'X' marks the spot (to which I shall never, ever return)

She's got a new bikini; she's gone off on holiday, and I'm (there's no point linking myself - you're already here) supposed to be working. But I'm having a muddy moment - a crisis of conscience, let alone confidence - regarding a current commission, so much so that I can't even go into the details here (if, however, you read between the lines of a previous post, you'll know what I'm talking about). However, I'm sick of the review that's been gracing my opening page since last Sunday, and suddenly urgently moved to do something about it. So ... please find below a copy of a recently published review that, as you can imagine, had the owners baying for (my) blood. As I'm trying to do my very best not to let them have it, we're going to call it Destination X ...

Life’s a journey, not a destination; to travel hopefully is better than to arrive; I would do anything for love but I won’t do that – such are the quotes, homilies and platitudes that inspire me when the (free range) chickens come home to roost. But I’ve yet to find a really good cliché to pacify me when huge disappointment sets in.

I’ve been walking past Destination X for years, and always thought that the cute little caff at the epicentre of Bath at its most picturesque looked rather inviting. I’d perused the daytime menu – sarnies, omelettes, afternoon tea, etc – and promised myself that one day, I’d pop in and check it out. But I never did. Until, that is, I came upon the Destination X website (as you do), and found myself seduced by an unexpected emphasis on Moroccan cuisine. That little café turns into a ‘Casablancan Bistro’ by night! White tablecloths are flung over the tables, the candles come out, and dishes such as kemroon m’shermal, kefta m’kaoura, briouats b’kofta are b’writ v’large. Wa-hey! Could this be an alternative destination for the Monday evening curry club that kick starts my social life for the week ahead?

Unfortunately, Destination X is more likely to launch the next series of Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares than appease our fevered exotic dreams. You can see the opening sequences now: Gordon sitting at an overdressed table – a cluttered riot of vast, vinyl-backed menus, sugar bowls stacked high with cubes and 65 items of cutlery all wedged between those poor, overlooked flowers and potential fire hazard candles. He has his head in his hands, an untouched plate of baby back ribs (‘The Best In Town!’) beside him and a dessert menu that includes ‘full cream tea’ and ‘toast with jam’ under his feet. His lamb tagine – meat tasting like it’s been boiled with Oxo cubes, the cous cous woefully under-seasoned - sits undigested in his stomach. “What the **** are they doing?”, he mutters to two confused tourists (the only other diners in the room). He picks up his notes, which include a printout from the website information: ‘evocative, colourful, and sophisticated, full of romance and rich with flavours’, it says. “Mexican fajitas! Pizzas! Ribs!”, he wails. “Where’s the passion? Where’s the …”

We know he’s going to find the Moroccan word for balls eventually. But on the night we visited, our chef’s were clearly big enough to give him the audacity to serve three portions of that lamb tagine alongside a weak, sad seafood version, a sea bass incarnation (which was actually okay-ish) and Moroccan brochettes that turned out to be a lamb kebab (“which needed a steak knife to cut”, according to my cute little guinea pig), a chicken kebab and a burger. Before that, we’d shared two platters – sorry, two ‘beautiful selections’ – of unidentifiable Moroccan mezze, which were just about passable … if you’re very, very hungry. With wine, our bill came to £25 a head. With hindsight, we should have gone for a curry.