The Chant of the Barbie Dolls

I can't honestly describe myself as a biblical person. In any sense of the phrase. However, my trip to Quo Vadis with Piggly Wiggly did leave me looking into the distance with a wistful, rueful, half smile, tinged with sadness, like some sort of iconic Madonna style stare into the middle distance, at the foot of a cross, like in some sort of Da Vinci masterpiece. A look, in short, that would have art critics guessing for hundreds of years as to the nature of that enigmatic, sad smile.

Fortunately, as this is food criticism, I can dispel any myth and cut straight to the chase: Qua Vadis, the recently refurbished restaurant and private club in Soho is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a religiously artistic transcendent experience. The décor on entering the vestibule is pleasantly hotel like, but we were left waiting while an inefficient host dealt repeatedly with queries from other people simply interposing themselves in front of us. Perched at a miniscule bar, we had pre-dinner drinks while our table was prepared. We'd arrived deliberately a little early to have a drink, but we were left wondering why the hostess was at huge pains to encourage a non-member of the "exclusive" bar upstairs to attempt a gate crash as "they weren't that busy anyway", while happily consigning us to the mere "ordinary" bar in the restaurant. Perhaps because he was wearing jeans and trainers, while we'd decided not to make an effort by donning our swanky restaurant gear? I admit I have an instinctive dislike for the idea of exclusive bars and clubs, particularly where the exclusivity is based purely on paying £500 per year, but the idea of one who's exclusivity depended on how busy it was felt like a real let down. Anyhow, the in-restaurant not-exclusive, you-don't-have-to-be-a-member bar, bar staff were on-song at least - the martini was pronounced most satisfactory, and my glass of champagne was well chilled.

Once at table we were impressed by the refurbished décor, the generous leg room and space available at the table, and the substantial wine list. The room was pleasantly buzzing, with an admittedly older crowd, and, on a fairly sultry night, was very well air conditioned without being chilly. Not like that hole L'atelier Joel Rebouchon, with it's tacky black faux lacquered surfaces, miniscule tables with barely room for a cigarette thin flower vase, and obfuscating clamour and noise. The menu augured well: it was going to be very difficult to decide between the seafood and the remaining meatier dishes - in the end we decided to have our cake and eat it, so to speak. We ordered half a dozen oysters, in case we got famished before the starters arrived, and I opted for courgette flowers, and Piggly-Wiggly went for Scottish chanterelles in garlic. I'm not quite sure why they should be identified as "Scottish" - perhaps we were expected to sample the brawny aftertaste of the homely fingers of the kilt-clad fungus foragers or something.

Our wine (a Californian zinfandel, Ridge Geyserville, which we first sampled in New York with an amazing crispy duck, but that's another story) arrived with such alacrity, I mean it was amazingly quick, we suspected that they had staff on standby holding a bottle or everything on the wine list, ready to sprint to the table. Nit-picking aside about the needless frippery on fancy restaurant menus (pan fried - how else can you fry something; diver caught scallops; Scottish chantarelles; succulent morsels etc) the starters and oysters were pretty good. I suspected the oysters may have been pre-shucked, as they seemed to be immersed in brimming puddles of briney delight, which said to me they'd been oozing for quite some time, but nonetheless they can't have been that old as they were pronounced by Piggly Wiggly, the best oysters she'd had quite a while. I objected to this as we'd had some damn good ones in Dublin very recently, but again, I'm nit picking. The courgette flowers were nicely stuffed with feta and deep fried, and had an excellent smoky pepper and tomato salsa. The chanterelles were meaty and tasty, but I felt a over salted and too garlicy. Nonetheless we were left with a pleasant sense of expectation of our main course.

Our waiter had informed us that the rib for 2 came with chips, so we ordered a side of vegetables each, and sat there slaveringly anticipating our meeting with the meet. When it came, just at the point when we were beginning to wonder where it was, it was briefly presented to us on a plank, before being whisked away to be sliced and diced for us. We accepted the waiter's recommendation to err on the medium side, but what arrived was definitely rare. What didn't arrive however, were our chips, or steak knives, both of which we ended up having to ask for, when we managed to get a waiter's attention.

You may have had the great fortune to have visited the Michelin starred Peter Luger's in New York, situated in Brooklyn, just across the Manhattan Bridge - undeniably the greatest steak house experience I've ever had. Very similar cuts of beef cooked and served to an orgasmic, sizzling, perfection. The plates are so hot, it almost demands a health and safety waiver just to get into the place. Looking back on the 3 or 4 times we'd been there, the key thing that comes to mind is how perfectly cooked and HOT the meat was. Not only had Quo Vadis seen fit to leave the beef to rest (ok, that's all very proper) but it was then served on cold plates, resulting in the pre-sliced meat going cold very rapidly, a key pet-peeve of Piggly-Wiggly's, due to some peculiarities of her upbringing. Taken with the missing chips, the missing steak-knives (which arrived when we almost finished) and highly unremarkable sides of broccoli and spinach costing 5.20 and 4.50 respectively.

I mean SERIOUSLY - 5.20 for a small buttery dish of broccoli - Jamie Oliver feeds entire, admittedly entirely fictitious, Sainsbury's families of 5 for less than that, we were left in deep high dudgeon by the time we'd finished. We had to wait so long to be asked if we wanted desert that our ire raised to simply ask for the bill, in a manner as chilly as the plates our food had been served on. At £180 all told, with the temerity of 12.5% services included, we felt our hard earned spondoolicks had been fiendishly purloined. All in all, a deeply underwhelming experience - if we'd thought there was enough there to want to return we probably would have offered our comments, but as it is, we definitely wouldn't be returning, so, their look out! Our dismay perhaps reflects more on the idiot in the Times that gave it "9/10", raising expectation impossibly beyond what they should have been: but nonetheless, cold plates, I ask you?