Rating: 1.5/10
Telephone: 023 8029 2257
Address: Bartley Road, Woodlands, Southampton
Open: All week, dinner only, 7-9pm (plus Sunday lunch, and lunch snack menu Mon-Sat)
Price: Set menu, £31.50 for four courses with coffee.
According to its highly enticing website, which lauds the "wonderful food and ambience" for which it is known, visitors to Bentleys at the Woodlands Lodge Hotel are often greeted by the lively dalmatian after which this restaurant is named.
It was, then, riven by anticlimax that we made our way into a large, white building in the New Forest unattended by woof or lick. Although Bentley himself never showed his face, he did make a guest appearance in the short and obvious wine list my cousin Nick and I studied, along with the set menu, in a bar dominated by some overpowering floral wallpaper. "Wine is a journey of discovery with many twists and turns along the way, but with no right or wrong decisions - only enjoyment," this document assured us (whoever wrote this had clearly never had Bulgarian riesling with red meat). "It is not uncommon to see Bentley playing the role of 'mein host'. Just don't expect him to suggest a good 'New World' wine!" Ah, well, winsome, lose some, we borrowed from Alan Bennett ... there's no harm in that sort of nonsense if Bentley keeps his word about the wonderful food and ambience.
Soon we were led into a room cheaply styled after the mescaline-fuelled fantasy of a colour-blind, late-80s Sloane Ranger interior decorator with a Louis XIV fixation: ornate golden mirrors, swagged curtains, a seemingly imitation 17th-century French clock, a pink ceiling and mock Corinthian columns. "It's unspeakable," said Nick - literally, since the three other couples were cowed into silence by the aura. It was as if the atmosphere had been drained from the room by a psychic dehumidifier. "I'd rather be eating with the Munsters. Or in Belmarsh."
A doleful piano concerto drifted from the speakers, and two even more doleful starters arrived. "Where are they?" asked Nick, rooting around under some flaccid leaves for his potato gnocchi and wild mushrooms. He eventually located five tiny pieces of pasta with so little taste that he demanded a gastric roll call to confirm that any had passed his lips. The flavour of my "salmon gravadlax" (the scrag end, apparently, of a cheap, farmed fish) also arrived via an invisible filter.
By now only one other table was occupied, by a young couple whose baby's crying vied for attention with Andy Williams, successor to the dirgeful concerto but soon to be replaced himself by what our sweet Slovak waitress Eva revealed to be a hit by the Gwen Stefani-fronted No Doubt. Seldom does a restaurant's choice of music say much about it. Here, though, the nihilistic randomness of the selection (it would have been no surprise had the sequence continued with Anarchy In The UK, the woodwind segment from Peter And The Wolf, Total Eclipse Of The Heart, and Keith Harris and Orville's I Wish I Could Fly) sang its assonant song of a place disregarded by its owners.
The main courses made their way to the table. The chargrilled loin of tuna with salad Niçoise proved a huge piece of what struck the eye more as whale meat overcooked to a sallow grey finish and accompanied by incongruously dainty fine beans cut into half-inch slices. "Quite atrocious," was the verdict. "I've had better shoe leather." My tenderloin of pork marinated in ginger ale, with a parsnip fondant, was equally hideous to the eye and, although the flavour was inoffensive, it had been cooked rare - a standard technique with tuna, yes, but a mighty bold one with pork.
Barely adequate chocolate puds came and went, half-eaten, the baby fell asleep and a Shirley Bassey impersonator seized the speakers to insist, "I want to know what love is." The questions that occurred to us as we paid up were how the AA came to award this hellhole a rosette; why, in such a rampantly beautiful part of the country, the management is so determined to keep punters away; and, above all, where was Bentley, that cheery if wine-ignorant dalmatian?
"I've cracked it," yelped Nick as we drove away at speed. "Bentley can't stand it there, either. He's run off into the forest to look for Cruella De Vil."
