A family outing to celebrate Father's Day last night, 19 June 2011. We were five adults with a 7.30pm booking. We ordered drinks – a delicious rose flavoured martini for me and beers for the others, while we looked at the menus. Only four tables were occupied and the a la carte menu was not on the table – we had to ask for it. Common sense should have told me that they clearly didn't have the turn-over to provide, freshly cooked, the extensive a la carte range of dishes. I should have stuck to the all-inclusive menu, as my family did, but I didn't fancy any of the options. So I ended up being served the worst duck curry I have ever tasted. I like duck curry and often enjoy the Busaba Eathai version which, despite not always containing as much meat at you'd like, is always freshly cooked, totally delicious, and frankly a real treat. I also regularly cook curries, using all fresh ingredients, so I know a load of old rubbish when I'm served it. Very few small scrawny scraps of leathery old meat – way worse than the sort of left-overs you feed the family pet from the turkey a few days after Christmas! These had clearly been added, at a late stage, to an already prepared highly spiced curry sauce, so the flavour of it hadn't penetrated the meat, whose ‘old’ taste could not be disguised. It was tarted up with three kumquats and some large pieces of soggy diced carrot and a couple of other slimy vegetables. It really did taste disgusting, and what was most alarming was my husband's reaction to it – “Horrible, tastes really weird”, and this from a man known as the human hoover in our house because he will eat anything, and insists on finishing off any old food he can lay hands on!

Not wanting to spoil the outing, I ate a few mouthfuls of the jasmine rice I'd also ordered, and sipped our overpriced South African white wine. My family enjoyed their meals, especially the minced beef starter with peanuts and lettuce leaves, and the white chocolate and cranberry cheesecake dessert. But… More