http://www.mashsteak.co.uk/restaurant/show/mash-london

This place is huge. And has lovely booths. And a wine list to make you dizzy. And steaks that stop conversations. But can it do a decent Caesar salad? That’s the question on everyone’s lips.

My intrepid salad hunter companion and I took the unconventional decision to order the Caesar as a side this time, rather than a starter. When it came, it looked every inch a “side-dish”. Simple and small-ish. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing. Many a Caesar salad has been spoiled by too many bells and whistles. So we tucked in, minds open wide.

Initial impressions were fine. “Well, it’s the right lettuce” said my fellow salad eater, which is always a good sign from him. The necessary elements were there, and some of the usual pitfalls were avoided.

But as we made eye-contact over our third mouthful, we each recognized a dissatisfaction in each others’ expressions. As one, we had come to the same conclusion. There was, in fact, one missing ingredient. And it was this.

PASSION!

There was zero. None. It was Caesar salad by numbers. Flung together. It was an afterthought of a dish, treated in exactly the way your trusted GCSS-ers don’t want a Caesar salad to be treated – with inattention.

Once that was established, we started spotting more flaws. The dressing was thin and none too flavoursome. The croutons had been left to sink to the bottom, so you got a famine of them at the start and a glut at the end. The lettuce was far from fresh.

All of which is bad, but none of it fatal. What there is no coming back from is relegating the Caesar salad to a footnote. Doing so belies a lazy attitude that can oh so easily permeate every other dish to come out of the kitchen.

3/10

If they don't care about their salad, I don't care about their score.