Grace and Flavour: Forman's Fish Island

For far too long, scavenging for great food around the outer East London environs (Hackney Wick, the backside of Bow, etc) was an Olympian-style quest, but then an influx of bearded hipsters and knock-kneed scenester women in fake-lens Deirdre Barlow specs arrived needing somewhere to glug macchiatos and scoff locally sourced celeriac rémoulade.

And, lo, several wonderful cafés (The Counter Café, The Hackney Pearl, the Yard, View Tube) were born. And in the midst of this lies Forman's, Fish Island's solitary shot at 'fine dining': a restaurant within Britain's oldest fish smokery, purveyors of fish since 1905, affording views of the Olympic Stadium. 'Don't go there, it's always dead,' I was warned. Well, this sounded like a challenge, and besides I'm not overly keen on 'other folk' anyway.

Booking a table at Forman's is tricky as they rarely pick up the phone. Eventually a woman answered, sounding startled to hear a human voice. I dined that evening with a friend in Forman's small, draughty dining room, which is actually a partitioned-off section of a large bland hall perfectly suited to conferences and corporate parties. The menu was brief, spendy and communicated in swirly font. To start, London-cured smoked salmon arrived with tired buckwheat blinis that had seen better days. Warm smoked eel was delicious, but its Jersey Royal, caper and mustard sauce drab. Service was gleeful, but I could have done without hearing the kitchen staff estimating loudly when I might go home. They'd only served three tables that evening; they'd hardly earned a rest. The peppered rump of lamb with bubble and squeak was satisfying but neither piping hot when it arrived nor technically even 'bubble and squeak'. In fact, j'accuse it of being truffle mash. I said nothing at the time. One tends to sound like Marie Antoinette niggling waiters on such frippery. The sea bass (overcooked) came with 'vanilla froth' - more accurately a puddle of sweet yellow that looked like in-flight cheese sauce.

A chocolate parfait was wiped off the bill for being inedible, but we'd still blown £100. With 2012 on the horizon, Forman's has a wonderful location, but they're not getting any medals for food just yet.