Restaurant review, Gregg's Table, Bermondsey Square Hotel, Tower Bridge Road, London.

It's funny how the personality of a TV celebrity can permeate a place he owns. Gregg Wallace comes across on MasterChef as a no-nonsense, don't-muck-about, straight-talking, plain-dealing kind of geezer, not a foodie, certainly not a cook, just a chap who loves his food and appreciates it in big quantities. His most characteristic utterance in praise of a dish is, "I could polish off a 'ole plate of that". When you visit his new restaurant, Gregg's grinning visage keeps turning up in your head, beaming encouragement, defying you to find fault and criticise his down-home style.

Unfortunately, it's all too easy to do so. Gregg's Table is in the Bermondsey Square Hotel, which occupies an unlovely territory between trendy Bermondsey Street and grotty Tower Bridge Road. I visited the Square three summers ago to review a new branch of Del'Aziz, attracted by a press release that promised a "striking alfresco area... with twinkling lanterns, ideal for a romantic evening". It was awful, a concrete piazza of horrible buildings with an overhead criss-cross of wires from which dangled garish spotlights. Three years ago, I complained that we were forced to look at the neo-brutalist Hotel and its ground-floor bar/grill, Alfie's. Now Alfie's has metamorphosed into Gregg's Table, you can gaze across the Square at the people buying ready-meals from Sainsbury's Local. It's not a big improvement.

The décor mixes the plain and the vaguely retro. Tables and floor are laminated, some private booths have been designed in Soviet-bloc leatherette ("I've never seen a booth I was so reluctant to sit in," said Angie) and lengths of wiring dangle above you. The kitchen features the harsh lighting and mosaic wall of a Bosnian correctional facility. But the coat racks are nobbly in an old-fashioned way and the speakers are playing Fleetwood Mac's "Albatross" from 1969, so perhaps the décor is a kind of tease. I can imagine Gregg nodding and smiling as his associates assured him the punters would lahve a bit of vintage-east-London anti-elegance.

Read more at http://www.independent.co.uk/