Royal Victoria Dock, London E16 (020 3714 8111). Meal for two, including drinks and service: £140
In naming this week’s restaurant Lands End, the operators of Sunborn London, the superyacht hotel which houses it, were almost right. It is indeed the end, though not of land. It is the end of hope, of good taste, of ingredients which deserved so much better. Generally, bad places have a redeeming feature or two: a dish that passed muster, a sauce that made sense. The meal served aboard the Sunborn was remarkable for having not a single one. That old gag about stopping for chips on the way home? It is no longer a gag. That’s exactly what I did. There was a burger, too. I was hungry.
Some will regard this as a cheap shot. We all know you shouldn’t eat in restaurants that boast about the view, that rotate, or sit on water. It will never be about the food. It will always be about the view or the rotating or the water. But this one looked different. From the outside the Sunborn, moored by the ExCeL exhibition centre in east London, looks like a gargantuan torpedo; it is every high-end, high-polished white kitchen appliance you’ve ever perved over, its lights twinkling prettily off the oily waters of the Thames. It’s a greased Kanye West music video waiting to happen. Who wouldn’t want a go on that?
And then there was the menu. It wasn’t poetry, but it had a pleasing narrative thrust. It mentioned coriander shoots and salt-baked beetroot. There were porcini ravioli with the beef cheek and cornichons with the duck rillettes. It listed enthusiastic prices: starters at £12, mains at £25 or even £30. If they were charging that sort of money it should at least be adequate? Adequate, aboard a superyacht that looked like the setting for a Kanye West video, could be loads of fun. Couldn’t it? In this I am an idiot; a sweet and trusting one, but an idiot all the same. Mind you, my failings are as nothing against theirs.
We embark via a lift that opens from the quay. It takes us up two floors and back 32 years to 1983, when all metalwork was fake gold, all staircases swirled upwards in big curves, glass panels were etched with images of ferns and carpets looked like someone had thrown up on them. It looks like late Elizabeth Taylor realised as interior design.
Up those stairs is a reception desk, above which a faulty light bulb flickers in a way news anchors have to warn epileptics about before screening reports containing flash photography. Beyond that lies a dining room that makes the foyer look classy and subtle. Almost everything here is clad in shiny brass-coloured planks, including the ceiling. I like my own image as much as the next narcissist but this is ridiculous: it means the terrible time I am about to have will be reflected back at me from every surface. The waiters, who for the most part do a valiant job in terrible circumstances, wear name badges, unreadable in the shimmering gloom. For this they should give thanks.
And so it begins. A bottle of water is warm. Bread rolls look like they arrived in the kitchen part baked, and in need only of finishing – in which case the kitchen failed at their one job. They are undercooked. Garlic butter tastes old and slightly rancid. No matter, there will be starters. Eventually. The only thing that can make bad food worse is being forced to wait for it. We have enough time in which to all but finish a bottle of Albarino, one that can be found on wine lists all over London at no more than £30 and here costs £39.
The alcohol doesn’t blunt the pain. A black pudding cake, looking like an emotionally neglected hockey puck, arrives under a glass cloche. It is removed and a moat of gluey chive and mustard velouté is poured on. To say it tastes watery is an insult to a chilled glass of water (something they cannot manage here). It is a sludge of nothing. The black pudding cake is hard and compacted and tastes mostly of salt. It is carelessness and disregard, fashioned out of wasted calories. Citrus-cured salmon gravadlax with daikon, pickled cucumber, watercress and yuzu, brings half a dozen small cubes of salmon that taste of malt vinegar, and an £11 addition to the bill.
The half-eaten plates are cleared. We are not asked why they are half-eaten. That would be intruding on private grief. Time stretches out, restlessly. We are brought warm glasses of pinot grigio to apologise for the long wait. By now the main courses feel less like a promise than a threat. It turns out not to be an empty one.
The thinnest piece of turbot arrives so over-cooked it crumbles on to dry, distressed borlotti beans. There are tangles of chewy meat which the menu says are bits of ham hock, and more of the rancid butter from a beurre noisette that has solidified on the plate. It’s a dish in need of antidepressants. Arguably, my beef cheek is worse. It is hard and solid. It looks like a growth of the sort that might feature on a Channel 5 programme about embarrassing medical conditions. The tumour sweats under a blanket of sticky, over-reduced sauce that has the brutal hit of Marmite. Porcini ravioli are undercooked, leaving the pasta hard. A side dish of sautéed mushrooms tastes of raw garlic, salt and hypertension.
This food isn’t just poor compared, say, to a roast swan I had the other week. It isn’t me being snooty and prissy and overly demanding. It is a blistering display of incompetence; of cack-handedness and cynicism and bad taste. My companion asks if we have to stay for dessert and I agree that we have suffered enough. Even utter perfection fashioned from salted caramel could not save this evening. Over barely touched plates I ask for the bill. Our waitress notices the debris. She asks if there is something wrong with the food. I give it to her straight. Something wrong? Nothing is right. She comps the bottle of wine.
Outside, a perfect evening is capped by threats of casual violence from a man who accosts us with stories of having been arrested and who now wants money. We shake him off and get into a cab. I give the driver directions to the burger place we need; and with relief, we head towards a place where I know the food will not hurt us.
Jay’s news bites
■ If you’re going to ignore the rule about restaurants with a view, then you’d best do it at Hutong up London’s Shard. Sure, you can find many of the things they serve – the Peking duck with skin like glass, deep-fried lamb ribs, prawns rustling under heaps of dried chillies – at ground level and much cheaper. But the glittery James Bond decor, and the extraordinary shimmering view of London at dusk from the 33rd floor, does almost make the cost worthwhile (hutong.co.uk). ■ And while we’re on the subject of Chinese food, the Hilton on Deansgate in Manchester has launched a Chinese breakfast in its podium restaurant, including congee – a form of rice porridge – plus siu mai dumplings, char siu pork and red tea. It will be included in the price for bed and breakfast guests (hilton.com).
■ You’ve got to admire their cojones. British company Brindisa, which both imports Spanish produce and runs tapas restaurants in the UK, is to launch a new eatery... in Barcelona. La Volta Brindisa Bar Restaurante will open near Boqueria market in April (brindisatapaskitchens.com).
Email Jay atjay.rayner@observer.co.uk. Follow Jay on Twitter @jayrayner1
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