Jan Moir Are You Ready To Order

Imagine the prow of a ship glassed over like a gazebo, and you have a pretty good idea of Mark Hix's new restaurant in Lyme Regis. Imagine S's face glassed over with shellfish fright, and you have a pretty good idea of his expression when our oysters arrive. Common sense and the laws of marketing suggest that if you are going to call your restaurant The Hix Oyster and Fish House, you might at least make a big effort at getting your oysters and your oyster service right. Right? Wrong. First of all, the waitress brings a dozen oysters instead of the half dozen ordered; it is a small mistake and easy enough to rectify, but one which does not inspire confidence. For the key factor in ordering raw shellfish is that diners need to have absolute faith in the restaurant and its vigilance, preparation and serving procedures at every step of the process. Otherwise, don't bother. As the disillusioned brunoise chef said to the shucker, why do we dice with vegetables, or death?

The Hix platter that arrives is lacklustre to the point of pointlessness; three Devon Yealms and three Portland Royals (£1.75 each), set clockwise on a calamitous rubble of cheap drinks ice from the bar dispenser, with a half moon of lemon, complete with pips. Even accepting that this is not the best time of year for oysters - the Yealms are hopelessly milky, the Royals are huge but thin tasting - diners should expect better. Shaved ice, a proper stand, a bit of seaweed, lemons without pips; come on, make an effort, for God's sake! Shellfish service is all about drama, not about sad molluscs lolling in their shells like weeping webs of ectoplasm, waiting for some psychic jolt to turn them into the ghost of Marilyn Monroe. Yet clearly - immediately, obviously - some sort of 50,000 volt charge is needed to make this restaurant work.

The Oyster and Fish House has been open for about six weeks and is the latest venture in the independent rise of chef and writer Mark Hix. Since leaving his job as chef-director of Caprice Holdings earlier this year, Hix has launched a Chop House in London and now this fishy outpost in his native Dorset. Are You Ready To Order? loves the Hix Oyster and Chop House in Smithfield, EC2, although we do worry that so many diners keep complaining about the awful service. Hix appears to be phlegmatic about this disorganised state of affairs, believing that new restaurants must undergo a filtration process of both customers and staff before an even keel of mutual respect, affection and repeat custom is reached. Perhaps only someone who was the executive chef of The Ivy, Le Caprice and Scott's could afford such a luxuriously relaxed attitude to his customer base.  

A stale old specimen (and I don’t mean S)

The Oyster and Fish House is situated high on a hill in the centre of town, overlooking Lyme Bay and the meek, neat Jane Austen Garden nearby. The views from the restaurant sweep from the famous Cobb arching around the harbour below, across to the Jurassic cliffs of Gold Cap to the east. There, where the sea meets the honeycomb rock, centuries-old fossils of sea and land creatures are embedded in the stone; the prized evidence of ancient lives long gone. Are any of them as old as my lemon sole, I wonder, prodding a stale specimen sitting on my plate like the disgraced underside of a hob-nailed boot. This sad sole is dressed with some dried out surf clams and a wash of soggy samphire that looks as if it has all been dumped on top of the fish by a rogue wave. To add insult to injury, the fish is pathetically overcooked. 'We will take it off the bill,' says the nice waitress, but this is not the point. No one goes to a fish restaurant to have stuff taken off the bill. What we want is a jolly good time and lashings of lovely seafood, not this haphazard misery. Across the table, S regards his dry John Dory with an eye as beady eye as the glaucomatous one sported by the old fish on his plate. It is not fresh. Far from it. The fish is not off, just on its last fins. In the kitchen, it has been stuffed and dressed with rosemary in an over-exuberant fashion and has sea fauna milling - that's Si-enna Miller's aquatic cousin - over its dessicated flesh like a sunken hedge. A small ashet of chips costs £3.75.

Starters we try include chargrilled squid (not much char in evidence) with broad beans, both items in a sauce that tastes weirdly like some distillation of Heinz tomato soup. Meanwhile, a 'seashore salad' of mussels, lobsters, clams, crab, oyster and sea greens is a truly elegant and typically clever Hix idea. It looks pretty - the fronds of wild fennel adding a sharp layer of aniseed flavour - but the smear of crab and itsy chunks of lobster are rather measly contributions, while the rest of the shellfish, with the exception of the Portland oyster, are dried out old specimens. Puddings include a opportunistic £6 bowl of 'New Forest berries', featuring cherries (strictly speaking not berries at all), blueberries, strawberries and raspberries. Can all of these really be grown nearby? More cynical customers may feel aggrieved that they are expected to swallow all this local, sourceable guff. The same applies to a blackcurrant Bakewell tart for two, which is served in a rustic, cast iron pan that it does not appear to have been cooked in.  It all seems a little bit phoney.

To be honest, the Hix Oyster and Fish House is a let down. If this restaurant in a Dorset beach town cannot find fresh fish to cook simply and well on the first Tuesday afternoon of the summer holiday season, then what hope for the future? Despite its pleasing, white paint washdown, clean lines and good views, there is something very transient and unsettled about HOFH. Much needs to be sorted out.

• Hix Oyster & Fish House, Cobb Road, Lyme Regis, Dorset DT7 3JP. Tel:01297 446910. Dinner for two, excluding drinks and service, £70. Set lunch for one, excluding drinks and service; two courses, £17, three courses £21.