restaurant for a ladies night out

[Tim Hayward]

I love Moro, but am I alone in finding it impossibly loud for a group of more than four?

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You're not alone. It's got some of the worst acoustics I've ever come across in a restaurant. Add to this the fact that, if you're sitting on the backless banquettes you find yourself leaning in to hear anything, which knackers your back.

What is it with back problems and Exmouth Market? Every time I go to the Quality Chop House I have to take out a simultaneous block booking with my osteopath.

[naebody]

What was Portal like? It's looked empty whenever I've walked past.

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Bar was quite busy, but the cavernous restaurant was empty but for for a table of Japanese business tourists.

The amuse bouche was the highlight: a shot glass of courgette soup accompanied by a few bites of scallop sashimi. The scallop was not a patch on the Fifteen version if ripped off. Still, the price was right.

Starters were forgettable, in that I've forgotten what they were. But the main course will live long in the memory: nugget-sized lumps of John Dory, cremated, then served inside a damp parcel of cardboard-thick uncooked filo pastry, which was placed on a bed of gloopy squid-ink linguine. The Date's veggie option, which involved tofu in a similarly robust filo crate, requires no additional adjectives.

On the positive side, the wine cellar is solid, and the dark-wooded conservatory dining room has a kind of mid-90s chic. (Drafty though. And god knows what temperature it'll reach when the sun starts shining. Perhaps it'll be hot enough to cook the filo.) However, if the kitchen can't cope with a grand total of six customers of an evening, it doesn't inspire confidence.

In current form, I give the place two months.