Will they pass the £15 challenge? Nope

Published on Wednesday 8 March 2006 00:58

All bar one

Two dishes and a glass of wine, 17.75

Langham Hilton

Two cups of tea, 10.15

Yo! sushi

Two dishes and a glass of wine, 10.25

ON TO every place- setting a little rain must fall - and this week the culinary weather has been brutal. I couldn't honestly say that cats and dogs or stair rods were involved, though it did occasionally taste like it, for my assignment was specific. The candle-lit pleasures of fine dining were to be exchanged for the harsh realities of eating on the move.

We're told often enough that we have become a nation of grazers: increasingly hefty ruminants who wheeze from snack to snack, lingering only when and where large amounts of alcohol are involved. What a calumny. I'll linger even when small amounts of alcohol are involved - and I was poignantly grateful for every last sip during this adventure.

It started in London, but as each of the places I ate in is part of a chain, the actual city doesn't really matter. Gotham, Metropolis or Glasgow. There's sure to be a Hilton Hotel and an All Bar One - and even though the citizens of Edinburgh eventually rejected conveyor belt sashimi and a robotic drinks trolley, Yo! Sushi will still welcome them as they step off the Heathrow Express train at Paddington.

My budget was set at 15. Surely sufficient to refuel the Scot on the move?

Not as it turned out.

My first appointment was at the Langham Hilton - a mausoleum of a hotel opposite the BBC. But not the sort of place a shrewd traveller would choose for lunch, so I asked the taxi driver to stop several blocks away in the hope of stumbling upon that mythical little restaurant offering a fine home-cooked lunch for a tenner. Well, a girl can dream. Even in Regent Street, even as she enters All Bar One with a sigh of defeat. The sigh was due to a recent encounter with a tapas portion of "succulent tiger prawns dipped in a light coconut and wasabi tempura" (4) in the Edinburgh branch of the chain. Now to be fair, the prawns were quite succulent. What I couldn't fathom was the chef's interpretation of tempura - the batter which should be light as sea foam. This seemed to weigh a pound and a half and swaddled the prawns like a sodden soldier's puttee at the Somme.

But the place is always busy, so perhaps deep-fried bandage material is more popular than I had guessed. I didn't order the prawns here, however. After reading the cheery assurance at the top of the menu that "we love really good food, and buy the best seasonal ingredients from small producers who are passionate about authenticity and quality" I chose a chicken and red pepper peri-peri kebab (8.95), which with a large glass of white wine (4.80) would keep me under budget. Theoretically, because when the chicken arrived it was charred black and dried out to the texture of old rope. As it was perched on two pieces of warm, very dry flat bread, and the only moisture on the plate came from a spoonful of vinegary chopped tomato salad, it would have taken the contents of Loch Katrine to ease this lot over the gullet. So I ordered some falafel on the side (4) as this came with cucumber and yoghurt - oh sweet balm!

The waitress did enquire about the chicken, and said she would tell the chef my comments, but the bill remained unaltered: 17.75 to leave most of the food on the plate. What a bargain.

So I was gasping for a cup of tea by the time I trotted up the steps of the Langham and into the Chukka Bar. My guest wanted tea as well, so a small, very battered pot of Earl Grey arrived, along with those famous accompaniments for tea - a bowl of peanuts, brown lump sugar and no milk. What a treat. Though that's not quite the phrase I used when I turned over the bill. Hilton Hotels sell boiling water and a spoonful of tea for 10.15. Or 9 plus an already added service charge of 1.15. This made the inedible chicken look positively reasonable.

A quick stop in Knightsbridge and another 20 or so on taxi fares, and I was back in Paddington, muttering like a music-hall Scot about profiteering, rapacity and good old robbery by daylight. It was 6pm, but my plane didn't leave until 8:40pm and I guessed that mainline station profiteering would probably register at a slightly lower level than airport rapacity, so I decided to stay in the station, though I certainly wasn't going to order tea. Besides, I was still hungry. I'd spent nearly 28 and enjoyed perhaps a fiver of it - yes, you've guessed, the glass of wine. So I wedged myself on to the last available stool at Yo! Sushi. There was some impressive chopstick action going on around me as commuters guzzled with astonishing speed, each hermetically sealed in their individual anxieties and impenetrable personal space. The conveyor belt, with its burden of colour-coded plastic-covered bowls and dishes, which range in price from 1.50 for miso soup or a portion of edamame beans to 5 for an assorted seafood tempura, was mesmerising.

But I woke up in time to order a large glass of Concha y Toro Chardonnay at 4.25. It tasted as good as the salmon katsu (3) looked. This is crunchy fried breaded salmon with chilli mayonnaise. Only, because I took it off the belt, it was cold. You can order it hot; but once you've accidentally captured a cold one, I can promise you won't wish to. And because I don't learn fast, I did the same with a portion of seafood fried rice (also 3) which contained an impressive amount of salmon but when cold seemed listless and unwelcoming, even after I had added a shiver of pickled ginger and a searing amount of wasabi. So there was only one thing for it ... Another glass of Chardonnay, please!

Thank God for alcohol. I'd be thin as a rake without it.