Telephone: 01904 673 990
Address: 34 Fossgate, York
Lunch for two, including service, £70
For a few disturbing months in the late 80s I was a theatre critic, and a desperately unhappy one at that. I had thought it would be the perfect job for me, because I loved the theatre; by the end, after four or five plays a week, I hated those evenings in the dark and found myself all but incapable of writing about them. I had no problem finding a vocabulary to describe the brilliant or the appalling. There are always the words for that. It was the other 90 per cent - the stuff that fell into the middle, that was neither a heinous crime against the audience nor a triumph to make the heart ache - which defeated me. Watching those plays felt like little more than time passed.
Maybe I was just not the right man for the job. I admit I was blessed with remarkably poor judgment. For example, I confidently forecast the closure within weeks of two West End musicals which then ran for the better part of a decade. I think they did it to spite me. Certainly, I have not encountered the problem with restaurants in the three years (as against the three months for theatre) that I have been writing this column. I like to think it has something to do with the multi-stage nature of meals. However poor a dish is, there is always the possibility of redemption with the next course. Or maybe it's just that I'm more interested in food than theatre.
And then along comes the Blue Bicycle in York and I am immediately dragged back to those dulling evenings in the dark, where nothing was dire but nothing was grand, either. It was not what I had hoped for. It is not what I ever hope for. However savage some of my reviews may be, I almost always go to restaurants hoping for the best. This newspaper spends a quite frightening amount of money every year paying for meals out and it would be obscene if we wasted it in the purposeful pursuit of the awful. (The exception is the Nation of Islam cafe, which I reviewed two years ago. I will admit that I did not relish having to praise the culinary prowess of an avowedly anti-Semitic organisation's catering operation. I expected it to be awful and it was. But then it only cost £15 for two, so I don't feel bad about the waste.)
The problems with the Blue Bicycle trouble me all the more because of its location. York is the sort of comfortable, moneyed town that ought to be able to support a thriving restaurant business. It doesn't. There are just a couple of outfits that make the big guides and then, other than the Blue Bicycle, a roll call of the undistinguished. So this place has a distinct role to play: the neighbourhood bistro, good enough for special events, relaxed enough for an elbows-on-the-table evening out.
And it does look the part. It is housed in an old building that was once, a long time ago, a brothel; it's a saucy heritage pointed up by the desperately tasteful photograph of a bare naked lady on the menu's cover. The restaurant is equally tasteful: rust-coloured walls, stripped floorboards, chunky wooden furniture, lots of big knobbly antiques all softened by huge floral displays and enough flounced curtain to kit out a tea clipper. Service is welcoming, friendly and, for the most part, efficient.
So what's the problem? Oh, you know, just the food: almost everything we ate failed to deliver. It wasn't awful. It was just there. It even read nicely on the menu and looked nice on the plate. But almost everything disappointed. There were three of us - myself and two academics from York university - and we were able to give the menu a real work over. A millefeuille of wild mushrooms looked like an interesting pile but was bland and an effort to get through. A more exotic bowl of spicy prawn noodle soup contained good fresh seafood, but the broth was too salty to be finished. My salad of smoked duck and figs sounded nice, and the ingredients had clearly been well-sourced, but it fell at the last hurdle: it needed a punchy dressing to lift all the flavours. The punch wasn't there.
It was the same problem with the main courses, where fish predominates. A chunk of halibut marinated in red wine and then grilled was dry and overcooked. The accompanying saffron mashed potatoes were equally dry and crumbly. My steak of lemon-glazed salmon was also overcooked - there were little beads of solid albumen on the surface - and the 'Blue Bicycle' paella that it came with reminded me only how good a dish paella can be when cooked by someone else. The most serviceable dish of the six, a swordfish steak on a ratatouille, was fine, but the portion was so huge it sprawled off the plate, which was more than a little off-putting. None of this was cheap, with main courses at between £13 and £15. The best thing we ordered was a moist sticky-toffee pudding in a lake of cream and sauce. It did the job.
Not a dismal experience then, but not a great one either. Just lunch, memorable for the company and conversation but little else. I fully expect readers to write to me with stories of the marvellous meals they have had at the Blue Bicycle. I'm pleased for you. But we didn't have the same experience.
Finally, a quick word on music. Could British restaurateurs please now observe a self-imposed ban on Robbie Williams's fine CD, Swing While You're Winning? I've had to sit through the bloody thing four times in the last five meals (twice at the Blue Bicycle) and I'm getting heartily sick of it. The copy at Circa in Lewes a week or two back had been played so often it even started jumping. I now know it so well I haven't felt the need to listen to my own copy. Enough, already.
Contact Jay Rayner on jay.rayner@observer.co.uk
