Hell hath no fury

My mate Titch hails from Wolverhampton, and I recently said to him that if I were ever to be told that I had, say, only two weeks to live, I would up sticks and spend my last days in his home town on the basis that being dead would be better than living there. 'But you're probably going to hell,' was his riposte. 'I know I will,' I said, and my point remains the same.

As if to test out the food and drink offering in hell, I went along to the newly opened Hell Food & Drink on the site of what was known as the Brick Lane Music Hall - now decamped to new premises in Docklands. It's a colossal space - alternative uses could have been squash courts or a five-a-side football pitch - accoutred in the raw, industrial style and furnished with robust, refectory-style wooden furniture.

Great swathes of empty spaces are crying out for some lounge furniture to soften the environment and make the place more cheery - I couldn't help but compare this place with that of a railway station bar in a provincial town. An enormous island bar in the middle of the room is wholly impractical from the customer's point of view, as you end up doing laps of the room trying to get served.

But the bar is nicely stocked with a good selection of (for the most part) quality Belgian beers. Among the highlights are the draughts of Bel Pils (a 5 per cent alcohol content lager beer) and Maredsous (in both 6 per cent and 8 per cent versions), and the excellent bottled beer, Duvel, a monster beer with an 8.5 per cent alcohol content. John Smith's lamentable smooth pour bitter will provide some succour to beer xenophobes in search of something English on St George's Day on Sat 23 Apr.

I didn't try the cocktails - I don't in venues that look designed to attract tourists and where staff don't exude confidence. The wine list is short and unimaginative, but the food menu is one of the most hilarious I've ever seen. It's a tough call when trying to decide between pickled octopus, sardine fillets, fried polenta, or duck and scallop wontons.

One of my mates refused to eat (sensible girl, as it turned out). I was told that a slice of rare roast beef would take 20 minutes to prepare, and my other two mates struggled to find anything they wanted. One eventually opted for 'Thai inspired' fish cakes (which were OK), another chose roasted chicken wings (bones loaded with fatty tissue), and I went for linguini with chorizo, peas and roast peppers.

I know this was during the bar's early days of operation, but it's fair to make the assumption that the menu had been planned and the chef had seen the inside of a kitchen at some point in his or her life. As long as there are dustbins in the street, there is no need to eat this badly - even in a Third World slum.

If I never have to visit Hell Food & Drink again I will die a happy man. Going to hell after dying has to be better than this place.

Hell Food & Drink
134 Curtain Road, EC2