This week Gordon Ramsay opened The Narrow, his first pub. It overlooks the Thames by the Limehouse Basin lock.

Ramsay says his pubs will do away with poncy gastropubbing. By that, I assume, he means you won't find warm gateau of oxtail with mango jam. He says he wants to serve old-fashioned traditional British grub.

This toad-in-the-hole chic is not new (at all) but under head chef John Collin - formerly with Mark Sargeant, head chef of Gordon Ramsay at Claridges - Ramsay hopes to bring back unadulterated traditional dishes.

The menu includes pea and ham soup (£4.50), potted cromer crab (why the poncy lower case?), country paté, a beetroot salad and things on toast such as devilled lamb's kidneys and sardines with tomatoes.

Mains include boiled salt beef (£11.50), braised gloucester (sic) pig cheeks with bashed neeps (£12.50) and leek and broccoli flan (£8.50). Vegetables at £3.50 include purple sprouting broccoli (soggy) and creamed mash.

I went for lunch and had the pig cheeks and neeps; now I know what it must have been like to be at Gordonstoun at the turn of the century. It was sloppy, turgid and miserable. Why this fashionable obsession with school food?

Despite insisting on "honest British grub", resurrecting old British dishes is pretentious. Most of them are grim and have been long forgotten for good reason.

Ramsay wants to roll out his branded pubs to earn big bucks. He'll probably do well as many will want an off-the-peg Ramsay experience, but a concept cannot conceal true understanding. When the concept is as tired as this, it's worthless.

Ramsay doing pubs is like asking Ronaldo to play for a Sunday league side. He should stick with what he is good at.