Local restauRANTS - I

I was a bit bothered when I saw, in the foyer of a much-lauded local restaurant, a hastily pinned-up A4 sheet bearing the slogan "We no longer accept cheques for under £100" (and I probably paraphrase), and only mildly reassured to learn that the North West Development Agency had been involved in funding a pretty serious refurbishment, because the true test of a restaurant, as opposed to a caterer, is not the ambience but the taste of the food, but we'll come to that later.

The best eatery that ever assaulted my plastic and flirted with my palate was, without any doubt, my old friend Rob Moss's little bistro (or brasserie) in New Hey. Rob, who had worked for far too long for the sake of his soul and his happiness in insurance, and had hated every minute of it, eventually gave up the soul-sickening graft of conning people out of their loot and opened this little bistro in a converted terraced house to share his love of northern French cuisine with local punters, only about 16 of whom could be accommodated in his nosh-house at any one time. I don't know whether Rob ever had a commis chef - I think his kitchen was too small for more than one person at any one time - but with so few covers he could cope on his own and the place was always nearly full. We used to go with our friends Kim and Bill about once a month (both of them mean cooks) for the two years that the place was there, then Rob was called to higher things and became a postman on a Scottish island where his wife Carol ("Brain") got a job teaching deaf children.

I mention this because there is a point, measured by the number of mouths to be fed and the competence of the chef, where cuisine stops being cuisine and becomes catering.

And at this much-lauded local restaurant that is what we got - catering (plus a barney about whether or not we had ordered chocolates to go with our coffee, which, by the way, tasted of acorns.) But the barney was about a couple of quids'-worth of choccies (most of which were consumed anyway by the Vicar's wife, who is a connoisseuse of such things), which in the light of takings of something like £500 from our party, plus the profit from the bar and the wine list, is mere chicken-feed unless you are an accountant by trade, knowing the cost of everything and the value of nothing.

The starters were fine - my smoked salmon was delicate enough to let the taste of the prawns get through, and the dill sauce was subtle, and it all worked beautifully together.

But the best thing I can say about the entrées is that they were bland enough not to frighten the taste-buds of your average Daily Mail reader. Ann's lump of lamb was huge, but too fatty, and with no hint of rosemary or even oregano to give the occasional morsel of lean meat a bit of a lift. My chicken breast was tough, and pink in the middle, which with chicken is always a bit of a worry, for it suggests that it has been cookd on too high a heat for safety. And the veg! The promised cauliflower cheese was strong in cauliflower, but wet with cauliflower cooking juice in which floated a few blobs of something yellow which might have been cheese, but which didn't taste of anything. Cauliflower al dente is delicious, but we all know what the cooking liquid smells like, and we don't really want that stuff swimming around on our plates.

Desserts were all right. My pancake (oh, all right, crêpe) was limp and soggy, and flopped slimily like a jellyfish over the ice-cream. A touch of buckwheat flour might have put some lead in its pencil, but nobody had thought of it. And everything was swimming in the juice of the black cherries so it was sloppy. Ann passed me her dessert to finish, but the toffee lattice was burnt and bitter.

But the coffee! It was truly awful. I have never tasted anything so disgusting since a Mormon friend gave me a cup of Caro. If you have to cheat and use instant, at least use something that smells a bit like like coffee, even if tastes like acorns. And anyway, who in their right mind would finish an evening meal with coffee (even what English people think is coffee) and risk nightmares on top of indigestion?

Oh, and another thing. This restaurant - refurbished (with the help of the NWDA) in something approaching Art Deco style - thinks it perfectly acceptable to blare incongruous Karen Carpenter songs at you so loudly than you cannot have a conversation at your table. That they turn the volume down when you ask is no excuse - their sin is to assume that you want OAP muzak in the first place. Loud muzak is about as acceptable in a public restaurant as Lynx aftershave or foot odour.

Michael Winner - I hope you are reading this.

OVERALL MARKS

ambience - 8/10

service - 9/10

food - 4/10

wines - 7/10

VFM - 6/10