Not such a hot Latino

Could Chino Latino be Asia de Cuba by another name? Both restaurants are in hotels and both, for reasons that are hard to fathom, aim to combine eastern and western cooking on the same menu.

The answer to my somewhat rhetorical question is no. Asia de Cuba in the St Martin's Lane hotel in theatre-land is glamorous and fun, and Chino Latino, in the new Riverbank Park Plaza hotel on Albert Embankment, isn't.

"Good afternoon," said the waitress as we sat down in the restaurant at about 9pm. She gazed at the absence of light coming through string-like curtains on the glazed exterior wall like an anxious doormouse who's been too long in hibernation.

The low-ceilinged restaurant opens off the bar, which itself is situated in the hotel lobby. This makes for an unsatisfactory, tenuous sort of dining space. But the menu inside a black shiny cover with a logo of hot chilli pepper lips enjoins us "to share, to love and enjoy".

Unlike the other Chino Latinos in Park Plaza hotels in Leeds and Nottingham, the London outlet employs a Mediterranean chef, David Massey, formerly at Harvey Nichols's Fifth Floor Café. In charge of the Asian dishes is Jimmy Nakamura, who has worked at Nobu and the now unfortunately named Japanese restaurant Tsunami, in Clapham.

The best way for three of us obediently to share first courses was to go Asian. We ordered sashimi set two (five varieties), inside-out chicken wings and shredded duck salad. We might have had dim sum, but the kitchen wasn't doing it, we were told.

Before anything arrived, a tall, darkskinned, handsome man glided up to ask if everything was all right. It was hard to judge. He sashayed off, never to be seen again.

The sashimi sported agreeably chunky pieces of fish, but we had to ask for soya sauce in which to dissolve wasabi. The waiter seemed unfamiliar with Japanese eating habits. The flavours of chicken and duck did not manage to climb out from under the sweet-sticky, oversavoury sauces used in their preparation.

With chicken bones and splashes of soy on the plates, a waiter deliberated out loud about whether to change them for our main courses. But we had ordered to suit ourselves not share, with one Thai and two Mediterranean dishes. That familiar sweet soy sauce seemed to have been painted onto twice-cooked spiced poulet noir served with red peppers and courgettes.

Too much sugar had crept into the jungle curried lobster with shrimps and scallops - more shrimps and scallops than lobster pieces. We were offered a 10 per cent reduction on the £19 price of pan-fried sea bass with sweetcorn pancake, asparagus and red pesto because it arrived as steamed fish coiled around a few vertical spears of asparagus, a dish not listed anywhere. The waiter said he was too frightened to take it back to the kitchen.