Dismal food in a restaurant with all the atmosphere of a car ferry

I've never been a believer in the formula: (monkeys + typewriters) * time = Shakespeare. And, rather fascinatingly, a restaurant in Penarth is now attempting to prove the veracity of the hypothesis, except with chefs and Indian ingredients as the variables. Perhaps they just haven't been in there long enough, but things aren't looking good.

Even before any food arrives, just look at the place. Who in the name of Ghandi designed this refit? With windows so high, there's no view inside from the street, and as you walk by reflecting that this is what life as a dwarf might be like you might well wonder if you haven't arrived at an ex-serviceman's club instead. Only when you're inside does the full hideous truth kick you where it hurts. OK there are some nice(ish) chairs and tables, but the combination of wood panelling and lurid red on the walls (highlighted with some LED light tubes for good measure) suggests that an Amsterdam pimp might have had some hand in the interior design.

So far, so tacky. It's on with the poppadoms (and at this moment you might as well call a taxi for your taste buds as they won't be required for the rest of the evening). These may well be deep-fried sheets from the Yellow Pages, and the accompaniments are truly remarkable. There's some 'chopped' onion (if they left the pieces any bigger they would be whole onions), a mango chutney that's more like Lidl economy apricot jam, and a lime pickle which tastes alarmingly like Cif, or Jif, or whatever it's called this week.

The main courses show some further invention with ingredients. The garlic mushrooms explore a new technique of mixing tinned mushroom slices with garlic burned to buggery, the palak paneer appears to use polystyrene packing instead of cottage cheese, and the lamb bhuna offers the blandest and gristliest of meats in an ectoplasm jus. Or if that's all too exciting, just go for the Katchuri Dansak whose stodgy lentil balls dispense with the notion of taste completely.

And so we must conclude that the monkey/typewriter theory is a fallacy. Or at least they haven't devoted enough time to this particular experiment yet. And if that's the case then I doubt any of us will live long enough to herald a positive result at this laboratory.