Arranged along a high shelf at Cafeteria, a new restaurant in London's Notting Hill, are lines of sturdy condiments. There are multiple bottles of Heinz salad cream and Ketchup, HP Sauce and Lea & Perrins. It is a very conscious declaration of intent. It shouts no nonsense. It shouts reliable. It shouts trustworthy. To which I want to shout back 'bollocks', for there is very little reliable or trustworthy about the food served here.
This is a shame on two counts. First, Cafeteria has a lot of other things going for it. I like the idea of a place that is open for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Although it is reached down a gloomy NCP car park-style corridor, the main room is a delight - a huge wood-lined vault of overlapping curves, as if it were the inside of a bonsai Sydney Opera House. Finally, the service, by pretty young people dressed in black, was sweet and efficient.
The second shame is that in writing this I'm probably about to destroy my good relations with John Torode, the Australian chef who is one of the partners in the venture. Torode is the man behind Smiths of Smithfield, in London's Smithfield. I like the food at Smiths, which makes a virtue of organic, free-range meats, moderate pricing and straight-up dishes, with the occasional Asiatic twist. I don't like the food at Cafeteria, which is too much twist and not enough straight-up. It is also, in places, aggressively priced: £12 for six prawns with mayonnaise, for example, is more than steep. It's bloody vertiginous.
Three of us took lunch and of the six dishes we tried - we didn't do pudding - only two got the nod. Of the starters, all at £5.25, it was the crispy squid with a sweet chilli dip that was most pleasing, the batter light, the fish tender, the dip not overly sugary. My spiced duck salad was a disaster. I would love to know what it was spiced with, because the only flavour I got was the tooth-jangling burst of citrus, perhaps lemon juice, in which it was doused. Corn fritters were far too heavy on the fritter, being more solid pancakes than a crisp binding of corn kernels.
The most successful main course was my soft-cooked slices of belly pork, with a rich soy-based cooking liquor, with ginger and Chinese greens. The pork had been indulgently cooked. But the serving was meagre for £14, even with the single lonely scallop. (If you like the sound of this but not the price, try the double-braised pork in hotpot at Yming, 35 Greek Street, in London's Soho. Granted there's no scallop, but there's twice as much pork for £9).
According to the menu, each month Cafeteria will be choosing a favourite ingredient. This first month it's scallops - crumbed and deep-fried or pan-fried, with lemon-flavoured mash, both served in small or large portions; £14.50 for a large portion of the latter was pushing it for just four over-spiced scallops on mash with a slightly medicinal lemon taste. However, that seems almost reasonable compared to the £9.50 charged for the vegetarian bean burger with hummus. It was a huge beige monstrosity that looked like an item of 70s home furnishing and, according to the poor unfortunate who ate it, sat uncomfortably at the bottom of the stomach. Chips with mayonnaise were an extra £1.50, for good-looking chips, but a nasty cloying coagulated mayo.
There are, I suspect, better ways to eat at Cafeteria. Breakfast fry-ups look good value. The brunch menu looks fun. And the wine list keeps the prices down with a third under £20 a bottle and only one over £30. But, at the moment, the heart of the operation is a major disappointment.
· Cafeteria, 124 Ladbroke Grove, London W10 (020 7792 0801). Meal for two, including wine and service, £75
