Museum menu: lacklustre

Rather like the American visitor who complained that Windsor Castle had been built 'too close to the freeway', one might argue that the British Museum was located far too close to the discount hi-fi shops and computer-repair centres of Tottenham Court Road. Nor can one say that the stuff on show here is particularly trendy by Blairite standards: very few flashing lights, no dismembered cattle, it is all a little serious for modern tastes. The British Museum occupies a cultural high ground that puts it at odds with a country obsessed by David Beckham's hair and Danniella Westbrook's nasal passages, which is why I was determined to enjoy my dinner in the Court Restaurant.

First of all, at £14.50 for three courses it strikes me as a bargain. The dinner menu is compact: three courses containing three options, assembled with the narrowness of imagination one might expect of an institutional caterer. Expect something like Caesar salad, smoked salmon with new potato and cr?me fra?che salad, or soup, followed by a pasta, chicken or salmon dish, topped off with a choice of two cakes or cheese and biccies.

The food is banal, but perfect for a restaurant that was about one-third full of people of pensionable age with a taste for geometric-patterned knitwear and Cornish-pasty footwear. My table included a man in Loewe and a young blonde he had rescued from a life on the Eurotrash circuit, who turned up in an outfit that owed much to Richard Lester's 'Three Musketeers' films of the Seventies. Together we lowered the mean age considerably.

The food is the sort you could probably prepare easily at home, but quite why one would bother to complicate a stingy portion of smoked salmon with a pastry case holding a couple of bits of new potato perplexes me. The best of a lacklustre bunch was as follows: Caesar salad, followed by seared salmon with good ratatouille, and a decent chocolate truffle cake.

If, as has been reported, the British Museum is experiencing a cash crisis, it should look into maximising its catering input: why not serve themed Greek dinners among the Elgin Marbles?

Food 3/10, Ambience 4/10, Service 6/10, Value for money 6/10

Court Restuarant @ The British Museum
Great Russell Street, London, WC1B 3DG