Rating: 2.5/10
Telephone: 0116-251 7675
Address: 4-6 Hotel Street, St Martins, Leicester
Open: Monday-Saturday, 11am-10.30pm
Price: Three courses with wine, £35-40 per head
No wheelchair access.
In any contest to establish the most significant culinary influence in Leicester's history, there would, one suspects, be only one winner. Fans of the late CP Snow, the city's most revered novelist, might posit that the old boy's stricture on the cultural relationship between art and science was a prescient forerunner of Heston Blumenthal's molecular gastronomy. However, in all fairness, Leicester's leading foodie figurehead has to be Gary Lineker.
Since joining that other Leicester-born titan Peter Shilton in the England side of whose heartbreakingly narrow failure to win the 1990 World Cup it remains too soon to speak, Mr Lineker has devoted himself to boosting the disturbingly low levels of childhood obesity by promoting Walkers Crisps, with such success that the brand has vanquished all rivals and given its name to the local football club's stadium.
"I don't suppose," suggested my cousin Nick, as we toyed with our starters at The Case, "there's any chance of swapping this for a packet or two of Smoky Bacon?" He spoke, or rather whispered (the Whispering Quotient, that uniquely English measure of the degree to which diners find their larynxes constrained by a bad restaurant's aura, was recorded at a startling 79.5%), with the weary sense of mild persecution of a man whose last outing on behalf of this page was to Bath's Moody Goose, where we felt obliged to flush down the loo most of what we were served.
The food at The Case probably deserved the same, but since the staff seemed so sensibly indifferent to what we thought of our meals, the leftovers remained on the plates.
The sad thing about the wilful incompetence of the cooking is that this huge, high-ceilinged upstairs room deserves better. Thought, effort and a fair bit of money clearly went into the décor and, with its antique floorboards, sweeping staircase, pretty hanging lamps, vases of expensive fresh flowers and smart white and mauve colour scheme, the room has the sort of airy, uncluttered Mediterranean feel that puts you in the mood for a good dinner.
Then the food arrives, and you swiftly come to understand why people are whispering to each other about how to smuggle in a packet of crisps. "We only buy in fresh produce," insists a line at the bottom of the menu, but if so they shouldn't bother. Heinz tomato soup would have been infinitely better than my cream of celeriac, a vapid, watery broth more heavily flavoured with acrid potato than celeriac, and perplexingly accompanied by tiny pieces of congealed pizza. Roast field mushrooms with spinach, topped with a poached egg and Hollandaise, were, said Nick, "by no means good", not least because the Hollandaise - ringing a fat cone of undercooked spinach - was overcooked and had curdled.
Given that the above are not dishes designed to test a chef's technical skills to breaking point, hopes for the main courses were duly kept in check, yet still managed to be disappointed. Moroccan loin of lamb was adequate, but came in a "pointless melange" with lemon yogurt and "truly terrible couscous". If a cook can't produce a side dish of carrots with coriander without the carrots ranging from almost disintegrating to very nearly raw, roast loin of venison and pigeon breast with redcurrant and port gravey (sic) is odds on to prove a serious struggle. "If they served that in a prison," said Nick, tasting a piece of venison cooked pink as asked but with the slightly rancid tang that suggests a microwave, and doused in a bitterly metallic jus, "they'd be up on the roof banging the trays before pudding."
Those inmates would have showed sound judgment. The pudding we shared, The Case Taster Plate, looked repulsive (the presentation seemed styled after a TV dinner for one) and, although the raspberry jelly was fine, rhubarb and vanilla crème brulée and other horrors were unnervingly warm, marginally stale and might have arrived from a central depot in a tin foil carton.
In these circumstances, you cannot blame the staff for their lack of interest, and such trifling mistakes as serving pudding without plates or putting my coffee in a vacant place at the table seemed less amateurishness than satirical commentary on what they are obliged to serve.
