I’ve just been judging the beauty-journalism awards. Don’t ask. Actually, ask all you like. I can face up to it. I’m fascinated by the “50 fun bikini waxes to cut out and keep” pages. They’re so — well, so cosmetic, so superficially profound. They jig and skitter over the fathomless enigma of what it is to be human. Everything else in the press is merely events and opinions, but the beauty pages dwell on the very essence of existence: life, death, cuticles and the fragile relationship between id and epidermis. They’re questions writ in marble, answered in helium; Dante translated by Betty Boop.

Anyway, they gave me a bag of products. I’ve got a Miracle Mud “lift and smooth” face mask. I wonder if it will work on my bottom. I caught sight of my bottom the other day. I can’t remember the last time I saw it. It looks like Sneezy sucking a lemon sherbet. In fact, my whole body is a Mount Rushmore of dwarves, and I’ve got moobs like Bashful and Dozy.

After the rigorous buffing and tweaking of judging, I went on my own to Bumpkin, a new place in Notting Hill, and sat reading the paper at the end of a communal table. In front of me, over her date’s shoulder, I faced a woman having lunch. She was of that indeterminate age between “sex up against walls” and “only on anniversaries and weekend breaks”. She had a smart, intelligent beauty, well-cut and -coloured hair, minimal but crafty make-up. But what I really noticed was the way she used her face, the way she listened. The bloke, who I couldn’t see, kept up a steady noise, and her face followed it like a collie stalking sheep, fluttering with emotion, surprise, amusement, interest and shock. Every so often, she mouthed “Wow!”, “No?” or “Really?” And every time I looked up from the paper, she was still doing it, her visage a dappled landscape of summery attention. It’s a long time since I actually watched how encouragingly women listen to pontificating men. The truth is, I generally have my eyes closed and my mouth open.

He, apparently, never once asked a question. She, apparently, never thought to interrupt or stab herself in the eye with a fork. I took a dislike to him that grew into a nimbus of loathing and empathy. The hunched shoulders, the thinning hair, the crass self-indulgence — it was all too close for comfort. I could imagine him saying: “Well, if I had to admit to a fault, it would be that I know too much and am just too interesting. I forget ladies need a few moments to collect and assimilate everything I tell them.”

Restaurants are full of women nodding and smiling, taking small anaesthetic sips, giving themselves surreptitious brazilians one curly at a time, and thinking: “Oh my God, is there no end to this man’s talent? Is there no end to men?” Finally, he got up to show her something, and I saw his face.

He might just have scraped third prize in a Chris de Burgh lookalike contest, but without the crooner’s rugged intensity.

It was his mobile phone he wanted to show her. He’d been talking about his mobile phone for an hour.

Bumpkin is a stupid and embarrassing name. It’s supposed to give the sophisticated denizens of Notting Hill a taste of the countryside, the bosky rural simplicity that is the vitamin C their ironic lives need to prevent the scurvy of cynicism. It’s a five-floor entertainment pad with a brasserie on the ground, then a restaurant, then a private dining room and — there’s more — a pair of whisky lounges in the roof, where a whisky sommelier (I’m not making him up) will slur his views on the olfactory excitement of 900 single malts. “We don’t keep them all on the premises, of course.” Well, thank God for that.

The brasserie, where I sat, is decorated with those strips of statement wallpaper and exposed brickwork that whisper retro-chic à gogo, as well as effulgent swags of dried hops that shout: “Harvester. Wait here to be seated.” The whole place has that annoying NyLon-wannabe East Village style that’s so embarrassingly popular round these parts.

Then there’s the menu — but only just. It’s only just a menu, a few ingredients that might be a shopping list. It’s possibly the last thing they considered when setting up the business: three dining rooms, three kitchens, 900 whiskies and a bill of fare that looks like the Reader’s Digest version of every lazy tried-and-detested staple from every coach-friendly gastropub in the West Country.

The dishes are mostly ingredient blind dates, edible consequences that involve little or no technical ability. I reckon the whole carte could be made by Gary Rhodes’s hairdresser. Take my starter: sprouting broccoli, beetroot, anchovy and chilli. Actually, forget Gary Rhodes’s hairdresser, even Gary Rhodes could make that.

In fact, the only person who couldn’t make it is anyone who had tasted it. The anchovies were the hideously vinegared ones — like eating strips of soused cashmere. The tough, scrawny broccoli had the metallic flavour of a sucked bike chain, and the little gonadal beetroots would have been nice enough if they hadn’t been overwhelmed by the searing embers of minced chilli. Putting these ingredients together on a plate was evidence of a cretinous gastronomic illiteracy.

After a sturdy wait, I was brought macaroni cheese, a wizened little bowl that had apparently been kept under hot lights longer than a radioactive Italian history professor. It was hot enough to have its own mirages. The pasta — which wasn’t macaroni — had the odd consistency of crisp papier mâché and tasted, thankfully, of absolutely nothing except heat and a bubbly coating of fat.

Pudding was a brownie: a damp, brown, bitter poultice with anaemically white ice cream that slunk away into a gritty, watery effluvium. It’s time to call time on brownie chocolate inflation, the obsession that insists it should be crammed with ever more cocoa. It’s about as sensible as seeing how much salt you can get into porridge.

There is also the usual organic boast: “All our meat comes from Frank Godfrey.” I hope you get better soon, Frank. “Our fruit and vegetables are locally grown in fields just outside Guildford, and we love them because they don’t use any pesticide.” Grown in fields — what will they think of next? And if Guildford is local, then why don’t you just pop out and get a pint of milk?

This arrant waste of food is the best advertisement for the copious use of chemicals and pesticides I’ve seen in weeks.

As, indeed, were most of the customers. A couple stopped to tug my sleeve. “Don’t be too hard on them,” the man said in a stage whisper. “We like it here, don’t we?” The woman smiled, nodded, and added: “But don’t have the veal.”

BUMPKIN

209 Westbourne Park Road, W11; 020 7243 9818.
Brasserie, Tue-Fri, noon-3pm. Restaurant, Mon-Sat, 5.30pm-midnight; Sun, noon-5pm

5 stars Yokel hero
4 stars Yokel talent
3 stars Yokel colour
2 stars Yokel government
1 star Yokel anasethetic

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