Now that hipster beards are a thing and therefore soon to be a thing of the past – surely nothing can spell the end of a trend like melting your Baked Alaska on Great British Bake Off – I imagine Shoreditch will have to find another way of displaying rampant twattery. They might want to look a mile or two up the road to Finsbury Park if they want to find out how to be achingly trendy without everyone wanting to punch them in their (freshly shaved) faces.

Duck egg salad

The reason I begin with this frankly unwarranted diatribe against the graphic design community is because as I walked in to Season, ten minutes before everyone else arrived, I experienced the very strange sensation of feeling as though I’d just arrived somewhere incredibly hip but which, unusually, had managed to pull off the sensation of being incredibly cosy and welcoming at the same time. The dining room itself has the feel of an old thrift shop designed with exquisitely shabby taste that leaves you cooing over the old school chairs right up until you see the price tag on them. There is a simple secret to pulling this off beyond good taste in interior design, and that is giving a shit about what you’re doing, and on that level Season scores very highly indeed. Even the (one) misstep seemed to be born out of trying to do things well and that is an approach only to be applauded.

Porno courgettes

I was shown to a round corner table, which as the waiter (too young for a beard but you could see it was itching to grow) pointed out, was a better option than the one he had originally earmarked for us in the middle of the room. I sat down with some fizzy water and complimentary bright green olives to wait for everyone else and read the tracing paper menus. Tracing paper menus are just the sort of affectation that might annoy me elsewhere, but here seemed rather quaint and redolent of the sort of schooldays that no one outside the cabinet ever really experienced. There was also a smaller menu on the table concerning their wine pricing. I’m having a year off booze which I’m pompously enjoying, but this was one of those times that tested my resolve. A blanket mark up across the board (as opposed to a percentage per bottle) means that they were offering, for instance, a Chablis Grand Cru that sells at The Dorchester for £162 at £42. I bit my lip, patted my smug liver and poured myself another glass of fizzy water.

Wild rabbit salad

My brother, girlfriend and better half arrived in quick succession – as did some more free olives (I like this place) and we got to grips with the menu. There is a certain amount of waffle about how the name of the restaurant reflects their philosophy, which I always feel is a bit unnecessary – we live in a globalised world, and blathering about local/seasonal/organics can get a bit wearisome and uninformed in places. What I really want a menu to tell me is that we have these things that we have made into this and it’s really good. Luckily almost all of it was. Really good.

Stoked salmon

Having polished off a Camden Pale Ale in no time at all, my brother ordered the house cocktail – or ‘Season Restorative’ made with Kamm & Sons Ginseng spirit which is exactly the sort of thing you would only have in a restaurant and why going to restaurants is fun. I wasn’t even (particularly) jealous of him – possibly because at this point we were all tucking into what he confidently described as ‘the best soda bread I’ve ever eaten’, and he wasn’t wrong. It was like cake. Good cake.

Sea Trout

Wild leaf salad with duck egg was fabulous – spiky sorrel and mugwort (yes, we asked) soothed by the richness of the egg, while Stoke Newington smoked salmon (apparently smoked by a man with a huge beard, fact fans) was firm, meaty and beautifully paired with diced peach and melon jelly. Courgette flowers were ridiculously phallic, and what happened when you cut into them was frankly porngraphic, but a crisp batter and the cream cheese filling meant they were as tasty as they were rude and amusing. The only disappointment was my wild rabbit, fennel and orange salad. I applaud the effort, but the cold rabbit was just too dry and was really the only thing we ate that didn’t feel worthy of its place on the menu. Still – the exception that proves the rule and all that.

Doughnuts

Bavette steaks were chunky red slabs of meat with a big slapping hit of chimichurri slathered all over the accompanying cherry tomatoes, while sea trout was a serious hunk of expertly cooked fish with clams lightly poached in the broth and iron rich sea vegetables floating alongside. There were good chips, new potatoes and a ‘Growing Communities’ salad that was disarming in its brilliance. As my other half pointed out, it’s quite something when the most amazing thing on a table groaning under the weight of this much food is a green salad, but I guess that just proves what a dick I am for moaning about the menu banging on about its seasonality.

Lemon tart

I’m still annoyed I didn’t have the bitter chocolate pot for dessert, mainly because we had already ordered one lemon tart, but I had another and it was faultless. I just wanted to try the chocolate. Rhubarb and custard doughnuts were five balls of sugary indulgence, if not quite the revelation I was hoping for, but that is splitting hairs. They were still bloody good. All told the bill (with a couple of glasses of house red and white) came in at roughly the same price as a bottle of Chablis Grand Cru at The Dorchester, and I know where I’d rather be. Since moving out to Hertford, I come through Finsbury Park a lot, so I’m sure I’ll return – I need to try that chocolate pot for a start. Like fashions, seasons may come and go, but this Season is clearly rooted in a very good place, and hopefully here for the long term. A bit like my beard.

