Balthazar

One question often asked of best-TV-series-ever-made Buffy The Vampire Slayer was how the citizens of Sunnydale, a town unusually prone to attack from vampires, demons and the occasional robot, seemingly experienced collective amnesia after each new massacre. Die-hard fans however know that this was neatly explained very early on (Season 1, Episode 2, 'The Harvest') when Giles - Buffy's 'Watcher', or guardian - tells the Scoobies that, "People have a tendency to rationalise what they can and forget what they can't."

So with Giles' advice in mind I am writing this as quickly as possible - the morning after the horror of the night before - so that if, as I truly hope I shall, I forget everything that I can't rationalise about dinner at Balthazar, there will at least remain some record of it to warn others away from this Hellmouth of a restaurant.

Balthazar, a huge brasserie occupying the site of the old Theatre Museum just off the piazza in Covent Garden, is a near-carbon copy of the original Balthazar in New York. Why it was thought that what London really needed in 2013 was its own branch of a restaurant that was very fashionable when it opened in 1997 but nowadays is, by most accounts, strictly one for 'out-of-towners' is beyond me, but so are cooking rice and why people find Ricky Gervais funny - I don't pretend to understand everything.

I certainly don't understand what all the fuss is about the room at Balthazar, or the fabled 'buzz'; you will recognise the decor immediately if you have ever been somewhere like Bofinger in Paris, or Cafe Rouge. I am about the thousandth person now to compare Balthazar to a Cafe Rouge, but the comparison is inevitable when the shared 'I've-been-designed-to-look-like-I've-always-been-here' ersatzness is so stark. As for the 'buzz', fill a cavernous room with people and blast middle-of-the-road jazz over the speakers and of course they'll raise their voices to be heard. You say 'buzz', I say 'racket', tomato, tomato.

Already at our table when I arrived early for our booking, dinner-date Matthew explained that he had fled the adjacent bar because of over-crowding; an unwelcome import from New York is the notion that herding diners cheek-by-jowl into a holding pen before being allowed to have their dinner builds excitement, a theory as flawed as the belief that administering fear-hormone adrenaline to veal calves before slaughter will make the meat taste better.

To the eating. I cannot rationalise how a restaurant jointly operated by Keith McNally - a man who in countless, angst-soaked pre-opening interviews stressed how much of a 'perfectionist' he is - and Caprice Holdings, a company whose restaurants, almost without exception, I love, could allow such mediocre (and in the case of one dish genuinely inedible) food to be served. 

A basket of bread, from Balthazar's own bakery in Waterloo, had been brought thence so slowly or long ago that it was stale and flavourless. My starter of dressed crab was fine, likewise Matthew's chicken liver and foie gras mousse, although presentation was rather forlorn, my crab on a bed of tired lettuce with a tin pot of entirely superfluous Marie Rose sauce, Matthew's mousse a cone plonked on the plate straight from a catering mould. Accompanying red onion confit at least appeared to have been lovingly spooned from the jar.

But the main courses - oh dear, oh God. I ordered whole grilled dorade with Romesco sauce and herb salad, Matthew steak tartare with a side of frites. The fish had been grilled so long that all moisture had been obliterated, and the lemon and herb filling was so over-powering that the dorade tasted - the one mouthful I had before sending it back - as if it had been marinated in Toilet Duck. It was truly horrible, and swiftly changed for a salad Nicoise, which was OK. Matthew's anaemic, undercooked fries, too, had to be replaced and once done properly were far more enjoyable than his meagre portion of dull, dry tartare.

Unsurprisingly, we had no interest in desserts. Nor did we fancy ordering anything from the cheeseboard our waiter presented; would you want to pay £10.50 for brie or roquefort shown to you sweating under their clingfilm wrappers? I thought not. We did at least enjoy the perfectly pleasant mini cookies that came with our coffees. That at first an espresso was served instead of a macchiato came as no surprise; that our bill, for two courses (my replacement for my awful main course was still charged for), coffee, one cocktail, one glass of wine and service came to £92, did.

To give credit where credit is due, our waiter and most of the staff we came into contact with were delightful, but it is humiliating for them and for Balthazar's owners that an army of floor-walking management - from New York, I'm guessing - are trying to train them on the job. If I felt embarrassed that a manager came to the table with our waiter when he was serving our main courses and hissed, "Position 2 for the fish" out of the side of her mouth, how must he have felt? I have heard rumours of a power-struggle between the New York side of the operation and the London team over how things should be done; I didn't expect to see it played out in front of me table-side.

