Hereford Road needs a new direction

I just about qualify as a baby boomer - coming at the tail end of that fortunate generation born between 1946 and 1965. Life was simpler then, or so it's said, and so was the food. You didn't have to be rich to eat well, and the pollution of the food chain by the innovations that brought us joys such as BSE had not yet started.

Maybe it's this memory that is driving the fightback against bad food, and the entire food industry has to respond, including restaurateurs. More and more chefs are embracing seasonal foodstuffs and changing their dishes according to what's for sale at the market, and not what can be rummaged from the freezer or bought from the factory.

So it was with nostalgic excitement that I set off for Hereford Road - which claims to be bringing simple British cuisine back to the menu - and hoping that its cooking was more imaginative than its name. I can't understand the current fashion for naming restaurants after roads. Are they catering for intellectually challenged people who might forget where they're going? Or is it an irritating trend, just as when students used to buy goldfish and then name them 'Fish'?

Unfortunately, imagination was also in short supply when it came to choosing Hereford Road's colour scheme - either that or the designer was chronically depressed. The exterior is painted a gloomy shade of brown and there's the same inside - although this is lightened but not enlivened by empty white walls.

Bare lightbulbs gleam down on stark brown tables, making me wonder when the interrogation was going to begin. There are no pictures, no flowers, zero atmosphere and a warped wooden floor that the waiter warned us was hazardous (so why don't they fix it?). I have never seen nor been in a more dismal room.

Still, the bread brought immediately to our table was fresh and baked on the premises, and there is pink champagne served by the glass, which is always a good sign. I had taken a lawyer with me and she wanted a beer - although the only one on offer was organic, tasted foul and was called ' Freedom' beer. It was exactly the kind of drink that Winston Smith might have downed in 1984, along with his Victory gin.

In fact, the whole restaurant had a distinctly Orwellian flavour - not just in its authoritarian surroundings but also in the austere selection of food on offer. Here you could find vegetables last seen on your dad's allotment; this was real, postwar, digging-for-Britain fare. But a small, seasonal menu was what we had come for, the lawyer reminded me tartly.

We started with Purple Sprouting Broccoli, Anchovy and Boiled Egg (their capital letters, not mine). This was fine, although the egg wasn't quite soft enough and was also stone-cold, which tasted rather odd against the warm greens. Turnip and Bacon soup looked like a Goldilocks nightmare - thick grey porridge with odd lumps emerging as if from an unlucky dip.

Next, the lawyer chose Venison, Swede and Sprout Tops, which looked quite attractive, although she said the meat was bland and she wondered where the deer had come from. I picked Onglet, aïoli and chips from the six main courses on offer. The steak was full of flavour and the chips were the best I've eaten in the past year.

The desserts were proper nursery fare, which I imagine would appeal to the other diners who included a famous author, a smattering of rich young things and someone I thought I probably should recognise, but didn't. We opted for a gargantuan portion of sticky date cake and a rice pudding that was completely ruined by the overaddition of cinnamon.