September 2014

Fake Plastic Tree…

Simon Rogan occupies a deified position in the British culinary hierarchy. His Cumbrian restaurant L’Enclume is spoken of in deeply reverential tones, (and almost had a bigger part in ‘The Trip’ than Messrs Coogan and Brydon,) a pop-up in London a while back had everyone salivating, and all he has to do is burn a piece of lettuce on Great British Menu and Prue Leith at al start losing their shit. I’m not even being facetious – everybody loved the burnt lettuce so much I wanted to eat it too. I missed the recent TV show about him and Aiden Byrne setting up competing fine dining restaurants in Manchester, because sometimes life is too short, but like most people I tend to agree that while Manchester has a lot of dining, not much of it is all that fine. I can’t comment on Manchester House, although I have heard the dread phrase ‘Footballers’ Wives’ bandied about by my friend in the north who knows about these things. However, I did try and get a late table at Mr Rogan’s The French. Having seen some of the reviews, my failure, a mere three hours before I wanted to eat there on a bank holiday Saturday, was completely understandable, but having seen the prices, also something of a relief. I have no problem spending foolish amounts on food, but it’s usually a good thing when circumstances conspire to prevent me doing so. Luckily, his second, more bistro-ish venture in the Midland Hotel, Mr Cooper’s, did have space (rather a lot of it in fact) and so I trotted along the 100 metres from my hotel with my paper and my expectations.

Eel & porkbelly torte

I really wanted to be impressed. I know the man whose name is above the door is unlikely to be behind the stove, but that didn’t stop me hoping for some of that burnt lettuce action, and…well, I guess you should read on if you want to know.

It was a combination of small things that led to what can only be described as my disappointment. I don’t mind that they didn’t have my reservation, and the staff were unstintingly pleasant throughout, although there did seem to be a lot of them for a pretty sparsely attended restaurant slap bang in the middle of gay pride. Far be it from me to stereotype, but I would have thought a room that seems to have been designed as a partial homage to B&Q garden showrooms would have appealed to the more kitsch elements floating past outside. I didn’t mind that the seat I was on still had breadcrumbs scattered on it, even if it was the only bread I was going to come across until I accidentally inhaled the topping of my cauliflower cheese. A slightly bent knife is never going to worry anyone untowardly, but as everything began to add up, I just got a sense that this wasn’t going to be the hit I had hoped for.

The menu gave me hope. A good ten starters and main courses that all intrigued on various levels were neither cheap nor outrageously priced. My starter of smoked eel torte with lovage and pork belly was a thoroughly elegant plate of food and even appeared with a little gem lettuce, even if it wasn’t remotely burnt. I thought smoky, oily eel and unctuous pork belly would be a winning combination, but buried under an almost Dairylea topping on an oatmeal base, what I ended up with was a slightly confused cheesecake. Now I like all of those things, and I can’t say it was unpleasant. It did make me think for quite a while, but unfortunately my final thought was ‘I’m not sure why they bothered’.

Halibut

I did not have to wait too long for my main course, although it was just long enough to notice I’d been waiting, and there’s few things as annoying as waiting an extra couple of minutes to receive a piece of fish that is a couple of minutes over-cooked. I did mention this to my waitress who immediately offered to replace it, but it was nowhere near bad enough to send back, and not quite good enough to be happy with. It just seemed a bit unfair on the fish, and me, when I was already contending with the fact that ‘new potatoes’ meant ‘a new potato, sliced’. As the fish came with a very pleasant gratin sauce rich with peas, edamame and pistachio, the side of cauliflower cheese was probably overkill, but actually, lacked seasoning and the requisite cheesy oomph. The breadcrumb topping was lovely though, which I was just noting down when I breathed some of it in and spent the next two minutes choking attractively while my eyes streamed. This did at least mean I didn’t have to spend any longer looking at the big plastic tree in the middle of the room and again, wonder why they’d bothered.

Dessert was much more like it. I was told that the carrot and olive oil cake was a little dry (why have it on the menu then?) but the chilled lemongrass soup was highly, and rightly, recommended. An ice cream and coconut sorbet arrived with small pieces of melon, a glassy green tea wafer and baby mint leaves, and the soup was poured over (not by me I hasten to add, and I’m sure there was a drop left in the jug,) but it was exactly the kind of treat I’d been hoping for – delicate Asian flavours scrubbing the palate clean. My only criticism was the mint leaves, which tasted fantastic but made for a slightly unpleasant texture – perhaps shredding them might have made a quietly beautiful dessert perfect.

Chilled lemongrass soup

An excellent cappuccino rounded things off nicely, but also gave me pause for thought. If they could do something like the end of the meal so well, one has to wonder about the rest of it, and I’m afraid it does rather look as if Manchester is voting with its feet. Many of them are clearly heading towards The French and I for one am still very much up for the hike to L’Enclume, but at £45 for a booze free lunch with a non-optional (albeit thoroughly deserved) service charge tacked on, I suspect that Mr Cooper may be walking towards his own High Noon, which is a shame, because with a few tweaks I really get the feeling he could come out fighting.