Never before have I left a busy restaurant - and for reasons that cannot have anything to do with the food or atmosphere Balthazar and its veal-truck bar were packed - so inclined to stand at the door and implore people to go somewhere, anywhere else. The Delaunay is just round the corner and doing the grand brasserie thing a thousand times better; hell, Tuttons bang next door is superior by several powers, and that's saying something. 

Would that London were Sunnydale and Buffy could come along and plunge her stake into the heart of this blood-sucking horror of a restaurant; then it would crumble into dust and, not being able to rationalise the sheer dreadfulness of what we had experienced, we could all just forget it had ever happened.

Balthazar, 4-6 Russell Street, London WC2B 5HZ Tel: 020 3301 1155 www.balthazarlondon.com









Posted by +Hugh Wright

Brasserie Chavot

"I knew you would," a friend replied when I tweeted after dinner about how much I'd loved Brasserie Chavot, "it's very you." And it's true; Eric Chavot's new, eponymous brasserie on Conduit Street is very me, encapsulating pretty much everything I love in a restaurant in one very polished package.

Take the stunner of a room, a long, high-ceilinged space formerly (and briefly) The Gallery at The Westbury, the Mayfair hotel that the restaurant is part of but discrete from. Flatteringly-lit by twinkling chandeliers above a glorious mosaic floor, with a small, chic bar at the front and seafood counter looking onto the kitchen at the back, it's just the kind of room I like, and can't imagine anyone not liking, to eat in; elegant but informal, welcoming and warm.

The menu's right up my street too, the kind that at first glance looks a little 'so what?' because nothing leaps out, until it dawns on you that that's because you'd happily order all of it. There are no alarms and no surprises here, just all your brasserie staples - oysters, parfait, steak tartare - with a couple of modish interlopers like soft-shell crab and ceviche to keep things current.

A party of three - myself and two very elegant femmes d'un certain âge of my acquaintance Lyn and Vicki - we started off with a dozen oysters to share. Advertised as rocks, some appeared to be fines de claires, which I minded a little. If it seems ungrateful of me not to appreciate receiving ostensibly superior oysters to those ordered, let me say in mitigation that I have always preferred the full-on snog-with-tongues of rocks to the refined peck-on-the-cheek of fines de claires, while accepting that there is a time and a place for both. That aside, they were completely delicious and very attractively served, with accompaniments of shallot vinegar in a china oyster shell and crepinette, little patties of peppery veal sausage for crumbling on top. Great value too, at under £2 a piece.

I was a little ambivalent about my starter proper of steak tartare; something of a Tartar when it comes to tartare I was curious to see what 'mustard dressing' might bring to it. The answer was a piquancy - of course - and creaminess that while perfectly pleasant didn't particularly improve on a classic. There was exceptional flavour to the beef mind you (rump from Aubrey Allen, the chef told me later) and it was generous in quantum for £9.50 - Vicki's main course serving at £15 even moreso - although neither size came with anything, no toast, or fries, or salad, which I thought odd.

Lyn's ceviche was unimpeachable, translucent slices of scallops in a beautifully balanced marinade of lime juice and chilli, and we all enjoyed the basket of sourdough bread with its moreish bitter, dark crust. Her main of tiger prawns with chickpeas and chorizo was a hit too, the large prawns split in half and given a smoky char from the Josper grill.

Although I'll admit to having suffered slightly from plate envy, it was quickly dispelled by my own main course of choucroute garnie. Served in a cast-iron casserole dish it was more garnie than choucroute, and none the worse for that, a mini-mountain of pork - belly, back bacon, sausage, shoulder, oh my - concealing a tangle of glossy sauerkraut with a couple of potatoes and carrots thrown in for good measure. In his wonderfully obsessive 1989 essay 'True Choucroute', reproduced in The Man Who Ate Everything, Jeffrey Steingarten calls choucroute garnie 'a dizzying, almost inconceivable gastronomic summit'; I think he'd approve of this rendition.

Only I had room for dessert, a not unusual state of affairs, and my Mont Blanc was a soothingly light end to a rich, comforting meal. Like the steak tartare, this was Eric Chavot's take on a classic rather than a textbook version of it; I liked the replacement of pureed chestnuts with chestnut parfait and the addition of black-cherry sauce, but purists might not. You'd have to be dead inside not to love the presentation though, in a beautiful heavy-based glass bowl.

