EATING OUT : The bland leading the bland

OLIVE TREE RESTAURANT; Queensberry Hotel, Russel Street, Bath BA1 2QF. Tel: 01225 447928. Lunch, Mon-Sat 12-2; dinner, daily 7-10. Set lunch, pounds 11.50 for three courses, pounds 9.50 for two. Average a la carte price for three courses, pounds 25. All credit cards except Diners

I WAS convinced from a previous visit that The Olive Tree in Bath was in Gay Street, just round the corner from Queen Square, and accordingly gave directions to my distinguished composer friend as he parked his car to meet us there after he had been to a shop to buy a Bath parking ticket. His wife and I then set off for the restaurant - to find it wasn't where I had thought it was at all.

This provoked my friend's wife to deliver a general tour d'horizon of male incompetence. How would my distinguished composer friend ever find us? How would I ever find the restaurant? Why was it that men have no sense of direction? I stayed calm, called for instructions on my mobile phone, led her confidently through the Circus and up Russel Street, and felt a stong sense of male solidarity when the distinguished composer himself strolled beaming into the restaurant a few moments later, having asked the way from another man.

I had experienced a bit of trouble earlier with the Olive Tree when I was trying to book dinner for after the theatre: after a lot of holding the line I was told first that they didn't take bookings after 9.30pm, and then that they might do after-dinner bookings in principle but in practice they didn't like people having to have dinner at that time of night in an empty restaurant. Everyone else in Bath, the implic-ation was, would have gone to bed by then.

I consoled myself at The New Moon, a perfectly good new modern restaurant still experiencing some teething troubles, and more extravagantly at Le Clos du Roy, a charming French place full of bustle and atmosphere, both in a convincing mock-Georgian development within 25 yards of the Theatre Royal.

Bustle and atmosphere is not something you would associate with The Olive Tree, where I eventually made arrangements to have lunch. It is in a stone basement under the Queensberry Hotel, reached by outside steps, and, despite the carpets and rugs on the flagged stone floor, still has a slight echo which inhibits excessive laughter or loud talk. Smoking is not permitted. The clientele was a discreet mixture of elderly Anglophile Americans, respectable wives of Bath and local aesthetes, and the service suitably demure and undemonstrative.

While we were ordering from the single-sheet menus, printed across a rather Laura Ashleyish design of pastel fish, vegetables and fruit and for some reason including a live pigeon, the talk turned to the continuing Radio Three debate. This somewhat alarmed my distinguished friend since, having been putting on records for that station at the BBC some days before, he had quite inadvertently greeted listeners after the news with the words "Welcome back to Classic FM!"

It would be cruel to compare the Olive Tree to Classic FM, but there is a certain lack of roughness and authenticity - of what I mean by bustle and atmosphere, I suppose. On the other hand, they do a very reasonable lunch, and the food is ambitious. The set lunch menu offers two courses for pounds 9.50 or three for pounds 11.50 but I steered the composer on to the more expensive a la carte sheet in the interests of criticism. He chose to start with a galantine of wild rabbit and chicken with plum chutney at pounds 5.25. His wife and I stayed on the lunch menu. There were two possible starters. She chose a warm salad of lemon chicken with a sesame seed crust, and I had a Provencal smoked bacon and haricot bean soup.

My soup was nourishing, with good distinct flavours; her lemon chicken, which she very generously offered me a chunk of in the ding-dong of our battle about the need for Strong Women at the Helm, very slightly bland. The composer's galantine - pressed rabbit framed in a flattened ring of white chicken meat and accompanied by a gleaming heap of plum chutney that tasted home made, which we all sampled - was delicious.

For our main course, the composer and I turned to the more expensive menu again, he having agreed to take the wheel for their long drive home and I needing energy to jump about on stage for the matinee performance: he asked for leg of lamb roasted with minted couscous and spiced apricots, and I had calf's liver lightly grilled with rosemary and onion gravy. My feminist guest preserved the moral tone by restricting herself to the set menu. There was a choice of chargrilled pork fillet, field mushrooms and red wine, or roast cod and pinenut crust with pearl barley, lemon and cinammon, and she chose the cod.

Everything was fine really, especially the vegetables. Then my composer friend drew our attention to his lamb. He had not been asked how he would like it cooked, and it was blue, so raw as to bear at the centre no trace of cooking at all. Had I been Michael Winner I would, I am sure, have created a scene that would have been audible at the other end of Bath. As it was, my composer friend said he would eat round it, and being a man too and lacking Michael Winner's enviably feminine reserves of emotional energy, I nodded and said nothing. His wife by this time must have despaired of me.

It was shortly after that I realised it was 10 minutes to two and that if I did not dash to the theatre I would be late for the matinee. I asked them to choose a pudding each - creme brulee or a rum and orange bread- and-butter pudding - but they said they ought to be getting along too.

I left them over their coffee and climbed the stone steps from the basement into the glories of Georgian Bath feeling that I could have been more thorough, but that there was something in the Classic FM analogy: perhaps The Olive Tree really is too bland. Perhaps I am. Next time I shall certainly be more feminine and complain.

Lunch for three of us without puddings and with three glasses of house wine came to pounds 56.75 exclusive of the tip.