Earlier this week, in the pages of this very newspaper, restaurateur Claudio Vigilante spoke of his desire to put Bermuda ?on the fine dining map?.

?We have been working on introducing more Bermudian dishes to our menu for a long time,? Mr. Vigilante explained in a Lifestyle feature on Tuesday.

Head chef John Wason, added: ?We are trying to bring back some things that Bermuda had. There aren?t many places that create things that could be attributed to Bermuda. This is the whole thing that we are trying to do.?

Noble sentiments indeed but surely a touch ambitious? Let?s face it, Bermuda, doesn?t have much of a culinary heritage does it? We?re famous for growing onions, but since the greedy French grabbed those for their world-renowned onion soup, it?s left the Island?s store cupboard a bit bare of home-grown ingredients with which our chefs can show off their flair and innovation. We?re a small island and we import just about everything, not just foreign foodstuffs for our table but American pop culture for our eyes and ears, a British legal system for our criminals, and a British Parliamentary system for our politicians. Come to think of it, most of our chefs are imported, while our most popular dishes ? fried chicken and peas and rice ? are borrowed.

Nevertheless, intrigued, your critic and a companion decided on a lunchtime stroll down Reid Street to see how Mr. Vigilante?s vision was progressing.

We ummd and ahhd about sitting in one of the cool, tastefully decorated yet very simple ? and very empty ? dining rooms before chancing our luck at a table in the sun-drenched courtyard outside.

This was perhaps our first mistake. The space was packed and gruesomely decorated, with faux Corinthian columns and a pseudo terra cotta brick wall among the culprits. As for the mural of tumbling Tuscan hills which provided the backdrop to our lunch, whoever painted it should be put up against it and shot.

Not to worry, on with the food. Warm crusty bread, olive oil and balsamic vinegar were delivered alongside our menus, which we opened with a high degree of anticipation.

We were greeted by a blurb about Bermuda?s fine culinary heritage and even finer future possibilities. The restaurant?s bold philosophy, typed in appropriately bold, pink typeface, promised that ?Today we begin the next 500 years with a new vision, a new interpretation of food preparation Bermuda-style. New Bermuda cuisine embraces the best of Bermuda-grown produce, the succulence plucked from our surrounding seas, and reinterprets traditional dishes in a modern style influenced by the globalisation of food trends. While each dish evokes a link to Bermuda, it sits alongside the new, the innovative, and of course, the divine.?

Phew, that?s quite a promise. And what exactly is ?food preparation Bermuda-style?? What dishes on Fresco?s menu can honestly say they have a provenance linking back to Bermuda and our founding fathers? Mentally scanning down the menu I can recall two items ? fish chowder and fishcakes. That?s pretty much your lot. There might have been one, perhaps two others at most, but if so they were lost in a sea of pastas, salads and wraps.

The rest of the menu really does consist of a global gallop, stopping off at ports in South America, Asia, the Caribbean and the ever-safe Mediterranean.

Appetisers included pate (thank you, France) a prawn cocktail last seen in London in the 1970s, and the ever-present Caesar and tomato/mozzarella salads. Innovative? Not particularly.

Main courses were even more of a disappointment. Anyone care for a ?traditional? naan bread roll filled with curried vegetables? Or how about roast chicken breast with feta and hummus? If you?re dieting, fillet of salmon with soy sauce and Udon noodles might do the trick, and if none of the above take your fancy there?s an even bigger Caesar salad with a chunk of jerk chicken on the side on offer. Or why not just play safe with a good old cheeseburger?

We kicked things off with a Thai hot and spicy Tiger prawn soup for her and a beef carpaccio for him.

The soup looked and tasted like a tin of Campbell?s tomato to which a shake of chilli powder, a clutch of limp spaghetti and three shrimp had been added. Taste confirmed the original hunch. Had the chef taken a few shortcuts? Hack?s tastebuds certainly thought so.

No such shortcuts with the carpaccio, presumably because, with such a straightforward dish, there are none to be had. The top-grade beef dissolved jelly-like the moment it hit the tongue while the accompanying spinach salad was a worthwhile co-star. Excellent.

For main courses we took similar but very different routes, with similar but very different conclusions.

Paella is a robust, gutsy, rustic plate of amber rice, chicken portions and seafood. Fresco?s version tastes nothing like the original. It wasn?t so much a Bermudian twist as a complete departure. Pallid rice boiled up with a few chunks of tasteless chicken breast and wahoo (it was difficult to distinguish between the two), buried underneath, of all things, a mound of broccoli, do no justice to Spain?s national dish. It was certainly filling, but also completely tasteless, an anaemic, sanitised interpretation of what should have been.

Midway through lunch we swapped plates. I was surprised to hear my companion instantly start cooing about her alternative until I tasted her own vegetable risotto ? by contrast, the paella packed a hefty punch. The risotto tasted of nothing but boiled starch, a few indistinguishable vegetables clinging to the stodge. Frankly, Uncle Ben does a tastier version that you can throw in the microwave. If, by globalisation Mr. Vigilante means bland, he has certainly hit the target here.

And then came dessert. Given a choice between apple pie with ice cream (America), souffl? (France), chocolate brownie (America again) or orange and strawberry crepes (France again) we decided on the latter.

Although the strawberries were hard to unearth, the orange segments were plentiful. They were of the canned mandarin kind, an ingredient the probably represents Bermudian cuisine more than any other on this particular menu.

Perhaps we shouldn?t have been surprised. In the same interview about the search for our Island?s food heritage, Mr. Vigilante confessed: ? Apart from the chowder or the fishcakes, there wasn?t a lot else that we could think of.? Evidently not. It?s difficult to come up with a new twist on an old tradition when the tradition itself doesn?t exist.

Fresco?s philosophy about ?back to our roots? comfort food is, on this showing, nothing more than a lot of hot air. That wouldn?t matter if the food it does serve up was honest and hearty, but it?s not. We wanted to like the place, but we left full of disappointment and starved of satisfaction.