August 2014

All of it, obviously. Step aside Elizabeth David, Jane Grigson and all you Rouxs, Food Ponce has Les Bleus covered. Except for Paris, which I’ve already written about definitively having spent four days there in 2011. Come to think of it, I think I used the same joke then (I just checked – I did,) and like a politician’s punchline it doesn’t get any funnier with repetition.

I have, however, just driven through what feels like most of France. Twice. In a slightly hare-brained scheme to mark my parent’s 50^th wedding anniversary, my brother and I joined them with our partners at a cottage in the South of France where we used to holiday in the eighties. If you think you’ve heard of La Rochette, you haven’t. Not this one. I would say it has a population of around 60, but why bother when the internet tells you it’s exactly 57? Anywhere with a population small enough to be counted that accurately has to be pretty remote, and it is. I don’t know if the intervening 25 years had lent a rose-tinted glow to the journey, but as we closed in on our destination after two solid days of driving, the looks I was starting to receive from my passenger were less those of someone enjoying their holiday, more a combination of cramp, disbelief and hours of accumulated worry that the dog might lose control of its bodily functions in her lap.

Oeufs en Meurette

La Rochette is located up some very bendy roads about an hour north of Nice, and a fucking long way from Calais, if you’ll excuse my French, which I think you’re going to have to. The nearest town of any note is Puget-Théniers, but it would be a very small note. If you should find yourself wandering around there at any point, which you won’t, Café Math does a very reasonably priced set menu lunch (€13.50) served by a young waitress who admirably took her inability to understand my pronunciation of ‘Perrier’ about as far as was credible. Next door to the station (which you’ll probably find yourself visiting relatively quickly,) L’Oustalet does excellent bruschettas and ice creams, and reasonably good steaks, all of which seemed to be cooked slightly differently from how they’d been ordered. It’s not a bad town, just not a particularly exciting one, but then it doesn’t need to be, as it’s in the South of France, which is quite enough for a town to be smug about as far as I’m concerned.

We had a lovely holiday, but somewhat chastened by the drive down, we decided to make the journey back even longer. This was a much better idea than it sounds as it allowed us to travel at a more leisurely pace on prettier roads, enjoy a couple of nights of moderately good hotel living and make sure we still had time to circle Lyons a couple of times before we got over-excited by too much traveling in the right direction. Our first stop was Mâcon, and as someone who has stayed in a lot of hotels over the years, I was pleasantly surprised by the Ibis Styles, mainly because I’m someone who’s stayed in a lot of unstylish Ibises over the years. This one even had a swimming pool which was just what I felt like after the drive, and then we headed down to the banks of the Saône and Le Lamartaine for dinner. This is one of three fairly similar looking restaurants in a row in what could easily be described as a tourist trap, but then three similar bistros in a row in France does not fill one with the same trepidation as it might in, say, Hastings, which we passed through on our way to the Channel Tunnel and, a thousand years later, still appears to be crying out to be invaded.

Cancoillotte, saucisse etc…

We picked Le Lamartine for no particularly good reason beyond a smart exterior and a pleasing menu of French and regional (i.e. Bourgogne) classics which I was very happy to get to grips with. I did want to try andouillettes, the famed sausage that Jay Rayner once described as being ‘made from the business end of a pig’s intestine’, but firstly I wasn’t feeling brave enough and secondly I still have flashbacks to the tête de veau incident, especially as it was on the menu here, eyeing me balefully. That did not, you’ll be glad to hear, prevent me being adventurous and trying something different, as I like to see it, or ordering by guesswork and being an idiot as my girlfriend calls it. She sensibly opted for faultless snails and a nicely cooked fillet of dorade, which couldn’t have been more French if it had tried to sleep with her. Not me though, not when Oeufs en Meurette were available. What are Oeufs en Meurette you may well ask? As did a French friend when I got home, which should tell you something. I thought I’d take a punt – I mean, I like eggs, what the hell could they do to them? What they can do to three of them, it turns out, is poach them and serve them on croutons in a sort of beefy meaty stocky soupy winey kind of a thing that had a slight Worcestershire sauce style kick about it and was probably used by the French to wipe out hangovers after the Hundred Years War, but was not unpleasant for all that.

Beef carpaccio

I should have opted for safety with my main course, but enquiries unearthed a sausage dish with some sort of fromage that had the waitress waving her hand under her nose in the international sign for ‘whiffy’. If I wasn’t going to have andouillettes, I could have these. What in fact arrived was a large plate of rounds of garlic sausage on sauté potatoes, a jug of quite thin and relatively un-whiffy cheese (cancoillotte) sauce and a token tomato and lettuce salad hidden under a mound of bacon lardons. Basically a heart attack on a plate. It was solid comfort food, but not terribly exciting, and my other half summed it up best when she pointed out that I had ordered quite an expensive Full English Breakfast over two courses. Dessert was a good couple of boules of ice cream (I ate a lot of ice cream on this trip) and a very reasonable bill of just over €70 (excluding service) left us happy, if not as happy as I’d have like to have been.

