Worst celebrity restaurants

Is Le Relais de Venise the worst restaurant in London? Judging by recent reviews, you'd think so. "A repulsive, oily dressing that would never get past the quality control team at Kraft," sniffed Matthew Norman in The Guardian. Yet in the three years that I've been reviewing restaurants for ES Magazine, I've come across several other contenders for this title.

So what makes a bad restaurant? Obviously dreadful food is a clincher, but there are also surly waiters, a dingy atmosphere, woeful decor, too many people or too few people and the crucial litmus test - value for money. If there's something that really niggles, it's being ripped off.

Sometimes it is none of these. I took my wife to Babylon at the Kensington Roof Gardens. The atmosphere was far too licentious. To give just one example, the women's and men's lavatories were separated by a thin wall with a large hole at crotch level. My wife discovered that by bending down and peering through it she could see men relieving themselves at the urinals. This is not good.

To be fair, many restaurants I've taken a dislike to aren't the worst - they're the most disappointing. When I became a restaurant critic I felt the luckiest man alive as I could eat at the most expensive places in London for free. Unfortunately, I've learned that high prices don't always mean high standards.

Nozomi
15 Beauchamp Place, SW3 (020 7838 1500)
Covers: 70.
Cost per head: £58.
Car parked outside: Mercedes SLR.
Hot-headed owner Marios Georgallides used to own Attica, but does he lack the diplomatic skills needed to succeed in the restaurant business? Since it opened in July, he's sacked the entire kitchen staff and every member of the front-ofhouse team. Nevertheless, I hope this restaurant stays open long enough to be featured on the next series of Gordon's Kitchen Nightmares, if only because the clash between Georgallides and the Glaswegian ex-footballer would be absolutely electrifying.
Avoid: Deep-fried edamame in chilli oil. After the paint-stripping potency of this appetiser you won't be able to taste the rest of your meal.

Cipriani
25 Davies Street, W1 (020 7399 0500)
Covers: 150.
Cost per head: £65.
Car parked outside: Maybach.
With its marble floors and warm, buttery lighting, this new addition to the upmarket Venetian restaurant chain certainly looks the part. Unfortunately, whatever sense you have of being guests at a fabulous party disappears as soon as you make contact with the staff. After my wife and I had been subjected to an endless cavalcade of incompetence we decided that a better name for the place would be Il Torro di Fawlty.
Avoid: Veal Milanese. It costs £35 and looks like flattened road-kill.

Nobu Berkeley
15 Berkeley Street, W1 (020 7290 9222)
Covers: 200.
Cost per head: £67.
Car parked outside: Red Ferrari.
Nobu Berkeley supposedly operates a "no-reservations" policy but, in reality, celebrities are shown to their tables straight away while ordinary people are forced to cool their heels in the bar. David Collins, the ubiquitous interior designer, has completely surpassed himself in the decor. The gent's toilets combine blood-spattered, stainless-steel walls with Kiehls moisturiser dispensers. Who on Earth is Nobu Berkeley supposed to be for? Metrosexual axe-murderers?
Avoid: The chocolate bento box. I've had better chocolate fondants at Pizza Express.

Mint Leaf
Corner of Haymarket and Suffolk Place, SW1 (020 7930 9020)
Covers: 350.
Cost per head: £45.
Car parked outside: Subaru Impreza.
Mint Leaf is supposed to be one of London's most upmarket Indian restaurants, but on the night I went there it took 45 minutes to attract the attention of a waitress. My companion's cubes of duck breast were dry and tough, while my lamb was stringy and flavourless. I ordered some naan bread, which was slightly burned, and a portion of dal, which was bland.
Avoid: Anything that's accompanied by dried fenugreek leaves. You might as well sprinkle sawdust on your curry.

San Lorenzo
22 Beauchamp Place, SW3 (020 7584 1074)
Covers: 120.
Cost per head: £52.
Car parked outside: BMW Z3. If you're a member of the jet set, San Lorenzo is a home-away-from home, but from the perspective of a rank outsider it's pretty charmless. Bronze statues of reclining nudes may have been the height of exotica in 1963, but today they wouldn't look out of place in Luigi's on Peckham High Street. The food, too, is completely unexceptional.
Avoid: Veal Milanese. It tastes like a piece of shoe leather sandwiched between two pieces of sandpaper.

Brunello
Baglioni Hotel, 60 Hyde Park Gate, SW7 (020 7368 5900)
Covers: 30.
Cost per head: £74.
Car parked outside: Pink Rolls-Royce.
When it comes to sheer, over-the-top vulgarity, you have to hand it to the Italians. One of my fellow critics described Brunello as looking like the inside of Liberace's coffin, but it was more like being in Donatella Versace's underwear drawer. It's the sort of restaurant that women describe as "sexy", but red-blooded heterosexuals think is so camp they might actually turn gay if they remain in it for more than five minutes.
Avoid: Duck ham. The fat is inseparable from the meat, making each slice impossible to chew.