A lack of real bite

I once had a notion to do a coffee table book about all those businesses with the strange window displays and wacky names. You know, like the florists called Hello Petal and Branching Out, the fast food Abrakebabras or the thousands of Curl Up 'n' Dyes.

I love the snack bar off Oxford Street called Sam 'n' Ellas and the heroically-named Indian takeaway, Singh For Your Supper. Yeah, yeah, I know: don't give up the day job.

So when I read about a newly opened gaff called Eat And Two Veg, the last thing I expected was a slickly glamorous spot on newly ultrafashionable Marylebone High Street. I confess to being taken aback by the bustle, the veneer of sophistication, the entertaining 1950s-American diner meets-Alien decor.

OK, so my trepidation wasn't only down to the cheesy moniker - the place is vegetarian. For a gal whose idea of heaven is being smeared with foie gras before being buried in a well-hung slab of beef, this is a departure. But I recognise excellent meat-free food when I see it - like at Brighton's ground-breaking Terre A Terre - and I didn't recognise it here.

The menu, too, is diner-style: a retro, plastic-coated sheet. It's quite short, but manages to roam wildly around the world. We get Malaysian laksa, Thai spring rolls with chilli dip, fried haloumi and pastas. Great, if they can pull off their larderplundering. We gave it a fair bashing and came away feeling over-fed and underwhelmed.

Chinese dumplings were potstickers, those great squidgy jobs, semi-steamed, semifried. These were pretty good: the pastry translucent and yielding, the filling a pleasant cabbagey, musky, mushroomy, soy mush. This was the best dish of the evening, apart from an OK goat's cheese salad the usual chevre, the usual rocket, some sunblush tomatoes, a scattering of pine-nuts.

Despite not particularly warming to it, I'll be gentle about a 'cheeseburger', a soya protein effort that did a reasonable impersonation of poor-quality meat. Brownie points, though, for details: good skinny chips; a topping of slippery, caramelised onions; tomato rubbed into the bun, perky gherkins.

Rather sadder was the date's Thai green curry. A few desultory vegetables lurked in a thin gravy, tasting almost entirely of coconut. Where was the chilli, the lemongrass, the kaffir lime leaves? Hiding? And did we really have to endure hippy rice?

But meze - come on guys, this is basic stuff - were downright lame. Passable tabbouleh and fluffy but tepid falafel didn't make up for grouty, flavourless hummus and grey, slimy baba ganoush (aubergine) described by the date as 'strandy'. Slimy and strandy? Not good.

Puddings are a vegetarian's comfort zone and, as expected, ours were sound: a dense, truffled chocolate mousse cake and what was described on the press release as 'the best bread and butter pudding you'll ever eat'. Yes, it was nice, but let's not get carried away.