Trattoria Sorrento: Teddington, December 24th, 2011

I am prompted to reach for a quote from the inimitable Frasier. In episode 23 of season 2, the Crane boys visited a restaurant on the verge of closure, a place their family had quite a history. As they entered, it became clear the restaurant was a shell of what they remembered. Niles observed...

It's like running into a movie star you worshipped as a child, only time has left her hair brittle, her eyes sunken and dull, her skin waxy and sallow...

The delivery and dialogue (as ever) are impeccable. However, the point - whilst merely amusing on first viewing - has come to resonate quite extensively with me this year. Let me explain why.

For many years growing up, a restaurant at the end of the road was my favourite. A local, friendly, family-run Italian restaurant, serving perfect traditional treats such as rack of lamb, beef medallions, king prawns with garlic, all manner of pasta and a wonderfully quaint dessert trolley to finish. It was by some distance the best restaurant in Teddington and one that, on reflection, was serving up fine Italian fare to a neighbourhood willing to pay for quality.

The years took their toll on Sorrento. The declining television industry took away much of the traffic they accrued through post-show audiences (and even celebrities: Michael Winner's visit is an infamous tale from way back in the day) and mismanagement in general caused the place to close down. Many years passed, various other franchises came and went and nothing was quite right. It seemed that nothing could fill the Sorrento void.

Out of nowhere, a sign appeared on the long-vacant premises that Sorrento would be re-opening towards the end of the year. Local die-hards (and this includes me) celebrated, happy our favourite haunt was soon going to be back. My parents went in the autumn and declared the re-launch a big success. I was champing at the bit to sample it for myself.

My brother and his wife kindly offered to pay for me and the wife's meal there on a lovely Christmas Eve get together with parents. (Paying us back in kind for the birthday meal we'd treated them to earlier in the year.) The restaurant was packed, the holiday was upon us and we were all desperate for the kind of food that made this place one of those neighbourhood restaurants you really did believe in.

Back to my Frasier quote. This is one of the saddest meals I can remember eating. It wasn't the company (naturally) or the atmosphere, but the memories and the feelings I felt crumbling around me. It started with a lasagne (left). This was one of the worst excuses for genuine Italian I've ever had. It wasn't heated through properly which ruined it completely on every level. It tasted like microwaved slop. And the worst part is, I've had better microwaved and home-made lasagne than this.

The wife had some squid with tomato sauce (right). It was not as horrendous as my lasagne by any means but it still was not great. The sauce was acceptable enough but the squid was not worth any price outside of supermarket value. Forgettable and no more than functional.

The rest of the table were more complimentary about their starters. I don't know if it was that we were unlucky, but my father's sardines in particular were rather reasonable. The soft saltiness from the flesh was right on the money. As long as you've got the time to separate bones out from fish like this, it's worth it.

Main courses were where I truly hoped for a return to form. I went for beef medallions with Barolo red wine sauce (left). This was a dish which, many years ago, got me into eating red meat the way I do now. It has always had a special place in my heart (probably in the arteries). This was not what I remember. I asked for rare and I got the well-done side of medium. The sauce was embarrassingly thick and heavy. It was a deeply depressing plate of food.

The wife went for a steak and with pepper sauce and got more or less what you'd expect (right). It was rather nice in places. The meat quality was not the best as I had come to expect by the halfway point of the evening, but the sauce was excellent and merited seconds. Maybe things were looking up...

Desserts were as cute as ever, from the trolley and served at the table. I had a sliced apple tart which was reminiscent of something you might find in a canteen. A good canteen, I suppose, but I think by this point my morale was so low I would've been relatively unmoved by almost anything. The wife's chocolate cake was too airy for me but tasted alright.

I had had enough by this point. I felt fond memories of my youth dissolving in a sea of disastrous food and poor service. Oh, the service! A young man bringing food to the table announced each plate he brought to the table by practically shouting "watch out!" as he approached. It was a painfully amusing side note to a terrible evening's eating.

I must clarify that I don't feel particularly good writing this review. I actually feel pretty horrible, as if I'm hurting my home community, betraying myself and my family in the process. Maybe it's having moved away that makes me think of this restaurant in the same way the Crane boys thought of theirs. I am not technically a local these days. Maybe being local is what attracted me to this place originally? What have I become?

Well, maybe it's not as melodramatic as all that. I suppose if people want to eat the food and there are tables free, no-one goes home unhappy. Unless they keep the food at the standard I experienced on Christmas Eve. For their sake, I hope they fix it. This isn't somewhere I want to see fail - not again - and I still feel nostalgically attached to the place, even if they did their best to ruin my memory of it during this meal. There were times I felt like I was featuring on an episode of Kitchen Nightmares, so if I'm to go back here some time, I hope I don't feel like it again.