is said to be behind the concept that alongside more traditional dishes takes in the more off-the-wall, in mushroom and pistachio bacalao, and watermelon salad- all of which are skewered on sticks and left on the bar for you to help yourself. Priced at £2.50, they just count your sticks at the end. 

www.pix-bar.com