Soupe à l’oignon

The next day saw us arriving in Reims, which the French pronounce as if they were doing a very quick bout of heavy lifting. We checked into another Ibis Styles (no pool this time) and headed into town. I had not been to Reims before and it is stunning – the trip to the Cathedral worth the entire trip on its own. The main restaurant area from Place Drouet d’Erlon is a dizzying boulevard of choice with everything from the high end (and full) Café Flo at one end to pizzas and Mexican and Irish pubs and everything in between. There was plenty of opportunity for catastrophic misjudgement here, but luckily we chose well in Le Grand Café, and left the catastrophic misjudgement to the fashion faux pas of the passers by.

[Seriously, I have never seen so much appalling taste or badly contained flesh on display. Hookers from central casting would be well within their rights to claim a lot of it was a bit much, and at one point I considered sticking forks in my eyes so I didn’t have to see anymore. How much this was tourists and how much locals I don’t know, but if France is the land of elegance and style, then truly Reims is its (sorry about this) Waterloo.]

Moules Provençal

All of which ran counter to every other impression I had of the city. Le Grand Café was that unusual beast, a very busy tourist restaurant that managed to be both an authentic destination and yet feel strangely intimate. Our waiter was superb – helpful, efficient and tactfully switching between English and my dreadful French without a hint of superiority, in stark contrast to the stereotype I shamelessly perpetuated earlier. My better (at ordering) half started with an exemplary beef carpaccio, pepped up with raw mushrooms, artichoke hearts and capers and followed this with a generous portion of moules Provençale, a house speciality. She also ordered me to ‘order something that you know, and like’ which seemed a reasonable request from someone who has recently grown a little weary of eating across the table from a truculent schoolboy with the wrong sweets.

One good thing to come out of Brasilia

In light of that I kept it simple, for which I will be truly grateful. My soupe à l’oignon was faultless – a thoroughbred of the genre. A deeply rich broth packed with onions and possibly the largest crouton I’ve ever encountered, slathered with melted gruyere, was close to perfection. A sole with melted butter was delicious, if not exactly oversized, and the vegetables weren’t going to win any awards, but then vegetables rarely do. My dessert was such a brilliant idea – a trio of crème brûlées – I can’t believe I haven’t come across it before. Strawberry, vanilla and (the winner) caramel were exercises in sugary pleasure, and I only had to run a half marathon, visit a cardiologist and employ two dentists afterwards to nullify the side-effects. My other half had a Brasilia, which is neither a disappointing World Cup campaign nor a waxing (you’ll be delighted to hear,) but yet another chantilly topped ice cream delight of coffee, vanilla and meringue with which she professed herself blissfully happy. We sauntered off down the boulevard (one must always saunter down a boulevard) thoroughly pleased with ourselves, Le Grand Café and a bill of €82.

*claps*

If you are ever approaching Calais, I could definitely recommend giving Saint-Omer a miss for lunch, especially when you need the time to get lost in the search for an hypermarché before crossing the Channel. Not nearly as much as I could recommend not adding another hour and a half to your journey home trying to avoid running out of petrol on the M20 and then turning the wrong way on the M11. If the last leg of our trip was farcical, it was probably in keeping with much of what I shall now charitably deem ‘a driving holiday’ but that didn’t stop us enjoying ourselves, or reminding us that when it comes to stopping randomly for dinner, there is a reason the Michelin guide was created in France, while on this side of the Channel, our tyre manufacturers were tediously manufacturing tyres.

June 2014

Apparently, a new ‘mortgage questionnaire’ has recently been introduced by the powers that be to make the unalloyed pleasure of purchasing a house an even greater joy. I imagine Question 1 is something along the lines of,

‘Would you like to live in London?’

If the answer is ‘yes’ you are immediately denied a mortgage while they arrange for you to be openly mocked in the nearest public space that hasn’t been sold to amoral developers, on the understanding (rather than ‘condition’) that a tiny alcove is set aside and labelled ‘affordable housing cupboard’.

Cured ham selection

Having spent the last seven years happily ensconced in Battersea, two miles from where I was born, I would very much like to have bought a house there, but sadly I don’t speak Russian, have a trust fund, or wish to live in a cupboard.

Battersea has, to use a technical term, gone mental. The imminent arrival of the new American Embassy and the attendant building sites along the river in Vauxhall, the millionaires-only-need-apply Power Station development and the boon to travel delays that is a planned extension to the Northern line have fired up a massive housing bubble within a bubble that is itself within such a bubble they should get Michael Buble to play the opening ceremony. The present state of the London housing market is a genuine horror story, with its roots in the politics of the eighties, the ramifications of which threaten to stretch into a bleak and irreversible future for which we will all be poorer.

Gambas, innit?

Well. Not all of us, obviously.

It was my good friend Marcus Brigstocke, himself a long term resident of SW11, who recently pointed out to me that Battersea was becoming ‘like Hong Kong – essentially lots of very rich people living on top of one another,’ and if there’s a phrase to truly take the charm out of an area, that’s it right there. Marcus is moving to Balham because he managed to get on the property ladder a long time ago and because he does considerably more telly than me.

I, on the other hand, have moved to Hertford, because that was always the dream.

