Telephone: 020 7630 1733
Address: Mövenpick Marché Restaurant, Portland House, Bessenden Place, London SW1.
Lunch for two, with wine, around £30.
On a windswept urban thoroughfare near Victoria Station in London is an outpost of the Swiss Mövenpick catering empire, which until recently bore a large sign describing it as a 'Freshtaurant'. Every time I have driven past it, I have fumed more wretchedly than my old Volvo at the gross stupidity of it; at the contrived smart-arseness of it; at the overall bowdlerisation of the English language that this crass, invented word represents. I could just imagine the marketing man responsible punching the air with joy when the idea first thudded across his cerebellum. 'It's a restaurant. The food's fresh. I know: let's call it a freshtaurant!' As against what, exactly? A staletaurant? A bit-past-its-besttaurant? While the sign remained, I committed myself never to going inside.
Then it disappeared, I don't know when. All I know is that recently I found myself a mile past Victoria, realised I wasn't seething any more and that therefore the time had finally come to find out what the hell goes on behind its glass sliding doors.
The Mövenpick Marché Restaurant, as it now describes itself, is situated below ground under the glass-and-steel headquarters of John Prescott's Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions. To all intents and purposes, it is a food court, a vast, tiled, underground space populated by faux market stalls which give way to an eating area designed to look like a faux Italianate villa or a faux galleon or a faux alpine hut. That said, Mövenpick would probably shudder at the term 'food court'. This, they say, is a 'Marché' - which is like a food court, only one owned by Swiss people.
It was opened by the Countess of Limerick on 5 September 1995. I know this because there is a sign on the wall which says so. There are lots of signs and notices at Mövenpick. There's the big one listing 'The nine Marché principles of Mövenpick'. These are intriguing. Number five is: 'Our selection is varied and flexible but deliberately limited', which I suppose counts as getting your apology in first. There's the big police warning poster which reads: 'THIEVES OPERATE IN THIS AREA.'
And then there's all the stuff on the back of the customer card which is stamped at each stall so they can keep score of what you've had. One of those clauses says that, should you lose this card, you will be taken out to Victoria Station and shot. OK, what it really says is that, should you lose it, they will hit you for 50 quid, no arguments, no appeals. It is a nice, warm and welcoming way with which to begin a meal.
As to the food, it is utterly familiar to anybody who has ever walked about a food court - sorry, Marché - which is to say, a transcontinental mishmash. One stall has platters of pasta seizing up beneath heat lamps. Another has barbecue chicken and a lump of beef which carved up nice and grey. The real selling point, as the old name suggested, was the fresh stuff: the stall laden with good-looking cuts of raw fish on ice, or the meat stall with sausages and hunks of pork, or the cooking station where they were preparing Dover sole with pale spinach and saffron risotto at £6.55.
I passed on all of those and made for the salad bar offering servings of antipasti at £3.95 a pop. One plate contained smoked-salmon parcels. What was in those parcels was not immediately obvious. I asked the woman behind the counter. She muttered something in a foreign tongue. I frowned. She tried again. I was still none the wiser. It wasn't her fault. She had been placed in a position to which her grasp of English was not suited. I went for the peppered smoked mackerel with potato salad which was ready-prepared, sealed tight beneath clingfilm.
It tasted like peppered smoked mackerel that had lain beneath clingfilm for too long: it was far too cold, and dull and dry. I didn't finish it. As to my companion - there wasn't one. Sure, announce you have to review some £50-a-head Michelin-starred Italian fusion place and they're down on their knees offering sexual favours. Tell them you have to review a Swiss food court and you can't see them for dust.
So I pressed on manfully, alone. Next, I went for a made-to-order rosti with ham and cheese, what with this being a Swiss gaff and all. At £5.55, it was a substantial plateful. The ham was good and solid, and the rosti had a great crispy skin. Beneath this, however, it was a bit soft and squidgy as though it was fried-off mashed potato. It wasn't bad. It just wasn't great. There's a short wine list - a bit of Merlot, a bit of Pinot Grigio - and a longer list of sugary cocktails which doubtless have been responsible for the over-inebriation of many a Victoria office worker.
It was now 1pm and the place was quickly filling up. I tried to work out why. To be absolutely fair, if this were the café at a motorway service station off the M6, I would be praising it to the stars. There's food of a reasonable quality being served here at reasonable prices, which would be something close to a cultural revolution if ever it were to arrive in, say, Droitwich. But it's not. It's a service station without the motorway, a Travelodge without the beds. Maybe there are people in London who crave the 'Welcome Break' experience without having to drive there. Maybe some of them are civil servants working for the Department of Transport upstairs. Only one thing is certain: I'm not one of them.
Contact Jay Rayner on jay.rayner@observer.co.uk
