Origin City is a good name for this restaurant, whether it knows it or not. It is at West Smithfield, the only surviving wholesale market in the City of London (I do not count Borough, which is a snack shack impersonating a greengrocers and is only spiritually in the City). Covent Garden sells face cream – Eliza Doolittle didn’t need it – and Billingsgate awoke one morning to find itself on the Isle of Dogs. Somehow the cows hung on in West Smithfield. We owe them a lot but I would say that, I am a restaurant critic.

This is the most interesting part of the City of London: St Bartholomew the Great, of God and Four Weddings and a Funeral – the one where Charles was punched, fairly – and Cloth Fair. Can you still buy cloth on Cloth Fair? Don’t be stupid: this is the era of globalisation, and the silks are not as doughty as the cows or William Wallace, who was executed at West Smithfield for Scottish nationalism in a manner too disgusting to detail here: basically they pretended he was a cow. He has our sympathy: this column is not a fan of Edward I. ‘Bas Agus Buaidh [Death and Victory],’ says his plaque, in Gaelic. Quite so. Wat Tyler had a better death here after the peasants’ revolt. He was only decapitated, and he was apparently very drunk on ale. I hope he was.

Origin City lives in a tall and preening house. It is owned by a family with a vineyard in Provence and an estate in Argyll raising pigs, cows and sheep. Luxury goods are increasingly delivered by patrons these days: an act of control that works, or at least has its benefits. Origin City, a brother to the wine bar and shop 56 West Smithfield, is a showcase for this produce, and for a kind of cautious tweedy masculinity which is not violent and is therefore welcome. This is a restaurant for City men – the descendants of Thomas Cromwell – and, subconsciously or not, it mirrors them: or rather an idealised version of them, swaddled.

The greeting is charming segueing to concerned; the room is wide and bright; the wall by my face is a handsome wool. The many paintings suggest isolation. There is a solitary fish and a solitary boat, then a solitary man in a solitary boat. Perhaps this restaurant is medication for its owner: restaurateur, heal thyself? There is also a fresco of many tigers, or one tiger having a panic attack.

As is the fashion – a combination of good instincts and denial – Origin City offers food ‘from pasture to plate, nose to tail’. This is more irritating in print than in reality – it’s only good sense – because this is a rare thing: good value from the rich. I never tire of typing it, particularly as common sandwiches head for £10: restaurants are good value at lunch. The three-course lunch menu here is £25 for two courses and £29 for three.

It is modern British, which means modern global now – some things cannot be erased, even by maniacs. Particularly by maniacs. There is smoked salmon, crab, and beef topside to start, or beef and oyster gratin or roasted beets with goat’s curd. There is pork shoulder steak, grilled salmon, a macaroni cheese salad and, for those wishing themselves in a greasy spoon, a piled ham, egg and chips offered within quotation marks, like a dish in pantomime. It is gaudy: when I saw it walking up to the next table, as if by itself, I wish I had eaten it. Instead, we eat pork steak and a strawberry parfait and crème brûlée. This is fine food in a fine restaurant, near more savage ghosts.