Seriously good anchovies

Seriously – I love it. I have a garden big enough to have discovered a (fourth) pond we didn’t even know we had when we bought the place. I have three bedrooms, a loft, a basement, ample space for expansion and I’m still waiting for the morning when I wake up and decide the whole thing has been a dreadful idea, but with every passing day that seems more and more unlikely. To buy anything like this in Battersea, we would simply have had to add a ‘0’ to the price, and that, for somewhere twenty miles away, really is proper mental.

My first farewell to Battersea was to a building I had already said goodbye to some time ago. What is now a second outpost of Brixton’s (rightly) well-regarded Boqueria used to be a tiny branch of the less well-regarded Barclays Bank until it shut suddenly a couple of years ago, with the cheery announcement that the standard of service would not be affected in any way. Since I now had to cross a rather large river to get to my nearest branch, I begged to differ, but simply chalked it down as yet another bare-faced lie from the financial sector.

Courgette carpaccio MD (Massively Delicious)

The building lay dormant until a few months ago when the builders moved in and in no time at all we had a shiny new tapas restaurant perched on the junction of Queenstown Road and Battersea Park Road, right next to the traffic lights, just like in Spain. Boqueria is named after the famous market in Barcelona, and really my only serious criticism of the whole venture is one of location. As Marcus and I sat on the raised area overlooking the crossroads and tucked into some really quite excellent Spanish food, I could not have felt less Hispanic if you’d nicked my football, banned bullfighting and refused to let me have a nap in the afternoon.

Squid with rice

Marcus had been singing Boqueria’s praises for some time, and for the most part with good reason. While a plate of cured hams was not the finest I’ve ever had, we had gone for the mid-price option, and with Spanish ham you get what you pay for. There were many highlights – beautifully plump anchovies in vinaigrette matched with perfect olives, spicily fragrant chorizo with cider, faultless prawns, punchy alioli, delicious squid in its own ink with rice and a zinging plate of courgette carpaccio so cleverly done it had letters after its name. There was good bread, a fine selection of cheeses and the only minor let down was a pork shoulder with foie gras and truffle puree which probably suffered most from simply being more expensive and yet not quite as exciting as we thought it would be. All this was washed down with sparkling water and fresh pink grapefruit juice cutely served in jam jars. We finished with a couple of cortado coffees and a bill of  £82.55 excl service, which seemed very reasonable for what we ate, which was quite a lot. Would I recommend Boqueria? In terms of food and service, unreservedly, but it is instructive that every time I recall the meal, the image that persists is one of a huge articulated lorry belching fumes behind Marcus’s head. I would happily return, but as I now have that much further to travel, I’d probably go the extra mile to the Brixton branch, if only to find out whether it’s in the middle of an NCP car park.

Brigstocke and smoking lorry

My final meal was a rather more emotional affair. I have introduced Marcus to the enormous joys of Capitan Corelli’s and he has become a regular. I have taken friends, family, girlfriends and fiancée, but this was a meal I wanted to eat on my own. For anyone who has been following this blog from the beginning, in my third ever post I threatened to write about my top secret Italian local, and now that I will no longer be disturbed by my enormous readership darkening its doors, the time has come. If you’ve also been following those execrable Aviva ads, you’ll have already seen Corelli’s as it was the location for one of them, even if the glories of eating there weren’t particularly well represented by Paul Whitehouse in a fat suit and comedy accent.

My lunch, many, many times

I love this place. It is best described as an Italian greasy spoon, and at any time during the day (it only opens for the evening on special occasions – if you’re anywhere near during Italy’s World Cup games it’s worth trying to get in,) you will find every kind of character wandering in, from local office workers to hungry comedians, families with young children to gangs of men shouting at each other in Italian and ordering enormous plates of pasta. It would give Nigel Farage a heart attack, which is another reason to love it. Enzo, the chef, spends as much time pinching babies’ cheeks and glad-handing as he does in the kitchen, but what he cooks in there is fabulous. Behind the counter you’ll usually find the gently brooding presence of Mustafa and a touch of hard-working glamour from Wilma, who deflects industrial levels of flirting with consummate ease whilst also constructing the best sandwiches in South London. The whole operation is smiled over by the rotund and implacable presence of Pasquale, the patron, who parks his elderly chocolate Rolls Royce outside, takes a corner table and surveys his domain with perhaps a minestrone in front of him, or just his hands linked contentedly over his belly. The walls are covered in pictures of film stars and singers, not to mention the odd article from Sunday magazines extolling its virtues – Helen Mirren includes it in her ‘perfect London evening’, it would definitely feature as my ‘favourite table’ and Marcus was considering writing about it for ‘Secret London’ until I told him not to. He can now.

Wilma

The food is sensational, if not particularly refined. Corelli’s exists to feed, not to be reviewed. There are normally three or four pastas (if you want the best choices, get in before 12:30,) and the same number of main courses, on plates piled high with a selection of whatever vegetables were available that morning. Highlights will vary, but there’s always a good chance of oxtail, rabbit stew, meatballs, squid and chicken in varying permutations. I have a particular fondness for the breadcrumbed fish, which I had on this occasion, although the river cobbler with tomatoes and garlic is always a winner too. It really is well nigh impossible to go wrong. There is no wine list, but a decent glass of red or white can always be found if required.

