All aboard for a trip to the Seventies

Unless you're a contestant on The Apprentice, there are precious few reasons to make a day trip to Brentwood, home to Sir Alan Sugar's business empire. That could change if Daniel Clifford, the two Michelin starred chef proprietor of The Headley plays his cards right.

The stars belong to Midsummer House in Cambridge, but its canny owner has hired head chef Scott Wade from The Gun in the Isle of Dogs and spent a load on renovation.

It has proved popular with the locals, Sir Alan included. But can it attract daytripping Londoners? It needs to, if the empty barn we encountered on Sunday is typical. Perhaps the endless gloomy interior, made darker by heavy ceiling beams, works better in winter. But on the day we arrived sun was splitting the sky and large Essex families clustered around the outdoor tables instead.

Had lunch been a brief affair, we could have caught the late rays drinking beer by the duck pond, but our meal took more than four hours, with long delays between courses. The conversation flowed, but being forced to sit inside on a hot day is never appealing.

Fortunately, the food was worth the wait. A heavily nostalgic menu had us swapping anecdotes from the Seventies and ordering prawn cocktail and whitebait. We passed on Parma ham with celeriac remoulade, but noted the upmarket take on ham and coleslaw, remembering the days when that combination was considered classy.

Whitebait burst forth from a white china mug, crisp and darkly sweet, with a side of tartare sauce. But prawn cocktails, while heaped with plump shellfish, were drowned in run-of-the-mill Marie Rose. Nettle and hogweed soup sounded unpromising, but turned out to be a delicate, clean-tasting dish.

All food came pre-seasoned, which is fine if you get it just right. But the prawns, plus several sides, were salted or peppered to the point of being unpalatable.

The meat, gladly, did not suffer at the hands of the condiment chef. My calves' liver, in three succulent chunks, was a velvety triumph. Lightly caramelised with a sweet, creamy interior, it was set off perfectly by a really good, thin gravy. Pork came thickly sliced, firm but toothsome, not too fatty, with sharp apple sauce, tender carrots and crunchy crackling. A gamy mutton was good, despite being twinned with both salty anchovy mash and samphire.

A contretempts over a sold-out onion tart revealed a total lack of meat-free options and reluctantly a darne of salmon was boned and offered as a rather poor alternative. But the fish was truly delicious, spoiled only by viciously briny pickled cucumber.

Such was the promise of a knickerbocker glory that we imagined all our childhood dreams rolled into one masterful re-interpretation of the seaside classic. We were bitterly disappointed when the tall glasses arrived filled only with sloppy pink ice cream and topped with lurid, ill-matched confectionery - freeze-dried sour cherries, green glacé cherry and honeycomb sprinkles.