Gino D’Acampo: My Restaurant, Euston Station, London NW1 2DU (020 7383 4846). Meal for two, including drinks and service: £50-£100

Often with weirdly deformed restaurants – and they don’t come much weirder than this week’s – naming the guilty can be tricky. No such problem here. Sure, the business belongs to a sizable restaurant group. But TV chef, one-time winner of I’m a Celebrity and multiple world record holder Gino D’Acampo has put the words “My Restaurant” in the title of the place alongside his name. I think we should take him at his word.

The words “my” or “mine” appear on the main menu nearly 60 times. The first person is there over 100 times. It includes statements such as: “I find carefully chosen side dishes really enhance the meal” and “The secret to this dish is my traditional pesto sauce.” If you say so, love. Though if it’s traditional, how come it’s yours? Ach, details, details.

But look, he’s fessed up to it all, so let’s blame him for the silliest presentation of a dish I’ve come across in a long while. One of those round spindly stands used for oyster platters is placed on the table. On top of that goes a thick wooden breadboard. On top of that is a torn piece of greaseproof paper, printed with a facsimile of an Italian sports newspaper. On top of that are wedges of toasted bread smeared with tooth-baringly acidic mayo, and on top of that, finally, are the ingredients that we actually ordered as part of the sharing three cicchetti platter. Blimey, I didn’t know whether to eat it or strap on crampons and scale it.

I’ll come back to those toppings in a moment, because it’s worth examining his restaurant in a little more detail first. D’Acampo already has a bunch of “My Pasta” bars. This, the second of his “premium” brand ventures – the first is in Manchester – sits on the new mezzanine at Euston. You can eat outside on the eggshell-blue leather benches looking out over the concourse, listening for your train. Better still, go inside where there’s a long open kitchen with two ovens, their flames guttering invitingly. The staff, mostly pretty Italian boys, occasionally look a little startled, like kids left in charge of the grown-up’s shop, but they are eager and friendly. There are shelves of produce and, of course, stacks of D’Acampo’s books. Almost all menu items come with a book and page reference should you wish to recreate these crimes against Italian food at home later.

The walls are plastered with moody black and white photos of Gino with baffled-looking celebrities: here Jerry Springer, there Donny Osmond, over there Keanu Reeves, his dark anguished eyes screaming: “Help me! Please.” And yet for all the overt sleb stupidity, this could be a sanctuary for travellers caught between trains. God knows there have been times on my travels when I would have killed for somewhere comfortable to rest up. It’s colourful and warming. Two women with large suitcases pull up at the bar, flirt lightly with the waiter and order strawberry daiquiris. They sip and they sigh.

Here, as ever, is what I don’t understand. Why spend all this money – on the waiter’s natty outfits, the marble bar tops, the open ovens, the glassware, and the photos of Gino with Donny – and then produce such mediocre food? Compared to the other costs, a good cook is cheap.

Not everything is terrible. The best espresso at Euston station is almost certainly served here. It is dark and nutty and powerful. The tiramisu is a model of its kind. It’s not overly sweet and has a fine balance of cream to sponge. They make good zucchini fritti, which is not easy. One of those cicchetti toppings is a pleasing salad of spiralised courgette and fennel with salty capers and the punch of good, peppery olive oil.

But everything else seems to be trying to make up its mind whether to be awful or just plain odd. The other two cicchetti are four seared king prawns, not all of which have been cooked through, lending the centre a grey translucence, and small lumps of breaded cod. Some are overcooked and some are under. The £16 price tag for this is on the utterly shameless side of enthusiastic. The tomatoes in a salad with mozzarella have been rendered completely tasteless courtesy of a long journey through the fridge.

The risotto with scallops is where hope goes to die. The rice is claggy and completely overcooked; each traumatised grain looks like it’s been roughed up down a dark alleyway. Around the edges a pool of fat has started to separate out. It’s dotted with four scallops that have seized up in the heat. Make that three and a half scallops. One of them is missing the best of itself. Still, I suppose it was there in the fridge when the order came in, why not throw it into the pot? Nobody will notice. Or perhaps they will.

The same attention to margins and gross profit appears to apply to the seafood linguine. I do a count. There’s one big prawn, two mussels, two rings of calamari cooked to the rubber-band stage, and four clams. For £13.50. I check the menu. It also mentions a langoustine. I fork through the pasta. Where’s my bloody langoustine? I raise it with a waiter, who takes it up with the head chef in the open kitchen. And so I get to witness one of the best bored shrugs I’ve seen in a long time. They’re completely out of langoustine so, y’know… They take the dish off the bill.

The pasta is serviceable, but the tomato sauce has the brisk metallic whack of something that needs so much longer on the heat. Overall the dish tastes of rigorous and attentive accountancy. The same sauce turns up with veal meatballs that are hard and unyielding, first to the fork then the teeth. On the menu D’Acampo says: “If you like meatballs, you simply must try these.” Well I do, Gino, and I did. I so wish I hadn’t.

I have no problem with a celebrity using their public profile to further business interests. D’Acampo holds world records for pulling the most Christmas crackers in a minute and for running on custard. He’s clearly a grafter. That makes the lacklustre food offering all the more baffling, because it just seems so damn lazy.

London is rich in Italian restaurants. Some of them are good. It doesn’t need an overpriced bad one. As you say Gino, it’s all yours. Sort it out, mate.

Jay’s news bites

■ Red n Hot is a Sichuan restaurant on Chalton Street, a short walk east of London’s Euston station, and west of St Pancras. True, the Charing Cross Road branch of the chain may have had a run-in with health and safety recently, but this one’s doing fine. All the big-fisted fiery, butch, chilli-laden staples are here. Don’t miss the dry-fried chicken on bone with red and green chilli (rednhotgroup.com).

■ One impact of Amazon’s launch of its Fresh grocery supplies service is that punters can now give starred reviews to food items, as they have been doing to novels on the site for years. Negative reviews in so far include a complaint about fresh sardines not being de-scaled, tomatoes having been kept in the fridge, and a cucumber not being firm enough.

■ During October, Joo Won, head chef of Galvin at Windows, returns to his roots, serving Korean-inspired food. The £115 tasting menu includes Iberico pork bulgogi, and barbecued chilli squid (galvinatwindows.com).

Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk or follow him on Twitter @jayrayner1