It would seem a relatively simple task for a restaurant. Phone rings, request for table of 16 made; availability checked and confirmed, details taken, table booked. Something you'd imagine happens at restaurants fairly often. Not terribly complicated; unless you happen to be Boo Radley's, where organising a table is one of many simple acts well beyond the restaurant's limited capabilities.

I'd heard a lot about Boo Radley's, and all of it had been good: chic, retro décor, relaxed, speakeasy feel, and decent food. And so, in one of the multiple celebrations I have every year for my birthday (the pain of getting older is offset, I find, by receiving large numbers of presents, and so I have as many birthday lunches/dinners/toga parties as I can), I hauled a group of mates off to one of Cape Town's newest attractions; even by the mercurial standards of the Mother City, it appears to have risen and fallen with remarkable speed.

Book a table for 16, and you expect a table for 16, not two booths of eight a corridor apart. The long table I'd assumed was mine was for another celebration, the Nicholl party relegated to two separate camps; when I pointed this out to the manager (speaking increasingly slowly, as was clearly necessary), he explained that someone else had taken the booking, and that he didn't know it was supposed to be one table.

Why two of eight, then? Why not four tables of four, or eight couples, or hell, 16 individual seats, dotted around the restaurant? Salvador Dali's birthday dinner, perhaps, but not mine. If you can't handle a table of a certain size, at least have the courtesy to phone me up and tell me.

Forgotten, returned, indecipherable...

That was the last I saw of the manager, other than a fleeting glimpse of him throwing back shooters at the bar as we left; we did see plenty of the waitresses, though, a sweet but hopeless lot, combining memory of goldfish with speed of heavily pregnant tortoise.

One main course was forgotten, as was a starter, which eventually arrived with the main courses and was duly returned, and ordering a glass of wine would have been easier in Saudi Arabia.

And as for managing the bill, Bernie Madoff would have been appalled at the accounting process, the split tables inspiring three indecipherable bills that took two chartered accountants and an actuary a full 25 minutes to interpret.

Had the food been uniformly appalling, the whole evening could have been comfortably written off, but the fact that some of it was actually very good only served to show that Boo Radley's could have delivered a good night out with a little effort.

Goat's cheese and tomato tart starter was memorable, just the right tang on firm, rich pastry, and the fillet, recommended, was excellent — but once again, with a rider.

Boo Radley's operates on the cost-saving principle that offsetting a miniscule piece of steak with half a ton of starch will hide the fact that they've scrimped on the portions, and so a great bit of steak comes drowned in either (admittedly rather good) fries or (again, very moreish) garlic mash, cast from Dublin's annual potato consumption, reducing the steak to little more than garnish.

As for the rest of the menu, the burger was apparently great, when it finally arrived, the linefish was ordinary (overdone and uninspired), and someone had something else that also failed to elicit any memorable response.

The stroll from one table to the other did work some of the fries off the waistline, and the fact that the superb Jack Black is available on tap is a feather in Boo Radley's cap; sadly it's a battered, uncared for cap, worn by a restaurant that's clearly let good reports go straight to the head.

Review unannounced and paid for in full; I'd tell you what it cost, but as Allen Stanford does the billing, I honestly don't have a clue. More than it's worth would be the most accurate answer.

Boo Radley's, 62 Hout Street. www.booradleys.co.za