A royal disappointment

The Prince Regent is a lovely pub for drinking in. It has handsome, helpful, plentiful staff; the shocking, Indian pink, straw umbrellas outside match the lilac and charcoal walls inside; behind the bar are jars of pistachios and a spicy, garlicky mix of French olives to accompany your Belgian beer, your Adnams, your London Pride, your well-priced glass of rosé.

In fact, as a drinking place, its only downside is that it catches the morning, not the evening, sun. After-work drinkers here - on the premier food shop-lined boulevard that is Marylebone High Street - aren't bathed in light.

The Aussie manager was a star when I rang earlier in the day to explain that I would be eating with a militant vegan. The manager said that the chef would go off menu to accommodate him, and I notice they do a nut roast alongside the usual animal cuts on a Sunday.

On a Tuesday night the place was comfortably packed with drinkers and a few diners. It's more quirky and hip than your average after-work boozer - instead of the old lounge and saloon scenario, there's an Opium Lounge upstairs. This is trying slightly too hard.

The Prince Regent has a Med-inspired menu of sandwiches, bruschettas, deep-fried potato wedges, salads and a few crowd-pleaser mains: a burger, Italian sausage casserole, salmon and pepper kebabs and, of course, fish cakes, and sausage and mash. Ciabatta features everywhere. Tomato and red onion 'bruschetta' was in reality a lightly toasted fluffy bap that might have had a teaspoon of olive oil added somewhere in its mass-marketed past. The minute I saw this pasty roll I knew the food was going to be disappointing.

Chicken Caesar needed attention from the Campaign For Real Lettuce, since its cos was chopped and left for its edges to brown and spoil rather than being freshly torn as that ingredient deserves. No flavours worthy of the name Caesar, either. Garden salad with green beans was some musty leaves with a few beans chopped in a synthetic-tasting dressing.

Smoked haddock fish cakes were smooth, smoked, fish-flavoured mashed-potato patties. Wilted spinach was watery and greasy, potato wedges were soft and oily. The gnocchi with a spinach-and-mushroom sauce were stickily unyielding. A burger was at first praised for having lots of naughty things piled on top of it, but then rejected because it was too chewy. I won't go on.

The food's not evil. But on a street with culinary shops such as Fishworks, Conran, Paul and even good old Waitrose, food of the Prince Regent's standard just looks shabby.

Prince Regent
71 Marylebone High Street, W1U 5JN