KATHERINE MACALISTER and friends have a confusing time at a new Oxford eaterie.

My wonderful old friend Albert Ford didn’t get my message in time.

He was meeting me at The One in Botley Road for lunch and I had to cancel at the last minute.

So there was Albert waiting patiently with his 10-year-old daughter Masako, who was very excited about doing a review of the new fusion restaurant, and I didn’t show up. But instead of complaining, Masako wrote down her own version of events in my absence, which was a very accurate picture of my meal there the following week.

Masako is half Japanese, her mum is an amazing cook, and she knows her stuff, so here’s her initial impression: “The decorations, well they were OK because there were balloons, but there wasn’t enough air in them, and there were Christmas baubles in a champagne glass, which was quite confusing.”

Spot on. In fact, the decor set the scene for the entire experience because there was a bit of everything - not just deflated balloons - like a white piano, a stag’s head, oriental art and European paintings. It’s as if The One can’t quite decide what it is or who it’s supposed to be appealing to, so panicked and went for a bit of everything.

The menu follows suit, boasting pasta, burgers, Sunday roast, fish and chips, Chinese and Japanese, with such an enormous variety of dishes on offer that it’s hard to finish reading the menu in your lunch hour, let alone order. For me fusion is combining western and eastern foods in one dish, a style of cooking that I thought had been and gone. Here fusion seems to be providing several dishes from every country on the planet, which didn’t do it for me.

As for the food, Masako continued: “Albert ordered the Teriyaki chicken and the presentation was good, but the chicken was quite dry and I agreed with him. For mains I had the aromatic duck which was very nice but they left the bone on the plate. Albert had the monkfish and couldn’t understand the potatoes with the pasta sauce. It was a very small portion as well and didn’t have much flavour, so it did not fill Mr Ford’s tummy up and wasn’t really ‘his cup of tea’.”

Again I agree, our tempura veg was good but the seaweed was like green sugar on a plate. We also tried the roasted Sichuan spiced chicken, caramelised pears, baby potatoes and Sichuan sauce for £14.95 which was an enormous portion but nice enough. I gave up on trying to stick to the Chinese version of the menu and opted instead for the safer sounding Caesar salad instead which was fine, but not really what I expected from a fusion restaurant.

A man, presumably the owner, then swept up at the end of our meal and said: “Enjoy yourselves, just think of us as a Chinese McDonalds,” which was the final nail in the coffin for me. But when I thought about it afterwards I realised that however much I personally dislike McDonalds, The One bears no resemblance to it at all. It wasn’t fast food, it wasn’t cheap and it wasn’t Chinese.

A Chinese McDonalds would be noodles in a box or spring rolls, not wild mushroom farfalle with truffle oil & cream for £11.95 or roasted beetroot and goat’s cheese tart with caramelised shallots (£6.80).

Either way, Masako summed it up in one word, ‘confused’ and she’s right. As for my verdict, it’s definitely not The One for me.

* The One is at 2 Botley Road, Oxford. Call 01865 240018.