Keep it simple

The Morgan Arms came recommended by a senior food PR figure, but not one employed by the pub. It's won awards. It's busy. The Morgan Arms has broken the typical decor by mixing original decorative features, such as stained glass and a beautifully carved and inscribed wooden bar with green, brown and ochre walls, the odd plush (new) sofa, shelves groaning with books and bits and bobs and colourful natural matting underfoot.

The pub was filled with a multi-ethnic, modern sort of chattery crowd. It was 9.40pm on a Wednesday when we arrived, so late because we had a torturous fiasco trying to find it in one of those maze-like networks of one-way streets that generally herald a few posh streets being protected from plebeian throughtraffic. So, you might think, its punters are educated, discerning and enlightened. The feeling from staff and environment was that we were in an original, inviting and together waterhole.

Poor old Lovely Louis and the dear genius Big Shoe, neither of them have ever been to a great, or even a very good gastropub with me. This time I felt sure they would be pleased to be my friends.

For an award-winning pub the Morgan Arms has odd food. For LL, a deep-fried courgette flower, stuffed with watery crab and breadcrumbed, which meant its textures were more like a Scotch egg than the tempurared lightness you imagine for this delicate flower. It came attached to its stalk, the courgette, which clearly needed more deepfrying-than a flower and so had the texture of, well, raw courgette in breadcrumbs. LL called it 'courgette in a basket'. Sharply vinegary pickled white asparagus garnished the dish: 'They might as well be gherkins.'

For BS, it was a foie gras and white-bean terrine with a burnt-tasting onion marmalade. 'It's not quite working,' he said of the dryish beans stuck together with foie gras and brightened with red peppers. For me, the most extraordinary soup: smoked salmon, watercress and crème fraiche. A watery broth with globules of dissolved crème fraiche on its surface and cooked chewy salmon lurking in its depths, a big pile of watercress in the middle made it impossible to negotiate with a soup spoon and a large spoonful of salmon caviar added the final decibel of salty fish flavour.

Lemon sole came from the freezer and was tasteless, wilted leeks were crispy and chewy, crushed vitelotte potatoes were sweet and stodgy. They were all fashionably stacked and floated in a chive cream that really was cream and chives.

Char-grilled côte de boeuf was a good piece of meat, the straw chips were potatoey and good. LL struck gold here. But I hit a real low with tasteless hard halibut (warm), on a bed of (cold) coco beans and watery, tasteless crab.

I'm sorry, by now I was annoyed that they hadn't just cooked some sensible simple food well, instead of all this faux posh cooking. I'm tired of writing negative reviews, it goes against my nature.

Let's leave on a high note, though. The puddings were (relatively) awesome. Tasting plates themed around flavours - we had strawberry with its Arctic roll, Eton mess, jelly and strawberry shortcake. Also, Adnams and Landlord were well kept.

The Morgan Arms
43 Morgan Street, E3 5AA