Food review: Telford's Novello Lounge boasts good concept and good vibes

And then he picked up a squirty bottle of cleaning fluid. He aimed the fluid at the mirror, presumably directly at the reflection of his face.

He squired. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. As the stream of water ran down the mirror, he laughed. Then he did it some more. Seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty. He looked around towards his colleagues, all the better to show off in front of them. They were oblivious to his water pistol game. He squirted a few more anyway. Pow. Pow. Pow.

I’d imagined he might at that stage wipe the cleaning fluid from the mirror. Y’know. That was fun, but I’d better wipe up after me so that someone else doesn’t have to.

But no. Just aimless water pistol fun on a busy Saturday night while all his colleagues were working tables, cooking food, serving drinks. And they say you can’t get the staff these days.

Earlier, he’d been unable to discharge a simple request: to provide two glasses of freshly squeezed orange juice. Instead of bringing sweet and sharp glasses to our table, he’d bought the horrible made-in-a-factory orange juice that comes straight from a plastic bottle after it’s been whizzed up in a machine. I took it back and politely noted his error. He told me the machine was broke, I couldn’t have freshly squeezed, though if he’d told me that earlier I’d have been able to change my order and drink something more palatable.

One bad apple doesn’t always spoil the barrel and there were plenty of others earning their wage by providing good service.

A busy brunette was efficiency itself; walking endless steps between the serving hatch and tables, asking customers if they were happy with their food. A slim and diligent lad with an air of authority was similarly impressive, striding purposefully across the room and keeping a smile on his guests’ faces. A larger youngster who wiped down tables did so happily and speedily.

My partner and I had stopped off at Telford’s Novello Lounge on our way home from someplace else. It’s a quick and easy place for informal eating and drinking and was half full when we entered.

A generally youthful crowd – the sort of people who know the names of Love Island contestants – were supping cocktails and eating smart little bowls of comforting soul food.

There are numerous chains at Telford’s Southwater and the Lounge probably has the best concept of all. It’s brilliantly decorated and furnished, as are others in the chain, with big mirrors, odd pictures and colourful furnishings.

It looks like the front room of an eccentric professor who used to drop too much acid back in the 1960s. There are boxes of games, racks of books and easy-to-follow menus providing bistro classics.

Vibrant

Funny, colourful and vibrant; it’s a fun place to eat. I’ve probably spent more money at assorted lounges over the past three years than any other chain.

Simple eats in a quirky space where people are as likely to be playing Jenga as they are drinking a pint is a good recipe.

It’s reminiscent of a chill out lounge; the sort of place people might have gone to to chill out and relax as the sun came out after a night of clubbing during the Summer Of Love. Or something.

The food’s usually pretty good, though this time it wasn’t. Imprecise and poorly seasoned, it failed to live up to the standards that it usually attains.

So a starter of three tapas dishes were fine: chicken gyoza were savoury and light Japanese dumplings with shiro miso dressing and chilli mayo, buttermilk chicken was hot, tender and crunchy with a chipotle mayo dip while a supergreen bowl featured undercooked tenderstem broccoli, avocado, rocket, edamame beans and beetroot hummus with toasted seeds. Fine, fine and fine.

The mains were mediocre. Her lounge eggs featured two poached eggs served with hollandaise on a toasted English muffin with smoked salmon. The eggs were really overcooked, so that when she cut into them there was no golden, runny yolk – just hard-boiled overcooked balls of yellow.

My chilli was similarly awry. A dish that I’ve eaten before, it comprised slow-cooked American-style chunky beef chilli served with lime & coriander rice and mature cheddar.

I’m guessing the chef’s hand slipped when he added the chilli powder, for it was aggressively seasoned.

As much as a dollop of sour cream acted like the bowl’s neighbourhood fire service, it couldn’t extinguish the needlessly severe heat.

The chilli was sledgehammer hot and had all the subtlety of a monster truck running over a box of six eggs.

We skipped dessert. Though the puddings and cakes offered an opportunity for calorific indulgence, the standards hadn’t quite been up to scratch, leaving us disinclined to stick around.

The bill was reasonable – or, rather, it would have been if the food and bar tender had been up to scratch.

All of us have off days and I’m putting our latest visit to the Lounge down to just that. The place lacked an experienced restaurant manager to pull up boot straps and rally the troops; to tell a bar tender to wash glasses or do something useful, to tell a chef to take a little more time and get things right, to offer words of encouragement and thanks to the other, hard-working staff who got things so very right.

It remains a decent restaurant that offers good vibes as well as (usually) decent nosh. Amid the glut of chain restaurants offering much of a muchness in Telford’s re-imagined town centre, it remains a bright spot.