Mustafa

Next door they have an ice cream making operation (it doesn’t get any better than this, does it?) but there are also rows of apple pies and individual tiramisus in the chiller cabinet. I had the tiramisu. Of course I did, it was my last meal as a Battersea resident in a Battersea institution, so I won’t patronize you by trying to describe how absurdly good it was. I finished with what I confidently contend is the best coffee in London – I know Helen Mirren agrees – and how could you improve on Italian coffee made by a Turkish man?

And the price of all these unfettered delights? Well, there was plenty of change from £20, but I wasn’t going to take it. I got a hug from Mustafa and a kiss from Wilma, who also pressed another tiramisu into my hands for my absent ‘lady’ (although she wasn’t the one who scooped it greedily out of the fridge a couple of days later,) and I suddenly realized I had an enormous lump in my throat.

Tiramisu

I may now have frogs, fish, fruit trees and raspberry bushes, two sheds, some truly idiosyncratic DIY to unravel, fields to walk the dog in, stairs up to my bedroom and down to my garden, and all these make me very happy, but I don’t have Corelli’s, and that makes me sad. We have been through a lot together, and of the many things I shall miss about Battersea, I shall miss Corelli’s most of all. Although it is not their fault, I really can’t say the same about Boqueria, because, very well done though it is, it’s also very well done elsewhere; there is no shortage of restaurants I can go to watch bankers oblivious to the fact that where they’re eating was once an actual bank, and somewhere that served a purpose beyond servicing their expense accounts.

The best cup of coffee in London

There are still some places, however, that hum with a sense of community, with individuality and charm and genuine warmth and genuine worth. They are becoming harder to find, and, like those of us not on a six-figure income, they are being squeezed out of our capital city on a daily basis.

There are plenty of Boqueria’s, but there is only one Capitan Corelli’s. Go – it deserves treasuring, and best of all, it will treasure you right back.

May 2014

Crab Florentine

Dates, as we all know, can veer from the appalling to the sublime and back, sometimes in the course of a single evening. Personally, I always found the whole thing very unnerving, which usually meant talking like a typewriter and failing to impress – my favourite type of date used to involve drinking too much and hoping that eventually one of you fell on top of the other. I’m engaged now, which used to mean you were excused the whole business, but when you work away as much as I do, it is considered impolite to always sit on the sofa scratching yourself on nights off. As a result I am expected to involve myself in ‘date nights,’ sometimes as often as twice a quarter. There are other date expectations – for instance, that it doesn’t get written up as a blog and posted online, but then these are the pitfalls of agreeing to marry a comedian.

Raclette Comtoise

Knightsbridge is of course a ridiculous place, especially for dinner, but thanks to Toptable, I had been granted a visa. I like Toptable, (even though I’ve just discovered they’ve changed their name to Opentable for no apparent reason.) I’m sure I shouldn’t, although I’m not sure why. I think it’s something to do with buying into all this bollocks about exclusivity and privilege, but as all they’ve ever really done for me is provide an opportunity to eat in very good restaurants at reasonable prices, I’ll keep on checking the emails. I had heard many good things about Racine (although it appears a lot when you Google ‘tête de veau’ which previous readers will realise strikes fear into my very soul,) and four courses and an aperitif for £35 sounded like excellent value.

Featherblade steak

The restaurant was quiet as we entered through the large leather curtain that stops anyone untoward looking in, and we were warmly welcomed to a very comfortable and spacious corner table in order to admire the rest of the leather in the room. They give good banquette at Racine, which is probably why it started filling up with a merry and very well heeled clientele as the evening progressed. As neither of us were drinking, a choice of non-alcoholic aperitifs were offered and I am now going to start making my own virgin mojitos because they are bloody nice. Menus were proffered, orders taken, and then everyone realized we’d been given the wrong menus, and new ones were bought, but this time with extra things on them. When the only cock up of an entire meal is friendly staff bringing you additional options, it’s safe to assume you’ve had a good time.

Grilled rabbit

I started with Crab Florentine – a gorgeously rich sausage of pasta stuffed with white crab meat (and one tiny piece of shell, but I’m regarding that as proof of freshness) and spinach with a properly opulent béchamel and crab sauce zig-zagged along its back, dusted with a little paprika. This had the unusual ability to convince you it was good for you despite the fact it clearly wasn’t. Meanwhile, melted raclette Comtoise with cornichons salad was a winning combination of luxuriously melted cheese and sharp pickle, smacking you round the chops ‘like a posh ploughmans,’ in the words of the other half.

Cheese!

For main course, she had a grilled featherblade steak, perfectly bloody and oozing Roquefort and walnut butter. It was sensational, as was my rabbit on a bed of green beans, which retained just the requisite crunch and a mustard sauce for which the word ‘pokey’ might have been invented. On top was a shard of smoked bacon, which was (I’m quoting again) ‘immense’. My only problem was that it really didn’t seem to be the sort of place to pick up the bones and gnaw. Service was so gracious I doubt they’d have minded, but apparently you don’t do things like that on date night.

