I'll have what they're having - London's no-choice restaurants

This post was originally published on Telegraph Online

London. Home to the “Mother of all Parliaments”, epicentre of world democracy, the very bedrock of freedom of choice. Except, that is, on its restaurant scene, where menus are emerging offering minimal choice and, in some cases, no choice at all.

First came Le Relais de Venise ‘L’Entrecôte’. One restaurant in Paris has expanded into a global mini-chain, with London branches in Marylebone and The City. Serving only a green salad with walnuts to start, followed by two helpings of steak frites with a special, secret-recipe sauce, the only decision diners at L’Entrecôte face is how they want their steak cooked.

Fittingly enough I visited the Marylebone branch through a lack of choice; finding myself in the area with a friend between Christmas and New Year, L’Entrecôte was about the only restaurant open. Initially wary - L’Entrecôte polarises critical opinion - I was pleasantly surprised at just how much I enjoyed the experience.

The simple salad, dressed with a bracing mustard vinaigrette, cleansed and awakened the palate, while the steak was tender, the chips hot and crispy and the sauce - a sort of tart pesto - very tasty. It was also excellent value, at £21 for two courses; a regular stream of chauffeur-driven cars dropping off well-dressed families proved that even London’s super-rich like a bargain.

Burger & Lobster in Mayfair is the newest addition to the no-choice scene and it’s been an instant smash. Serving (the clue is in the name) only superlative burgers and whole grilled or steamed lobsters with a side salad and chips, the £20 flat price - exorbitant for a burger but peanuts for crustacea - has seen the restaurant getting through almost two tonnes of lobsters every week since opening at the end of 2011.
 
As with many recent openings, no reservations are taken and waiting times for one of the high diner-style tables are growing along with the restaurant’s reputation for superb quality - to which I can attest, having tried the lobster both grilled and steamed, as well as the only deviation from whole lobster or burger, a delicious, decadent brioche lobster roll. I was underwhelmed by the burger, finding it somewhat so-what for £20, but with superb cocktails and an excitable egalitarian atmosphere there’s nothing not to love here.

Ceviche's Pisco Bar by www.paulwf.co.uk

It’s not just restaurants that are taking choice out of the equation. While some bars might specialise in a particular drink while still offering others - the Campari Bar at Polpo on Beak Street, for example - the Pisco Bar at Martin Morales’ new Peruvian restaurant Ceviche in Soho will serve only the pure grape spirit, in cocktails and fruit- or spice-infused macerados.

Ever the assiduous reporter, I tried a classic Pisco Sour - Pisco, egg white and lime juice - and a Pisco Punch, made with pineapple syrup and grapefruit bitters. Each was excellent, and very different despite using the same base ingredient. I certainly didn’t feel that my freedom of choice had been compromised although my sobriety certainly was; I should perhaps have had rather more of the tasty marinaded dishes from which the restaurant derives its name.

If, as I suspect they do, these no-choice venues signal the start of a trend, it’s one that I’ll be embracing. The sheer range of culinary options available in London is dizzying at the best of times. Far from being a hardship, having a few locales where the decisions have already been taken strikes me as being the ultimate luxury.


Posted by +Hugh Wright

Le Relais de Venise 'L'Entrecôte'

Living, as we are privileged to do, in a democracy, choice is held to be totemic of everything that is good in our society. Who we vote for, where we live, what we do for a living, who we have sex with - or not - are all inviolably our choices; their protection is enshrined in law and if we should ever feel that our freedoms are being restricted we have the choice to take to the streets, airwaves or ballot box to make our dissatisfaction known.

Trying to get through to my broadband provider just after Christmas however, to berate them for the fact that, yet again, I had no service, I came to think that choice was perhaps not such a great thing. "OK, " the recorded woman said in a nasal drone that made me want to kill someone and then myself, "you now have five choices..." I listened and pressed the appropriate button. "OK, you now have five choices" she repeated; "No!" screamed I, "I have just made my choice, were you not listening?" But it transpired that these were in fact five more choices; I made mine and waited to be connected to a human being. 

 "OK, you now have five choices..." "WHAT?!" I blustered, "but madame you have already given me five choices, and then another five; what could I possibly want with five more? What could anyone want with fully fifteen choices, when all I want is to speak to one customer 'service' operative and get my broadband fixed pronto?" My blustering was for naught; I had to make a choice - had to - or I would never be afforded the privilege of speaking to one of their highly-skilled 'people' - so highly-skilled that for me to be put through to precisely the right one necessitated the navigation of fifteen choices. I made my choice and waited, all the while eyeing up my living room window and wondering whether throwing myself from it would bring a swift and merciful death or merely cripple me.

With this trauma still indelibly fresh in my mind, I approached lunch at Le Relais de Venise 'L'Entrecote' with an enthusiasm that might be surprising to anyone who has read the to-say-the-least mixed reviews that have preceded this one. The reason you see is that, at L'Entrecôte, there is absolutely no choice at all.

Although a menu displayed by the door cheerfully announces that 'Today' one can have steak 'with its famous sauce, French fries and green salad with walnuts', that is in fact all you can have, any day of the year, and it's this formula that is strictly adhered to at Le Relais de Venise's handful of sites around the world. Black and white-uniformed waitresses ask how you would like your steak cooked (and then scribble this on the paper tablecloth) and take drinks orders from an ultra-concise six bin wine list, but that's where your choices end.

Even how I'd ended up somewhere about which everything shrieks 'Tourist Trap! Avoid!', comes back to choice, or rather lack of it; my lunch date Scott had wanted to take me somewhere else in his Marylebone neighbourhood for a post-Christmas, pre-New Year catch-up, but like in so many other villages, pretty much everywhere was shut. So L'Entrecôte and its entrecôte were our only choices.

And do you know what? It was fine. Not the best steak I've ever had, nor the best chips and definitely not the best (or most exciting) salad, but very far from the worst and, at £21 for the whole lot including a same-quantity-again second serving of steak-frites, indisputably good value. The 'famous sauce', the exact composition of which excites nerds the world over as much as the exact make-up of The Colonel's eleven herbs and spices or the recipe for Coca-Cola, was really rather tasty, creamy and heavy on herbs like a slightly tart pesto.

A half-bottle of house Bordeaux was perfectly drinkable, and at eight quid brought a very pleasant, filling two course lunch for two, with seconds, to just £50 pre-tip. While I wouldn't race back to L'Entrecôte I certainly wouldn't avoid it, and nor it would seem would the moneyed Russian/Arab clientele who, Scott tells me, pack the place out even on days when other choices are available.

To finish off my broadband saga: eventually - after a quarter of an hour on hold during which I was invited to choose which of four genres of tinny piped music I would most like to endure, which struck me as being akin to asking an extraordinarily rendered innocent whether he'd prefer water-boarding or sleep deprivation - I got through to a real-live person who, unable to fix things remotely, booked an engineer's visit.

When she said "Would you like to choose a time-slot?" all I could think was that if only the clever people behind Le Relais de Venise ran call centres, the world would be an altogether happier place.

Le Relais de Venise 'L'Entrecôte', 120 Marylebone Lane, London W1U 2QG Tel: 020 7486 0878 http://www.relaisdevenise.com