AMID the changing face of York's waterfront, The Lowther, like its neighbour, the Kings Arms, has stood firm for years against the ravages of time, floods and trendy wine bars.

After the misery of last year's deluge, the pub underwent a £130,000 refit, and seems to be going big on food, with much of the outside being covered in chalk boards to tempt the tourists towards the range of pub meals and snacks, including steaks, baguettes and burgers.

However, when you get up close to the said boards, you realise that there are not many meals on the menu meal-wise, which offers a pretty basic choice including steaks, pies, curry, Whitby scampi, ribs, and a few tempting-sounding £3.50 special offers including chicken breasts in a range of sauces, aromatic duck and three vegetarian dishes, stroganoff, lasagne and curry.

Still, AA Gill I'm not, I wasn't expecting goujons of pan-fried shark's liver, (whatever they may be), and there's nothing so cheering as good home-cooked filling pub fare. And here in York there are any number of pubs that have that down to a fine art, so my hopes were still high.

Inside, they've done a good job with the refit. The Lowther is light and spacious, striking a good balance between traditional pub decor and a more modern feel - flood precautions making tiles and stripped wooden floorboards a necessity rather than a fashion statement though.

The range of beers isn't terribly exciting, but they do a nice pint of Magnet (£1.80). At least they do when the barman eventually stops nattering to his mates and notices us waiting, but that's the price you pay for being in a real pub, with real regulars, I tell myself. If I wanted fast food I'd go to McDonalds, and the Lowther staff are friendly enough.

We check the menu to see if we've missed anything. We haven't, and there's no starters mentioned, so my partner Vix opts for the beef and ale pie (£4.25), and I go for the 12oz sirloin steak (£7.95). You order and pay at the bar, and the food is brought to your table. Our meals turn up promptly, though admittedly there are only a few people eating at this early, just-after-work hour.

Vix's beef is pleasant enough, but she couldn't taste much in the way of ale, and the small quantity of pastry on top was taking a few liberties with the definition of a pie, it has to be said.

Mine looks good, the steak hefty, plenty of big chips, peas, sweetcorn and salad.

But, as I get stuck in, it soon becomes a depressing business. The steak is gristly and pretty tasteless - the latter a characteristic it shares with the dull chips. The veg appear to be no strangers to the tin can, and the salad is soggy and bitter.

Things don't get better when I ask about dessert at the bar, and the barman confers with his superiors before revealing that all they've got left is hot chocolate fudge cake. Not that there's anything wrong with hot chocolate fudge cake, but this is a pub that supposedly serves food into the evening and it's only 6pm.

The chocolate fudge cake (£1.90) comes quickly enough, with cream. Vix, a pudding enthusiast, is annoyed that there wasn't even the usual choice of cream or ice cream - how much effort would that have taken? And the pudding itself was pretty uninspiring.

OK, maybe we came at a bad time, on a bad day, or maybe the regular chef was on his summer holidays, but it still had to rank as one of the most disappointing pub meals I've sampled in quite a few years in this city. And there's no excuse for it. It's not even that cheap.

There are any number of pubs within five minutes of the Lowther, from the most diehard traditional boozer to the trendiest of city bars, that do a far better job. This isn't a dingy backstreet, this is a pub in a prime riverside location, in an affluent tourist city, that's just had a small fortune spent on it, and I thought would be doing its best to claw back trade after an annus horriblis of flooding.

Maybe their location is so good for the passing tourist trade they think they don't need to make an effort in the food department to win repeat customers.

The Lowther is probably a very pleasant spot for a drink, but the food on our visit simply was not good enough.

FACT FILE

Food:poor pub grub

Service: OK

Value: poor

Ambience: nice re-fit

Disabled access: NO

u The Lowther, Cumberland Street, York, tel 01904 622987.