With a carafe of Rioja for the ladies, a Virgin Mary for me and service, our bill would have come to about £50 a head, had it not transpired when we asked for it that it had completely unexpectedly 'been taken care of'. I couldn't quite work out exactly why, or by whom, but whoever it was I'm very grateful to them. We'd had a really delightful time and that very pleasant surprise was just the icing on the cake.

Brasserie Chavot is not perfect; there is definitely room for tweaking. Service for example was friendly and unhurried, but a used aperitif glass stood empty on the table until late in the meal, and one main course came a little after the others (which was apologised for, but serving everyone at the same time is fairly basic stuff). These might seem petty quibbles, but like a spot of red wine on a brilliant white tablecloth, little things stand out when everything else is so accomplished.

But as my friend had known I would, I liked Brasserie Chavot; I liked it a hell of a lot. I don't see how anyone could fail to. It's a lovely room to eat in, the food's fantastic, it's very good value for money and it helps that the chef is a real character. Go, be seduced, have fun, then tweet about how much you liked it so I can say, "I knew you would."

Brasserie Chavot, 41 Conduit Street, London W1S 2YF Tel: 020 7078 9577 www.brasseriechavot.com







Posted by +Hugh Wright

Cassis

In a very enjoyable recent article for Vanity Fair, Corby Kummer bemoaned the 'tyranny' of the tasting menu. "How," Kummer asked, "did the diner get demoted from honored guest whose wish was the waiter’s command to quivering hostage in thrall to the chef’s iron whim?" My thoughts exactly. In London as in America, an increasing number of restaurants - usually, but not always, the kind helmed by ambitious young chefs who include hubristic vacuities like 'reaching for the [Michelin] stars!!' in their Twitter bios - offer only tasting menus, even at lunchtimes when most right-minded diners don't even want two courses, never mind eight and up.

As a diner, I generally shy away from tasting menus for the reason that having what I eat in which order and at what speed dictated by the kitchen is the polar opposite of how I like to eat out; I have a great deal of respect for many chefs and restaurateurs but as a paying customer I like meals to be about my choice and convenience, not theirs. And as a writer I tend to avoid them because tasting menus have almost always to be served to the whole table and it's terribly boring to write (and read) about a meal only saying, "We all had the soup, and then we all had the halibut, and then we all had the duck" and so on ad infinitum.

But a tasting menu that genuinely serves to showcase the talents of a brilliant chef, perfectly balanced, carefully timed and matched with expertly chosen wines? Now you're talking, and that's exactly what's on offer at Cassis, the smart Provencal bistro in Knightsbridge where I enjoyed a meal that, on reflection, was probably the single best restaurant meal I ate in 2012. 

I've visited Cassis (and liked it very much) before and was lured back by an invitation to see what new executive chef Massimiliano Blasone - ex of Apsley's - was doing differently. The answer is, in a good way, not much; the upscale bistro menu, mindful of but not enslaved to the cuisine of Provence, is still there. What Blasone has done is to add some exceptional pasta and risotto dishes, and refine presentation so that what's on the plate is as visually impressive as owner Marlon Abela's art collection on the walls.

After expertly-mixed Martinis by way of aperitifs, my artist pal Paul Vyse and I started with sea bass tartare, coarsely-cut, silkily-fresh fish bound in a subtle trace of goat's cheese with a dash of citrus and sandwiched between crisp sesame wafers. Geometrically arranged on a plate decorated with a stripe of piment d'Espelette, the precision of presentation and equilibrium of flavours served as a clear statement of intent for the dishes that would follow.

Ethereally light cod brandade was perfect scooped up with its accompanying black olive tuile, while tart rhubarb marmalade countered the richness of caramelised Landes foie gras, dusted with bitter chocolate powder. Black Angus sirloin steak tartare - an additional dish included at our request - was surprisingly light, its spicing subtle enough to allow the flavour of the beef to dominate. Rabbit ravioli with pistachio cream was more robust, the nutty, rich cream stopping just shy of being actually sweet.

Lobster risotto was gloriously rich, dusted with saffron and containing generous translucent, just-cooked slices of lobster tail. Seared scallops, served with a pea puree as vibrant in taste as of colour, were similarly well-timed, lightly crusted from the heat of the pan and inner-cheek tender inside. A subsequent game dish, a classic combination of vividly red venison with red cabbage, was cooked sous-vide but retained far more texture than this fashionable but, I find, often disappointing method of cooking usually permits. Roasted sprouts provided additional crunch.