There was a cheese course, which is the sort of sentence that makes me enormously happy, as does the fact they came from the legendary La Fromagerie. A further indication of the quality of service was the maître d’ writing down the names of the mellow blue cheese and Chablis washed rind oozy number for me precisely so that I could mislay the piece of paper.

Crème caramel

Dessert was spectacular, in an understated and very classy way. Which is more than could be said for either of us as we had both of given up sugar for the previous ten days, and began salivating like Pavlov’s dogs at the very idea. I don’t imagine we presented a particularly attractive picture to anyone else, but this was fabulous. The crème caramel at Racine appears to be made with crack. It was easily the best I have ever tasted – almost creamy like pannacotta, but with the richness of egg and the slightly bitter hit of caramel. Meanwhile, a petit pot au chocolate is best remembered with the words,

“I’m really happy right now. I don’t want this to end”.

Petit pot au chocolate

It would have been nice if she was talking about the date, but we both knew it was the chocolate. But I’ll take it, and if you want to take anyone anywhere, on this showing I would thoroughly recommend Racine, especially if you get the deal we did, which was a steal. As is a 14.5% ‘optional’ service charge, but then this wouldn’t be Knightsbridge without it, and unusually for this part of the world, they were worth every penny.

April 2014

To Edinburgh. For a delightful weekend at The Stand – one of my favourite clubs in one of my favourite cities. Yet again, I failed to go to the fabled Sweet Melindas, mainly because I get a free dinner at The Stand in the evening and if you’d tried their chicken burrito you’d understand. I have been wanting to eat Tom Kitchin’s food for a very long time though, and on a whim gave the restaurant a ring on Friday morning – to my amazement, they offered me a table at 12:15 as long as I vacated it by 1:45. I bounced down to a Leith like a very happy bunny, wondering if I was going to eat one, because that is exactly the sort of Scottish ingredient that Mr Kitchin is very passionate about, as I was about to discover.

Pheasant Jelly

The walk was a joy in itself; when there’s a bright blue sky and sunshine over Leith it’s hard to think of a more handsome city. I passed Fishers where I’d been fed so well in August and on to Commercial Quay and The Kitchin, which is very glass and bespoke yuppie flat development from the outside, but once inside smoothes its edges into something less severe – all dark wood, blues, purples and a very warm welcome.

Happy as I was to be there, I didn’t fancy shelling out on starters that generally hovered around the £20 mark as I wasn’t actually celebrating anything, but luckily the very reasonably priced set menu (£28.50 for three courses) had quite a lot of things I wanted to order on it. While I was deciding on them, one of the sunny pack of waiting staff who buzzed round the restaurant brought me a selection of crudités with a Strathdon blue cheese and buckwheat dip and a cheddar cheese stick that achieved the unique feat of making me like carroway seeds. This was simple brilliance – crunchingly fresh veg with the simplest presentation that made you wonder why every meal didn’t start like this. Soda bread arrived and all I wrote in my notes was ‘God this is light’. I ate the whole loaf.

Ravioli of monkfish liver

A small rolled map of Scotland was popped on the table with the explanation that “the chef is very passionate about Scotland and Scottish produce,” which might have been a nice, if slightly twee touch were it not that you overheard the waiters repeat this mantra at every table, as a result of which it began to sound more like you were being initiated into a cult. Added to which, I was about to find out exactly how passionate Mr Kitchin was about Scottish produce by the far more effective method of tasting how he put it on a plate.

An amuse bouche of pheasant jelly set the tone – a deeply gamey wobble with a lively tang of apple, and a soft boiled quail’s egg with crispy bacon giving it a hint of the very best breakfast you’ve ever tasted. Just when you were thinking you couldn’t improve on perfection, the addition of a croquette of braised leg meat proved you could.

Ballotine of partridge

I don’t think I like Monkfish liver which is exactly why I ordered it – if I was going to find anywhere that made it work for me, this was probably the place. Another beautifully assembled dish, with a plump squid ink ravioli rested on minutely diced vegetables and shavings of squid and a delicate squid consommé poured over it at the table. The meaty fish and liver inside had the best touches of offal cooking about it – something felt slightly wrong with it which is what felt good. I still came away thinking that I wasn’t sure about monkfish liver, but interestingly, in the day or two since, it is the dish I keep on returning to in my mind, which can only be a good thing. Not quite my favourite dish of the day, but easily the most interesting.

A ballotine of partridge with winter vegetables could frankly have been wearing a kilt and playing the bagpipes were it not for the accompanying cannelloni, also containing beautifully moist meat. The sauce was one of the most deeply flavoured I have ever encountered, almost oily in its intensity, and the last of my soda bread was called in to action to wipe the final slick away when no one was watching.

I was torn between the lemon soufflé and baked Alaska for dessert until one of the waiters fixed me with a far away look and said in a low voice “The soufflés are very good”.

THAT soufflé. And map.

