L'Auberge at the Onslow Arms, The Street, West Clandon, Surrey (01483 222 447). Lunch for two, including wine and service, £45
Laurent Malnuit may not have the world's worst surname for a chef (who knows - there may be a Johnny Gastro-Enteritis working the stoves out there somewhere), but he still ought to watch his step. Am I alone in thinking that there are better omens for a meal than having your food cooked by a chap whose name translates, in poor Franglais, as 'bad night'? M Malnuit should certainly be grateful that I took lunch rather than dinner at L'Auberge, the French restaurant of the Onslow Arms pub in the Surrey village of West Clandon, because otherwise this column would have been full of lame wisecracks. I will restrict myself to this: the day I went there M Malnuit managed to cook me a pretty mal déjeuner.
On the face of it, the Onslow Arms is a promising proposition. It is part of a five-strong chain of pubs, in turn owned by the Massive Pub Company, each of which has a restaurant called L'Auberge, each of which promises a genuine French experience. (That may well be true; I hear standards in French country bistros are on the way down.) The Onslow Arms is the newest addition to the chain and its restaurant looks appropriately freshly minted: blonde-wood floors, white walls, glinting glass and crisp linen. Service is friendly. The wine list, though short on choices by the glass, is reasonably priced, with lots below £20. There's just one problem: the food, which is horribly unreliable. It's OK in places. Sadly, none of those places were on my plate.
At lunchtime they offer three courses for £12.95 but, just as £60 a head can be good value, so £12.95 can be poor value. The first problem was choice. There were four starters, of which one was off. There were three main courses, one of which they'd had to substitute. There were two puddings, but one had run out. And there were no more than 25 people in a place that could hold 70. Thank God there was no passing trade.
My companion, Mike, started with the gravadlax, which, though small in portion, was fine in specimen. The fish was well sliced and had a moderate cure. My starter of scrambled eggs with truffle was, however, a total mess. The eggs were watery and the truffle flavour nonexistent - and there were sizeable chunks of eggshell mixed in, which gave it a crunchy texture. Mike, again, did better than I did on the main course, with slices of roast beef, tender and pink as they should be. I wanted the bream but they were out of it. Instead, they had substituted cod but completely overcooked it before serving it on a bed of stodgy risotto with mushrooms which, unlike the fish, were undercooked.
By this point I had concluded that Mike possessed far better judgment than I. Yes, there were only two puddings - chocolate mousse and rice pudding - and I know we should have tried one each but I'd had enough of nasty food. Mike proclaimed a long-held aversion to rice pudding and, as I'd just had a large plate of grim risotto - a poor piece of menu planning - it wasn't at the top of my list either. We both ordered chocolate mousse. But what d'ya know? They only had one left. So Mike got the mousse and I got rice for the second course in a row. It was a dull, heavy end to a tiresome meal. I also got to try the mousse, which was equally heavy and unappealing, as if it had been set with a bucket full of gelatine.
There is a more expensive and complex menu in the evenings, which some - including the chef - might argue is the one I really ought to have tried. Sorry, M Malnuit, but I disagree. If you can't do the business with the simple stuff - your people can't even order enough of the ingredients, let alone cook them - why should I trust the kitchen on the complicated stuff?
