Michael Caines at ABode, Canterbury, restaurant review While the history of leading cooks lending their names to restaurants to which they are virtual strangers is not a glorious one, there is nothing intrinsically distasteful about the commercial whoring of a name. The great Renaissance masters signed works painted by students and acolytes, and no one seems to regard that as a fraud. Yet while those paintings are generally indistinguishable from the work of the maestro, no one acquainted with sanity could mistake this endeavour for Caines's autograph work. Everything about this large, square room is so desultory and cheerless that all our sympathies went to a staff (off-puttingly sporting bright orange ties) who had compelling cause to seem blasé. As moribund as an undertaker's parlour during the Spanish flu pandemic - if less crowded - the studied sterility of an off-white and mushroom colour scheme, barely leavened by a few monochrome prints of the neighbouring cathedral, induces a stultifying hush. A brusque, distracted welcome had nimbly set the tone for what followed when a glass of a South African cabernet/merlot hybrid didn't so much evoke the warm scented earth of the Western Cape as the acrid bouquet of a Sarson's factory. The manageress raised a sardonic eyebrow at our complaint, blithely insisting the bottle had been opened only the day before. The food that followed ran the gamut from ABout Average to ABysmal. Beetroot panna cotta came with wincingly acrid pickled vegetables, tasted like supermarket brand "essence of beetroot" and abandoned the dish's conventionally smooth texture in favour of a sort of soggy tofu vibe. A mechanical ham hock terrine was colder than the atmosphere. An accompanying "green bean salad" proved to be a few limp legumes. These were at least green, as advertised. But the menu threw down the gauntlet to Bletchley Park in the cryptography stakes by rendering "a few blobs of apple sauce" as "mustard mayonnaise." By now, the transcendently joyless hush in the room - one of those psychic dehumidifier spaces that saps the soul out of you - was striking an unnervingly surreal contrast with the ribald shrieking from a hen party in a salon privé, closeted away behind the bar to our right. If these women found merriment in their main courses, I doff my hat to them. We were not amused by a pan-fried fillet of mackerel which "tastes very fishy, but not in a fresh way," served with a puy lentil mush flavoured with bad chorizo. Roast sirloin of beef came not medium rare, as promised, but medium well, with studiedly soggy roast potatoes and viciously over-boiled broccoli and carrots - though the Yorkshire pud was fine. "Everything looks amateurish," said my friend over a clumping slice of fig tart, "but not in a lovely, home-cooked way. They're just not trying, are they? Perhaps they make more of an effort when Mr Caines pops in. According to the manageress, this is once every other month. How as talented and vaunted a cook who maintains the very highest standards at one of the country's premier restaurants can allow this theme park to the culinary standards of the Seventies department store canteen to operate under his name is beyond me. The best that can be said of our lunch is that it was keenly priced. For all that, an Act of Parliament should sanction the deliberately misleading claim that a superstar chef is "at" a restaurant to which he gives such a wide berth. As your lifetime dictator, in fact, I would go further down the path of tough love by sanctioning the deployment of a demolition ball. High St, Canterbury, CT1 2RX, 01227 766266; Michael Caines. Sunday lunch: £15 for two/£17.50 for three courses. À la carte: three courses with wine, about £65 per head