After a palate-cleansing mouthful of lime jelly came a trio of desserts: a chocolate sundae of sorts, a raspberry sorbet of the like I could happily eat after, or indeed for, every meal, and an elegant seven-layered assembly of ganache and wafer in chocolate crumb that reminded me, wonderfully, of an extremely posh Drifter. We somehow managed the dainty chocolate and fruit petits-fours that provided the finale to this note perfect, epic meal.

Massimiliano Blasone is clearly a prodigious talent; his cooking is intelligent, precise, innovative and exhilarating but also, refreshingly in a time when many chefs appear to be trying to outdo each other with the obscurity of their ingredients and idiosyncrasy of technique, really rather accessible. Less accessible - unsurprisingly - is the price; the seven-course menu we enjoyed is £75 with wine flights at £30 or £50. I'd certainly suggest letting the sommelier choose wines for you, as we did; highlights included a wonderful green-appley Albariño with the brandade, Monbazillac with the foie gras and and a really exceptional 'L'Instant' rosé from Provence with our ravioli. 

Service throughout was knowledgable, attentive and polished, and if I have one reservation about Cassis it's that the overall identity and decor of the place don't quite seem to marry up with the aspirations of the kitchen. The food might be Provencal, but casual bistro this n'est pas, and with Blasone's addition of Italian dishes to the menu this crisis of identity seems even more pronounced. Marlon Abela has for some time now been rumoured to be bringing his high-end Italian brand A Voce to London; perhaps with a simple name change for Cassis and some minor cosmetic tweaking he could achieve it on this site.

Corby Kummer dislikes tasting menus, as explained in his Vanity Fair piece, because they are 'tedious; surprise and delight and originality shouldn’t be banished'. They're certainly not banished at Cassis, where surprise, delight and originality are to be found in every course.

Cassis Bistro, 232-236 Brompton Road, London SW3 2BB Tel: 020 7581 1101 http://www.cassisbistro.co.uk





Posted by +Hugh Wright

Edwin's French Wine Bar & Restaurant

You have to admire - or envy - Edwin Chan. After a long and incredibly successful career in advertising, culminating in his founding his own global agency, Chan handed over the day-to-day running of the business to his partners and decided to pursue his passions of French food and wine. This saw him open an eponymous brasserie and wine bar in Lyon in 2007 and in October of this year, one in London.

The choice of Shoreditch as a location is an interesting one; although not quite as painfully trendy as in its Nathan Barley hey-day, the still-hip axis of Great Eastern Street and Curtain Road wouldn't seem ideally suited to somewhere priding itself on its traditionalism, as Edwin's does. But not everyone in EC2 wants to eat Peruvian-Japanese fusion atop a skyscraper, or vertically-roasted chicken under a giant Damien Hirst vitrine, so actually Chan could well be on to something.

Chef Jeremy Huguet's menu is a simple affair; nothing on it will be unfamiliar to even the most conservative diner. A three-course prix-fixe is offered at both lunch and dinner for an eminently reasonable £20, although with prices of only £6-£9 for starters, all mains around £15 and desserts no more than £6, three courses won't come to much more than that a la carte.

My fashion buyer pal James started with a plate of charcuterie (the rabbit terrine he'd initially wanted being unavailable) which was fine, as you'd expect a plate of Bayonne ham and salami to be. My escalope of foie gras with figs and raspberry coulis was excellent, seared to a crust on the outside and trembling within.

For our main course we both chose onglet, or hanger steak, presented sliced and with rather too many sauté potatoes. It tasted lovely but in both effort and presentation fell firmly into the 'I could (and do) make this at home' camp, which I think is taking simplicity just a step too far. A plate of cheeses, including a delightfully pongy Coulommiers and a sweet, nutty Tomme, rounded things off perfectly.

Chan personally curates and imports the wine list, which changes frequently. None of it is cheap, starting at £20 a bottle, but can be relied on to be good (and good value); our Haute Cote de Beaune was light but warming. Service, from an all-French staff, was entirely faultless.

Any restaurant, anywhere, serving good if unexceptional food at fair prices complemented by a strong and interesting wine list should do well; one with someone as passionate as Edwin Chan behind it, moreso. But Edwin's will, I think, struggle to achieve true popularity unless more is done to make it somewhere you really want to eat, rather than just being somewhere there's no really good reason not to eat.

The room, for example, is basic almost to the point of harshness, with aggressive fluorescent lighting; a restaurant - unless famed for its ascetic aesthetic, such as St. John - with no candles, no ornamentation, borders on the unwelcoming. From outside, too, Edwin's lacks warmth, retaining the unappealing doors and canopy of the backstreet trattoria it previously was. It's one thing to be a labour of love, quite another to actually feel like it to the customer.

