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'It's hard to know where to start with Sirena's oddities… The food is not in any way awful, just not really of this century'
Doubtless there are many people, both in and out of the biz, glued to BBC2's riveting consultancy show The Restaurant Man, thinking, "I could do that." Like restaurant reviewing itself, everyone thinks it's easy, a doddle, a skoosh. Not me, though. I'm more likely to be hit with the sobering reflection that the more restaurants I go to, the less I know.
Take Sirena's in Vauxhall. If you approached me with a blueprint for the place, I'd laugh like a drain, cross my exquisitely-linened knees and tell you that such a ludicrous concept has no business existing, let alone in the ravening maw that is London's city centre restaurant scene. But exist it does. And, what's more, every lunchtime of its life since 1991, it has been packed to its peculiar rafters.
It's hard to know where to start with Sirena's oddities. There's its location, on a side street off an unlovely stretch of the Thames, in the basement of a serviced office building that, with its soaring gothic red-brick, looks more like the setting for a school of correction. Down the stairs, metal banisters daubed red, white and green, walls plastered with curling posters of Amalfi, to a scene that looks like pastiche: hectic murals, gingham oilcloths, "classical" busts, more posters of Amalfi… Two twinkly chaps of untender years work the room, one bellowing in Italian, the other singing away in a pleasing baritone: Silvano and Walter (pronounced "Vaaltair"). Can it be for real? Oh yes.
After being given a menu that looks as though it came from any Dino's circa 1977, we're told about the specials. As consultant, I'd insist they were written daily on a blackboard. In Walter and Silvano World, the actual dishes are prepared just before service and displayed proudly to you by the chaps themselves. So we get an eyeful of gently petrifying penne alla salsiccia, slowly ossifying Parma ham and goat's cheese salad, a spaghetti ai frutti di mare that has taken to clinging on to its large bowl for dear life. Could we have half portions as starters? "Signorina" – the joy of that "signorina" – "you can have anything you like."
Everything has a taste of tempo perduto. The food is not in any way awful, just not really of this century. I suspect the application of a lot of tomato puree. We have both sausage and seafood pastas: they are al dente, garlicky and whoosh me back to being a small child. Pizza bread is an almost-margherita, thin, toasty base with puffy cornicione – not bad at all. It's during the main courses that the Proustian thing really kicks in: my pollo alla Milanese is as thin as the apocryphal breadcrumbed beer mat that Keith Floyd served an annoying customer, and with probably about as much flavour. Our sides – saute potatoes and peas, of course – come in a sectioned metal dish. My plate, with its orange chicken, bright green peas and vivid slab of lemon, is as comical as a child's painting. It almost reduces me to tears. Honesty demands I mention veal in lemon, a dish that almost reduces me to tears for other reasons: it tastes as though it has bathed in Cif.
Nothing about Sirena's is "right". They do heart-shaped pizzas on request and, almost as an afterthought, a range of hilariously cheap sandwiches; it doesn't open in the evenings; they even have a dessert trolley that's trundled diligently round each table. Are desserts homemade? Walter twinkles: "Of course." A fine tiramisu, certainly, but I'm not entirely sure about the others. I'm also not entirely sure I care. Should you commit the ultimate solecism of ordering a cappuccino post-lunch, they perform a shtick (not telling) that makes me squeal like a teen on a waltzer. It's a long time since I've left a restaurant beaming from ear to ear, but that's what we do, and it's not all down to the obligatory complimentary limoncello. Silvano and Walter: I take my know-nothing consultant's hat off to you, I really do.
• Sirena's Southbank House, Black Prince Road, London SE1, 020-7587 0683. Open Mon-Fri, 8am-4.30pm. About £16 a head for three courses, plus drinks and service.
Food 5/10
Atmosphere 9/10
Value for money 9/10
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