It is reassuring when the best restaurant in a great foreign city spawns a replica in London that then merely slots into the middle of our second division of eateries. And that is exactly what has happened with this week's joint.

When I reported on some duff meals I had eaten in Cape Town over New Year 2005/6 I was bombarded with angry e-mails telling me I should have gone to Haiku, the best restaurant in town. So when I found myself back in the Cape in January, I told locals that I planned to do just that.

Their heads lolled on their necks. Their eyes rolled back. Their tongues rolled out and down their chins. They drooled me a river. And they said, "Ach, man, you wan't be dissapoyntud, ut's hivvinly." When I called to book a table, the receptionist knocked back the first two dates I suggested, apologising that the place was "compleetli rrremmed".

When I did finally get in, it looked slick, dark, lacquery, like something out of Tenko, like Hakkasan without the hedge fund managers and Eurotwerps.

And it was full of South Africans, who are big, beautiful, straight-talking people I like very much (apart from the cricketing turncoat Kevin Pietersen, who told a reporter recently that despite emigrating to play for England, he still loved South Africa because, "The people are fantastic, the exchange rate magnificent.") What baffled me was the menu: Japanese, Chinese, Indian, Thai. Possibly 200 dishes in all. Four kitchens. How could it possibly work? And how could anybody read so much before supper? J. M. Coetzee got his Nobel Prize for not many more words than this.

My companions (advertising boys, relative simpletons) loved it. "It's just like E&O!" they cried — as if that were a good thing — forking dumplings, sushi, lamb kebab, chicken green curry into their mouths all at the same time.

And it is. It's just like E&O, the Southeast Asian plane crash of a restaurant in Notting Hill, Chelsea, Belsize Park and almost everywhere else, which is just about survivable if you don't know any better.

I had been in Tokyo only weeks before, where you do not even find sashimi, tempura, gyoza, ramen noodles in the same restaurant, let alone the food of other countries. No kitchen that has mastered sushi, goes the logic, could possibly have had time to get deep-fried breaded schnitzel right, say, or make a decent bit of beancurd. So how in the world these people thought that on top of all those they could hope to make a proper bum-stinging vindaloo or a nicely balanced satay sauce is anyone's guess.

And they couldn't. Despite the hype, this is finger food to gobble with cheap beer. Food for skinny party girls to toy with between trips to the loo. Food for the moneyed meathead who can't decide between "a chinky and a ramjam" when he's dialling for takeaway in front of the footie, so calls for both and puts an M&S Thai Green Curry in the microwave while he's waiting.

That said, they do everything just about OK. Like M&S. Like E&O. Like Burger King. Although calling it the best restaurant in Cape Town is damning indeed to the city's gastronomic reputation. Maybe that's why Kevin Pietersen left.

Not because he fell foul of positive-discrimination schemes in sport, but because he hates a clumsily made maki roll, and can't bear to see dim sum served after dusk.

The London replica — and it is a replica — has arrived in a half-built pedestrian cul-de-sac opposite Hamley's (also full of brightly coloured little bits and pieces for children), and is not only difficult to find but, with its slatted blinds, big scary door, and dark, mazy interior, is by no means falling over itself to appear welcoming.

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