Edwin, from a conversation I had with him after our dinner, appears confident that the restaurant and wine bar he's put his name to will do just fine without such finessing. I might not share his confidence, but I hope nonetheless that that proves to be the case. 

Edwin's French Wine Bar & Restaurant, 18 Phipp Street, London EC2A 4NU Tel: 020 7739 4443 www.edwinsfrenchwinebar.co.uk 

I was invited to review Edwin's







 Posted by +Hugh Wright

Soif

It always rather irks me, when reading about a restaurant outside of Zone 1, to see it described condescendingly as a 'good local restaurant', as if to reach it would require a journey worthy of Gulliver and that the preparation of decent food is somehow dependent on the possession of a W1 postcode. 

To those of us who live in Zone 2 (or - horrors - even further afield) it's the central London gaffs that need travelling to; our local restaurants are just our restaurants, ta very much, and many of them are very good indeed.

One such, which I've only just got round to visiting despite the enthusiastic recommendation of others fortunate enough to have it on or near their doorsteps, is Soif in Battersea. The third wine bar and restaurant to open in a group which now numbers four (the others being Terroirs, Brawn and the newly-opened-at-the-time-of-writing Green Man & French Horn), Soif follows broadly the same if-it-ain't-broke don't fix it formula - great produce, rustic dishes, carefully-chosen wines in convivial casual surroundings.

If that sounds like your idea of somewhere fantastic then I'd heartily concur; the slightly bistro-by-numbers interior might feel a little dated but there's nothing not to love about the food. While choosing from the daily-changing menu, chalked up on a large blackboard, three of us grazed on an excellent charcuterie selection - butch rillettes, the fat countered by tiny, mouth-puckeringly sharp cornichons, herby pork terrine and salty, paper-thin salame toscano - and a dish of perfect little leaf-on radishes Peter Rabbit would've risked Mr McGregor's wrath for.

The fat, tender chicken livers on toast with anchovy and rosemary butter which two of us chose for our starters were so big on flavour and beautifully balanced that I found myself craving them for breakfast the next day; I'd go so far as to say it was one of the best things I've eaten all year. Steak tartare - simply done, un-fannied about with, a process yellow egg yolk on top ready for smooshing in - was excellent.

Other mains - a nice hunk of roast cod with moreish, Moorish spiced chickpeas and alioli and a blushing pink magret of duck with garlicky sarladaise potatoes - were gutsy and faultless. It was a shame that bavette with duck fat potatoes was only available for two; I fancied red meat but no two of us could agree to have it so I ended up having the steak tartare from the starters, padded out with an exemplary green salad.

Instead of dessert, neither of the only two choices for which appealed, we shared a selection of immaculately kept French cheeses including  Soureliette, a wonderful unpasteurised ewe's milk whose nutty sharpness was the perfect match for a tangy bleu d'Auvergne and smoky Curé Nantais. I often find the prices charged for cheese in restaurants rather hard to fathom; £10 for three decent-sized pieces here seemed about fair.

As you'd expect from a restaurant whose name means 'thirst', drink is taken seriously and Soif's lengthy wine list is big on natural varieties, idiosyncratically categorised. There's a decent selection by the glass and carafe but cheap it ain't, with very few bottles under £25. That said you get what you pay for and our 2011 Roussillon 'Les Foulards Rouges' was, like my fellow diner Rich, full-bodied and bursting with character.

Two bottles of it, aperitifs and service pushed the bill for three up to £183 - just over £60 a head - which took me rather by surprise. The food had been good, and exceptional in places - those chicken livers, my gosh - but that still felt high, especially as similar quantities of even-better food and booze at sibling restaurant Brawn had only come in at about two-thirds that.

No matter; Soif is a very good restaurant and one to which, being lucky enough to be able to call it local literally, I'll be returning. Wherever you live, it's a journey I'd recommend you make, too.

Soif, 27 Battersea Rise, London SW11 1HG Tel: 020 7223 1112 http://www.soif.co 







Posted by +Hugh Wright

Brasserie Zédel

Anyone who, like me, was living in London in the 1990s will remember Atlantic Bar & Grill. Owned by the then-coolest cat in town, Oliver Peyton - the Russell Norman of his day, now better known for his role as a judge on Great British Menu - Atlantic, with its snappy bouncers and seemingly untraversable velvet rope, was for a time at least the place to see and be seen, if only you could get in.

