Maybe Magnolia's name is intended as a joke: you're unlikely to find an interior less blessed with the decorator's answer to vanilla. Every surface is covered with flock, or purple, or a riot of different wallpapers - so many clashing patterns that I reckon the death knell for the noughties' favourite interior-decorating device has just sounded.
In the raised restaurant section an unhappy chap takes our order without recourse to pen, pad or any kind of charm. What we eat cavorts insanely from the truly excellent - silky cured ham with squidgily glorious roasted figs; a wibbly, cool mousse of crab and avocado with caramelised lemon - to the scary: prawn skewers where the prawns are so woolly as to be almost liquefied; a greige Bailey's bread and butter that tasted like elderly porridge. There's real ability somewhere in the kitchen but it keeps getting coshed with mediocrity.
