Trouble at Marco's

I spent six years in and around the watering holes and eateries of St James's, my favourites being Le Caprice (for glamour), Wiltons (for formal) and The Ritz (for fun).

I was also quite a regular at a Japanese restaurant, now closed, where Luciano now is. Alan Kilkenny, the fine man who before me had the lonely job of looking after the then Camilla Parker Bowles' relations with the media, took me there. Alan was a great tutor - in food as well as PR - introducing me to Japanese cooking and, I'm pleased to say, plum wine on ice. Also, this restaurant was a minute away from my office - useful given my reputation for lateness.

Last week was a return to St James's - The Ritz for a celebration dinner, Le Caprice for lunch and then to Luciano, and the ghosts of the Japanese.

What can I say about this grand building's latest incarnation? I'm slightly reminded of a story about one of my heroes, Abraham Lincoln. Defeated for the Senate in 1858 in Illinois by his arch rival Stephen Douglas, a friend asked him how he felt. "Like the boy who stubbed his toe," he replied. "I am too big to cry and too badly hurt to laugh." My experience at Luciano was too awful to shrug off, and too depressing to laugh about.

I arrived on time (miraculously) at one o'clock, to be told we'd have to wait for a table because we'd changed the name of the booking the day before. Noting this novel approach to customer relations, I sat patiently at the bar

(though I'm not known for my patience). The bar is magnificent, which helped.

Half an hour and two more visits to the sulky women running table-command later I gave them a choice: a table now, or we leave. With painful reluctance she circled a table on her chart and we were marched to the splendid dining room, expecting to be squeezed in among a heaving mass of trendy diners. Unfortunately, the room was half-empty (so why keep us waiting?) and populated mainly by the kind of old men who normally hang out in ante-Wiltonsdiluvian St James's clubs.

Still, the beauty of the room, filled with wonderful prints shown off by glorious lighting, cheered me up, and I was prepared to overlook the dreadful introduction. Unfortunately, it got worse. We ordered a drink, but after ten minutes had still not been given any menus. My companion suggested we see how long it would be before the numerous staff (all of whom seemed to be cross with one another) noticed. But I was hungry, and once we'd prised some waiters apart, the menus arrived.

The starters came quickly and were very good: calamari and Parma ham with figs - simple Italian food which Luciano should do brilliantly, and did. But the main course was a disaster.

My friend had veal Milanese; I had pasta with lobster. The veal tasted more of the fryer than it did of veal. It's a dish we've all had in smart restaurants and cheap places (I think my first was as a teenager after visiting a Middlesbrough nightclub), and I can honestly say this was the worst I've ever tasted.

The pasta with lobster was inedible. It arrived as a great mass of spaghetti, in an ocean of red sauce, with an empty lobster shell plonked on top for "decoration". The few bits of lobster I could find would justify a conversion to vegetarianism, as the pleasure they gave me in no way warranted the death of this poor creature. I'm a hungry, slightly greedy eater, and it's rare for me to give up after a couple of forkfuls, but it was too disgusting to eat.

Perhaps these restaurants really are just places for Marco Pierre White to meet young women and have public rows with his charming wife Mati. But other than the harridans at the door, all the staff here were (grumpy) men, so Mati's clearly reduced the scope for Marco's passion (with his staff anyway).