It's rather poetic then that in its new incarnation as Brasserie Zédel, what was once London's most exclusive venue is now among its most democratic, offering all-day dining at extremely accessible prices to a staggering 240 covers at a time. Reservations are taken (fancy!) but a substantial proportion of tables are kept for walk-ins meaning that, unlike Atlantic, any and everyone is able to get in.

And get in they must if Rex Restaurant Associates, the Chris Corbin and Jeremy King-helmed investment vehicle behind Zédel  is to make back the fortune that must have been spent on the decor, one of London's most jaw-dropping rooms by a country mile. Shayne Brady, the impishly-handsome head designer at David Collins Studio has turned what was a dark and imposing subterranean space into a light, even dazzling room with acres of pink-hued marble, brass railings and real gold leaf on the capitals atop the room's mighty columns.

As for the pricing, much has been made of how cheap many dishes on Brasserie Zédel's all-French menu are - not least the soupe du jour at a no-it-can't-be £2.25 - but it's not necessarily a cheap restaurant; on my most recent visit, one of several since it opened, four of us clocked up a bill of about £40 a head once a couple of decent bottles of wine had been added to the mix. Rather, it is one offering value for money almost unheard of not just in London's West End but just about anywhere.

Starters start with that soup and peak at £7.75; particularly brilliant are the crème Dubarry - a thick cream of cauliflower soup - and the soupe de poissons at £4.75, almost as good as The Ivy's at two-thirds of the price. Salads, too, impress, particularly endive and roquefort which happily marries the bitterness of chicory to the saltiness of blue cheese.

Of the main courses, even the simplest steak haché - £7.50 on its own or available as part of the £8.75 for two courses or £11.25 for three prix-fixe - is noteworthy, using good beef and enlivened by a perky sauce au poivre. The vast choucroute Alsacienne, £11.75 and a meal in itself, is as delicious a mountain of pickled cabbage and pork as you'll ever find.  

Desserts continue the theme of being far better than one would expect for the price. I simply can't fault the ile flottante - £2.75! - and even the café gourmand with the prix-fixe is a generous serve, three mini pastries with a cafetiere of decent filter coffee. There's also all manner of ice-cream coupes, sorbets, tarts and cakes, all for under a fiver.

In a restaurant of this size, serving this many people, choreographing service is bound to be a challenge and to date my only real gripes with Brasserie Zédel have been around this. Firstly, wherever the kitchen is in this behemoth of a building, it is clearly too far from the dining room to ensure that food arrives piping hot; nothing I have eaten has been much hotter than tepid although it's tasted none the worse for that. 

Also, in the time it takes for plates to arrive at the tables, sauces can congeal; a quick whisk with a fork at the service station before presentation would help no end. Worst of all, on my most recent visit our main courses arrived before we had even finished our starters and rather than being taken away, they were served while one of our party raced under pressure to finish her soup, which is a serious no-no in my book. So it's not perfect, but it's still early days for Brasserie Zédel and with luck and a little more time these glitches should iron out. 

Everything else - the reasonably-priced wine list, the perfect classic cocktails being served in the beautiful Art Deco Bar Americain, the camp coral pink napkins one of which, mea culpa, found its way into my handbag - make this easily one of the most exciting new openings in London this year.

As I write, reservations have just opened for Corbin & King's next project, Cafe Colbert on Sloane Square; with its SW1 location and aristocratic landlord it is unlikely that it will be as democratic as Brasserie Zédel.  No matter; for here is a restaurant that in both pricing and geography is truly accessible to anyone - and not a velvet rope in sight.

Brasserie Zédel, 20 Sherwood Street, London W1F 7ED Tel: 020 7734 4888 http://www.brasseriezedel.com

 

 

 

Posted by +Hugh Wright

Café Boheme, Soho

Café Boheme is, like the sex shops of Walker's Court and strip joints of Rupert Street, a stalwart of the Soho scene. For twenty years it's stood on the corner of Old Compton and Greek Streets, apparently open all hours, its pavement tables always occupied - one of the hottest spots on a street where people-watching is a competitive sport.

But despite my having haunted the streets of Soho for a similar period - arriving in London from the sticks at around the time Café Boheme opened for business - until recently I'd only ever been past, not in; many's the time I've sipped and supped at Soho House upstairs, but I've always found negotiating the phalanx of drinkers outside Café Boheme itself too like running the gauntlet for comfort and hurried on elsewhere.

