When a House is not a home

HORSTED PLACE

Little Horsted, Uckfield, East Sussex TN22 5TS. Tel: 01825 750581. Open daily 12.30-2 and 7.30-9.15. Table d'hote menu, lunch pounds 15.95 Mon- Sat, pounds 16.95 Sun, dinner pounds 28.50. Average a la carte price, pounds 30. Major credit cards accepted

There is something wistful about buildings that have outlived their original purpose. I felt this perhaps more intensely having dinner in the restaurant at Horsted Place, as I knew it 10 years ago when it was still a private house. Now it is a hotel, sharing the old estate with the dazzlingly expensive East Sussex Golf Club, aristocracy driven out by plutocracy, but there is still an implicit assumption that the old regime did it better. "Country Houses," the crested brochure claims, "are amongst England's finest creations. More than just a home, they represent a way of life."

Snobbish respect for Old Money apart, Horsted Place does raise the question of what makes a restaurant homelike. There are, unquestionably, some relatively modest eating places where you could imagine yourself being under the proprietor's domestic roof. Beaming Italians pump your hand, throw an arm round you, introduce you to their grandchildren, marvel at the beauty of your womenfolk, shout with joy at your child's every word, wipe their eyes for crying with laughter at your feeblest joke. Unfortunately trying to market the exclusivity and snootiness of the "country house way of life" does not leave much room for this kind of generous knockabout.

Horsted Place is an early Victorian exercise in red brick Gothick, and we got there on a blustery evening with the wind tossing the trees about in the park. Many of the tree trunks were lit with their own individual spotlight - a post-revolutionary touch - and the old patchwork of woods and fields where woolly-hatted locals once roamed of a Sunday with metal- detectors has been transformed into greens and fairways, dotted with purpose- built facilities for golfers and executives. We were greeted at the top of the stone steps by a receptionist, who closed the door behind us and returned to her computerised cash register and clattering printer at a table by the window.

The long Gothic hall, embellished with elaborate Pugin doors and fireplace, that runs the whole length of the house, used to be full of flowers, very big pictures, comfortable Victorian furniture with brightly coloured covers, straw hats and general domestic clutter. Now the Pugin woodwork, once painted 10 different shades of white, is a uniform dull cream, there are a few small pictures and a mood of institutional correctness. A Scottish waiter in a black coat asked us if we had come for dinner, and we were shown into the dining room. It was papered in dark red stripes with pairs of little shaded wall lamps, there were a few odd oil-paintings of Edwardianish girls with funny-shaped breasts, and seven or eight tables covered in white cloths with tall silver candlesticks. The menu arrived almost immediately, bearing a wishy-washy water-colour "by a local artist" of some trees in the park.

One other couple came in later and a lone man arrived just as we were leaving, but otherwise we were alone. The wind rattled the rose leaves against the windows, we listened to the barely audible conversation from the kitchens, and came to the conclusion it was really to do with individual style. Whoever was in charge of redecorating was an imitator with a small budget, and if they were really tested in making it seem like a country house of any kind they needed a greeter. It seemed possible from his manner that the black-jacketed figure who brought the menu, the wine and the food was a manager, rather spookily trailed into the room and then watched by a pale girl-trainee in a long black skirt. He did his best, shouting "How're you doing?" or "There you go!" but somehow it didn't really catch fire as a Country House Extravaganza.

The food, I'm afraid, was a bit like the decor, unoriginal and uninspired. There was a set menu with three courses for pounds 28.50, with a choice of four starters, asparagus soup, rillette of veal, deep fried squid and confit of duck leg, four main courses, lemon sole with noodles, guinea-fowl filled with halloumi cheese, noisette of lamb with cous-cous and shiitake mushrooms and an escalope of veal "cooked in egg and cheese", plus four puddings.

My wife, who was by this time in critical mood, turned to the a la carte menu - the prices all written out in words rather than figures - and asked for coquilles St Jacques: "diver-caught scallops with fresh noodles and basil". Against her grimmest warnings, I ordered saumon fume parmentier, described as "pan-fried home-smoked salmon with potato pancake". I also asked for a half-bottle of Fleurie and a jug of tap-water. The scallops were all right, but the sauce on the noodles was too buttery. The fried salmon, in whoever's home it was meant to have been smoked, was dry and no nicer than it sounds.

For our main course she had the noisette of lamb with cous-cous from the set dinner. After considering the grilled dover sole in a shellfish and pimento sauce, the "pan-fried fillet of beef with artichoke bottom filled with tomato and glazed with bone marrow" and the guinea fowl with cheese on the set menu, I ordered carre d'agneau with a garlic mustard and herb crust. The black-jacketed figure came back to warn me that my lamb might take a while, and we settled down again to listen to the rose- leaves tapping against the window.

My lamb was good, my wife's noisette quite tough, and the green beans that came with them al dente to the point of being raw. Horsted Place managed to win back a few points with a prune and mascarpone tart with a vanilla and caramel sauce, but the poppy-seed and champagne parfait that my wife ordered, I had to concede was, in her own description, "horrid". We finished up with peppermint tea, and the bill without the tip came, as the menu would put it, to Eighty-Four Pounds and Thirty Pence. !