The Brooklyn Brothers eatery is an underwhelming dining experience

The Brooklyn Brothers eatery at the new Cornubia mall, north of Durban, makes a nice roasted marshmallow milkshake. So it's got that going for it.

It was the only highlight of what was otherwise one of the most underwhelming dining experiences I've had to date as a contributor to this column.

The food wasn't bad as such. But it wasn't good either. The sticky maple buffalo wings we ordered came generously doused in a gloopy syrup which overwhelmed all other flavours the wings might have had.

My lunch partner's chocolate chip biscuit milkshake, though otherwise okay, suffered from its base and garnish of cheap tasting, chocolate chip biscuits.

I don't know for sure if they were but they tasted mass-produced, like the kind of "cookies" you can buy at suspiciously low prices and are available only in clear 5kg plastic bags at the wholesalers. One sip of the crumb-laced milkshake immediately delivered a mouthful of the gritty, oddly oily texture characteristic of such biscuits.

I abandoned my partner to his fate. My own milkshake had a pleasant caramel flavour which I would later use to neutralise the burn of the gourmet chilli dog I ordered as a follow-up to the wings.

Before eating my fancy hot dog I sampled my poor, unfortunate dining companion's sloppy joe. Categorised under burgers on the menu, it was sold as an American dream of "beef chilli mince with corn and beans" in a burger bun. It was alleged there would be pickles. I can neither confirm nor deny the presence of the pickles. There may have been some, but I didn't see or taste them and neither did my co-diner.

As for the "sloppy" innards which earned the American fast-food classic its name ... well. Have you ever eaten a child's first attempt at cooked mince? One where the mince in question had been insufficiently defrosted before being forced into the pot and where tinned corn had been dunked in as an afterthought; and then the 10-year-old got bored with paying attention to the whole concoction four minutes into the cooking time and so decided that drowning everything in water would take care of things while he or she went back to watching TV? That's what it tasted like.

The hot dog possibly tasted good - but I never got to find out since the first of its flavours to hit my tastebuds was the fiery and potent burn of deep fried jalapenos. Their heat was tinnitus-inducing - and this comes from someone who ordinarily enjoys hot food. Then my mouth went numb.

The other trimmings - green chilli relish, pepper and corn salsa, the dollop of sour cream and the juicy-looking bockwurst sausage - were consequently wasted on me.

"How many points out of five would you rate them if you had to?" my lunch companion asked as we walked away. Our eyes locked for a beat. "Two," we said in unison.

Address: Cornubia mall, Flanders Dr & Tacoma Drive, Blackburn Estate, Mount Edgecombe

• This article was originally published in The Times