When I finally did decide to go in a couple of weeks ago, lured by a new menu defiantly retro in its simplicity and remarkably kind in its pricing, it quickly became apparent why Café Boheme has remained so popular and for so long. The attractive room is classic Soho House (who bought Café Boheme along with the rest of the building when they opened in 1995); design details that will be familiar to anyone who's eaten at sibling sites Dean Street Townhouse and Hoxton Grill are all present and correct. To the uninitiated this means dark red leather on bar stools and banquettes, wood panelling, lots of crystal and a statement zinc-topped bar at the heart of it all.

While sipping an excellent Martini, dinner date Eliot and I shared some eggs mayonnaise - I said the menu was retro - which were great, especially piled onto some good fresh bread. I also ordered moules marinieres which were textbook; the wonderfully sweet, small mussels used resembled clochinas, popular in Valencia but unseen anywhere else, making for a welcome treat. 

Main courses were nothing to get over-excited about, but then café food generally isn't and it was none the worse for it. Eliot's grilled chicken salad with tarragon mayonnaise was well-executed, simple stuff; the ratio of leaves to protein was perhaps a bit skewed towards the greenery but it was a generous helping of good-quality poultry nonetheless. My steak - a decent-sized rib eye, served blue and full of flavour if a tad over-salted - came with fantastic frites, hot, crisp and oil-less as they should be. 

We skipped desserts in favour of a couple of glasses of Sauternes (as you do); together with a glass of Pinot Noir from the all-French list - which also offer s good choice of 500ml pichets - and service the bill still only worked out at about £35 each. You could eat well here for even less; steak frites start at just £10 for rump (my rib eye was only £16, the selection peaks at £19 for filet), and main courses average £12-£13. 

Being a café, bookings aren't taken but given that it's open eighteen hours a day, opening for breakfast at 8.30 and only closing at 2.30am, it should always be possible to drop in and get a seat. With food of this quality, at these prices, in such stylish surroundings, it's easy to see why Café Boheme has been such a lasting success. What's harder to understand is why, with food of this quality, at these prices, in such stylish surroundings, anyone would ever want to eat anywhere else.

Cafe Boheme, 13 Old Compton Street, London W1D 5JQ Tel: 020 7734 0623 http://www.cafeboheme.co.uk 

 





Posted by +Hugh Wright

Dabbous

When, just a couple of weeks after Dabbous opened earlier this year, the Evening Standard's Fay Maschler - the doyenne of restaurant reviewers - gave it an almost-unprecedented five stars, the effect was instantaneous. Word spread like wildfire (après Fay, le déluge) and by the end of the week rumours abounded that the next available table at Dabbous was sometime in early 2013. 

As I found out, this wasn't strictly true - and the fairly fundamental flaws, as I see them, in Dabbous's approach to managing reservations are something I'll come to later - but the undeniably huge impact that review had on Dabbous's early success surely must silence those people, mostly restaurant bloggers, who say that the traditional print-media restaurant critic is headed the same way as the dinosaurs.

Dabbous's corner site on Whitfield Street, parallel to foodie enclave Charlotte Street, is currently blighted by scaffolding, although stepping through the huge oxidised metal door into the grungy, industrial interior I found myself wondering if the scaffolding wasn't in fact part of the design. I loved the room, finding it ultra-modern without any hint of pretension, but diners more accustomed to the plush, beige comfort of traditional high-end restaurants are in for a shock.

My lunch date James Ramsden had already eaten at Dabbous, and it was his plaintive comments on Twitter about how much he longed to go back if only he could get a table that prompted me to invite him along. We were given three menus to choose from, the a la carte, an eight-course tasting menu (available, as is usual, only for the whole table) and the set lunch menu, offering two choices for each course for just £21 for three courses or £24 for four. Wanting to try as much as possible we ordered the latter, giving us eight different dishes to share - a better option than the tasting menu which would have limited us to having the same for each course.

The first courses appeared while we were still sipping our (excellent) pre-lunch Negronis and scoffing the baked-daily rye bread,  which comes to the table in a date-stamped paper bag along with nearly-melting homemade butter. Any annoyance I might have felt at not being allowed to finish our cocktails before our food arrived quickly disappeared at my first taste of 'peas and mint', far and away one of the most astonishing dishes I can remember eating anywhere. 

A chilled, minted pea puree was interlaced with pea shoots and shelled peas, a split-open pod lying across the middle offering up its plump contents, and beside it a small mound of vividly green mint granita. The intensity of colour was matched by purity of flavour; peas have never tasted more like peas, mint never mintier. The mixed alliums - red and white onion, so I did wonder why they couldn't have just been described as such - were also wonderful, poached to translucence and swimming in an incredible consommé-like liquid that, finally, showed me what is truly meant by umami.

