The sort of situation that must present itself to millions on a Saturday night befell our household last night: too tired to cook, too tired to go and buy some food to cook. The obvious answer was a takeaway delivered to our home.

Monmouth has many restaurants, most of them in Indian/Bangladeshi. Indeed, I’ve wondered, every time a new Indian restaurant opens in the town why the owner believes there’s room for just one more Indian restaurant serving the same mid-range Indian food. When I asked one once, he told me, with a big grin, “because we are the best!”.

Anyway, Indian was not on the agenda because there was a new place in town selling Thai and Chinese food from the premises in St. Mary’s Street vacated by the Malt House. I had heard on the grapevine that the food at The Dragon’s Den was “bland” and not recommended. This concern was put to the back of my mind as I picked up the phone to make my order from the leaflet that promised “upmarket” Thai and Chinese cooking.

Achieving payment over the phone in advance seemed overly complicated as I was asked to give my order, then wait for a call back, at which point I could give my card number. The call duly came and I was told the food would leave the restaurant forty minutes later. That was fine.

The food arrived on time and we arranged the lavish spread that was Set Menu A at £16.95 per person. This worked out at much better value than selecting dishes I actually wanted individually, but at about £8.00 for each smallish takeaway container this would been unaffordable.

The grapevine was right.

The starter was a “Thai Platter”- “A selection of Thai starters”. This was a collection of  deep-fried items that lacked variety in taste and texture: a spring roll, a wonton, prawn toast and a pureed chicken dumpling that had the texture and taste of a Chicken McNugget.

The main courses were disappointing too. The stir-fried pork, chicken curry and chicken with vegetables all lacked those essentials of Thai cooking: a contrast of flavours and texture that surprise the palate. There was not much evidence of Thai Basil leaves or garnish to give any visual appeal. OK, fair enough, it is difficult to make a plastic container visually appealing, but here they hadn’t even tried. There was just no finesse.

Now to be fair, getting a take-away means we weren’t able to sample the ambience and service offered by eating in the restaurant itself; and the food was by no means inedible.

Certainly serious money seems to have been spent on refurbishing the premises. It may be disloyal to a new business in Monmouth not to be nice about it, but it must stand on the quality of its product. On that basis, I’m afraid I can’t, at the moment recommend the Dragon’s Den’s takeaway experience. Let’s hope the quality will improve as the business gets into its stride. Monmouth needs some good Thai cuisine to balance the surfeit of Indian and Chinese outlets.  Monmouthshire is foodie territory and the punters expect better!