Coin Laundry, restaurant review: Damn you, Giles Coren, what a disaster!

Have you ever given much thought to the fact that, out there somewhere, you have a nemesis? Perhaps you're the kind of person who goes through life thinking you get on with everyone, that there is no thing or person who will be the unavoidable cause of your downfall. In my experience, I can tell you that's hokum. Everyone has a nemesis. Everyone. And here's the thing about your nemesis. It's a person, not a failing such as lateness or flatulence. And worse, he or she is a person you consider a friend.

My nemesis is a guy called Giles Coren. I have to tell you, I really, really like the man. We get together a couple of times a year and have a very jolly time. He has a remarkable mind, a ferocious wit, and can raconteur with the best of them. Lately, however, it has dawned on me that he is starting to cause me problems. Big problems. And so his many charming traits are coming to seem not like admirable qualities, but sources of future unrest.

Giles, you see, is better-looking than me, and much more famous. Waitresses always eye him up, whereas with me they just see a burnt potato. Like me, he is a short man, but not disgracefully so: he is a taller short man than me. He is also much better paid despite working many fewer hours, and therefore much richer in cash, assets (he recently bought a country house) and time. He is also slightly more intelligent, writes better sentences, and by combining these superiorities with those aforementioned, he has monopolised the allotted space in our TV schedules for short, Oxbridge-educated restaurant critics to opine about nothing much.

Now he is taking his nemesis status so seriously, that he's ruining my family life. This is a step too far. The other day he wrote an annoying and typically eloquent review in his Times column of Coin Laundry in Exmouth Market in London's Clerkenwell. My father-in-law came to town and I had a table booked at Bellanger, the latest triumph from Corbin & King. But along comes Giles and his ability to make things seem cool, so I booked Coin Laundry. I took Rob, Penny, and Sarah – my father-in-law, his partner and her daughter. And – damn you, Coren! – it was a disaster.

First of all, on a Saturday night at least, this 1970s-themed restaurant is nothing of the sort. It is the loudest cattle market I have ever been to, even after the shrieking harridan hen party on an adjacent table moves downstairs. The open-plan design and deafening music maximise discomfort. Is it intended to distract us from the food?

From a bar menu, one of several printed on ultra-basic, pastel-coloured paper, we have cheese and pineapple (£4) and spag bol croquettes (£5). The former are weird: melted brie in too much breadcrumb and an over-sweet pineapple jelly. The latter are greasy outside, dry and bland inside. Four mini chicken Kievs (£6) don't taste of chicken at all, but pork with lashings of garlic.

On the main menu, fried artichokes and ricotta (£6) are like a sexless marriage where the conversation dried up years ago, and the prawn cocktail (£8) is three piddling crustaceans drenched in anodyne Marie Rose. Smoked haddock rarebit is almost OK, except that Rob's toast is burnt.

My wife Charlie's chopped green salad (£9) is so plain there is nothing worth eating in it, especially the limp cucumber; and my "pig and bean" (£9.50) is a tedious liaison between pulled pork, cracked haricot beans and a brown sludge, all on a bed of boring baby gem lettuce. I try to pick out the ribbons of pork but eventually lose patience.

Desserts are an angel cake doused in jam and hundreds of thousands (£4.50); profiteroles in mini Yorkshire puddings (£5.50); a vast banana boat for two with vanilla and strawberry ice cream, toasted pistachioes and not enough chocolate sauce (£8); and a lifeless Black Forest trifle (£6.50).

The whole thing is meant to be kitsch, cool, and nostalgic for that decade of oil crises, EU referendums and the Winter of Discontent. To me, it just tastes like kids' party food in an unsubtle setting. Instead of a cultivated, classy blandness with a lively ambience, they have built a ghastly, charmless emporium with bad food to boot. If that's what the 1970s were like, I'm glad I wasn't around to find out. Which is the one thing I have over my nemesis.

4/10

Coin Laundry, 70 Exmouth Market, London EC1, Tel: 020 7833 9000. £70 for two, with wine

Four more foodie notes from the past week

Treacle tart

My wife made an amazing one for Rob and Penny (see above). Delicious with Jersey cream and raspberries.

Ricotta gnocci

Went back to The Three Horseshoes in Madingley, Cambridge, just for this, and it didn't disappoint.

Beefeater

Remains by some margin my favourite gin, and preferable to Gordon's, Hendrick's or Bombay Sapphire.

Blueberries

I'm starting to get into the habit of having a trayful for breakfast. Probably not as healthy as I'd like to think.