Next came fish. Charred organic salmon with marjoram, samphire and muscatel grapes was good but there was a slight acidity somewhere that, while not overpowering as such, somehow managed to drown out the very quiet flavour of the fish. Much better was grilled wild ling - a lovely fat fillet of this firm white fish - with beetroot, watercress stems and iodized sour cream, which looked as beautiful on the fork with its tricolore of hues as it tasted, the salty tang of the sour cream and the earthiness of the beetroot combining with the subtly-smoky ling.

Our meat courses, too, were brilliant. Barbecued lamb shoulder was so sweet and pure-tasting that it was almost possible to discern the milk the little bleater had been fed on. Runner beans, given a new depth of flavour from char-grilling, and lesser calamint - a relation of mint but with much lighter flavour - were clever accompaniments. Homemade black pudding, topped with a coarse, sweet mango chutney and a fried egg might have seemed out of place on a lunch menu but was stupidly delicious; at risk of my being forever banished to Pseuds' Corner I can only describe the pudding as moelleux, a lovely French word for which there is no direct English translation but approximately means sublimely soft, gooey and sticky - which it was.

The only small disappointments of the meal came with our fourth course. Not knowing how similar lovage was to celery, which I am allergic to, I was unable to try the iced lovage but felt that, in any case, this was the kind of insubstantial palate cleanser that is usually offered free and certainly not as a course in its own right. Our 'artisanal cheeses from the British isles' - the only dish on the set lunch menu to attract a supplement (£5) were wonderful, especially a spreadably soft Crozier Blue, but were served in such minuscule quantities that I felt the supplement to be entirely unjustified even at these great prices. I couldn't complain though about the chunk of caramelised baked apple that stood in here for quince jelly; it was lovely.

Feeling that, apart from service from James's doppelgänger Gabriel our meal had lacked something sweet, we ordered a custard cream pie and were rewarded with a glorious cornet of cracking crisp pastry filled with layers of salt-caramel, butterscotch and whipped cream. It was splendid, so much so that I wondered why it wasn't being offered instead of the iced lovage. Still, at just a fiver it didn't add much to our bill and was oh-so worth it.

Despite the great value of the set lunch, our bill soared to about £65 a head with the addition of our aperitifs, a carafe each of Viognier and Malbec from the superb and very reasonable list, a glass apiece of Churchill's 10 Year Tawny Port and 12.5% service. It still felt like a very fair price for what was, I have to say even knowing how hyperbolic it might sound, one of the most exceptionally conceived, cooked and presented meals I've ever eaten. I liked Dabbous so much that before I left, I did something I only ever do very rarely, and booked to come back.

Yes, you heard right, I booked to come back. And not in February 2013, or at a weirdly early or late time, but for lunch in the last week of August, admittedly some way off but soon enough for my liking. Because believe it or not, you can get a table at Dabbous if you're able to be flexible and can get through on the phone or, if you live in or are visiting London, drop in during opening hours and ask. 

The difficulty in getting a table, and this really should be addressed, isn't that there aren't any, but that Dabbous haven't quite got to grips with how to handle the demand. Tables aren't being turned, which meant that when I arrived for our 12.45 booking only one other table was occupied and many didn't finally fill up until their booked time of 2pm. Diners desperate to eat at Dabbous would, I am absolutely certain, have no problem with being offered a midday lunch slot on the condition that they vacated the table by 2 o'clock, but instead tables are standing empty. 

Also, Dabbous isn't a tiny place with only a handful of tables; downstairs there's a huge bar, bigger than the restaurant itself, which throughout our visit had only one customer. Surely that could, indeed should, be being used as additional capacity? It might be argued that the kitchen couldn't cope with the extra covers but based on our experience, I don't believe that. You don't need to be Fay Maschler to recognise that Ollie Dabbous, the man in charge and whose name is above the door, is clearly something of a genius, producing the most innovative, exciting and inspiring food in London right now. I'm sure that, for the sake of the frustrated many who've yet to make even their first booking, he could do it just a bit faster, and more.

Dabbous, 39 Whitfield Street, London W1T 2SF Tel: 020 7323 1544 http://www.dabbous.co.uk/

Readers who enjoy food photos can find everything we ate in glorious pictures over on Rachel Khoo's blog, if so inclined. 

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Posted by +Hugh Wright