Oh my god. That is all. The lightest thing but beautifully rich with a smear of curd running through it and a slight sugar crust around the edge – and a quenelle of just soured crème fraîche ice cream to redress the citrus and heat when you wanted it. I started to understand the look in the waiter’s eye. I think he was trying not to cry. I don’t think a pudding has made me this happy in a long time.

By this time, my appointed hour was nearly up and I offered to go through to the bar for my coffee to free up the table – I particularly liked the fact that they didn’t ask me to. Petit fours of a very indulgent carrot cake and a rhubarb macaroon seemed the perfect end to the meal, but once again Tom Kitchin proved there was time for an extra touch by walking in to the bar to check that everyone had enjoyed their lunch. This didn’t look like showing off, but a genuinely heartfelt wish to have a few words with each table to ensure they’d enjoyed themselves and I particularly appreciated the chance to whimper at him about the soufflé.

As I walked back up to town, I tapped the following into my phone:

“There are times when the opportunities my job affords me make me absolutely glow with pleasure. This was one of them”.

And it was. That was when I noticed Tom had followed me on Twitter. Oh he’s good, ladies and gentlemen, he’s very good indeed. 2014 – the bar has been set.

Feb 2014

If I wrote about my ideal restaurant, like George Orwell’s pub in The Moon Under Water, I would probably come up with something like the Taverne du Passage in Brussels, which is I think what lulled me into making one of the greatest mealtime misjudgements of my life. The fault is entirely my own. I would return in a heartbeat, but the nightmare that played out in front of me, whilst not strictly Orwellian in nature, would hardly have looked out of place in Room 101.

Toast Aux Champignons de Paris

Things started so promisingly. A tram from the station and a quick walk to The Grand Place – one of my favourite places anywhere (a direct result of a family holiday as an impressionable child who remembers it as the first bit of foreign he ever saw, even if it almost definitely wasn’t.) We had no idea where we were going to eat, and were happily sauntering along when we happened upon the quite stunning Galerie de la Reine, or passage (it’s important that you pronounce it pass-arge for added continental effect.)

The Taverne du Passaaarge just had that look about it, one that makes you curious as you approach, fascinated as you draw level, and nagged back as you pass. Good, sturdy waiters of a decent vintage, with white jackets and epaulettes (epaulettes!) bustling around linen laid tables ordered neatly along the walls in long booths, another line of tables down the middle, black and white tiled floor, glass, mirrors and art deco fabulousness. The menu was wall to wall French classics, even if they’d probably argue, with some justification, that they were Belgian.

“We’re eating here” I said, and very soon we were.

Croquettes de Fromage

My mushrooms on toast, or ‘Toast Aux Champignons de Paris’ (told you it was French) were stupendous, mainly because they were just mushrooms on toast. All that had been added was butter and a little parsley and I can’t recall ever eating something for which the phrase ‘does exactly what it says on the tin’ was more apt, were it not impolite to mention tins around food this good. Croquettes de Fromage were the best version of this Belgian classic we tried – again, simplicity itself, but done properly, cheesy potato wrapped up in a crispy breadcrumb coat leaves you very little to complain about.

Similarly, I cannot have any complaints about what happened next. I can’t even say I wasn’t warned. Our waiter, who appeared to be the youngest in the building by several decades, had already turned his head quizzically to one side as I ordered and said,

“You know what is, yes?”

One of these…

And I had blithely waved away his concerns, safe under the idiot assumption that what I was getting was some sort of mildly ofally thing that one really must have in these sort of surroundings. I think the imbecilic words, “Well if I’m going to eat it anywhere, darling,” may even have escaped my lips at some point, little realizing that what I was about to have should NEVER BE ORDERED IN ANY RESTAURANT ANYWHERE EVER. The hustle and bustle of a busy (and brilliant) restaurant clearly covered the cry of amazement and glee that went up in the kitchen, and quite possibly throughout all good kitchens in continental Europe when they heard the news – ‘The Englishman has ordered Tête de Veau!!!’

…things is not…

I’m not sure I possess the descriptive powers to do justice to what appeared in front of me. I only know that time slowed and a specific kind of silence fell across the table as we contemplated what I’d done. I imagine this is what fillets of Blobfish look like, garnished with a massive slug. Grey flaps of ick wobbled under the knife, while the tiniest shavings of gristly meat did their best to hide themselves within the folds of fat. The only recognizable thing was the slug, which was in fact a great big calf’s tongue, sitting there threateningly and scaring my potatoes.

…Tête de Veau

Let’s be clear. I like interesting things. I like stuff made with heads – my crispy pig’s head croquette at The Hand & Flowers was joyous. What I thought I was going to get here was something along the lines of fromage de tête – brawn by any other name – and when done well, as it often is across the Channel, a thing of beauty. That is not a description which was ever going to attach itself to my plate of calf’s head, which was now staring back at me, eyelessly. Apparently there are various clubs and societies dedicated to this dish whose members tend to sound like something out of the Darwin Awards, or at the very least dangerous sports enthusiasts, psychotic mountaineers and Great White hand feeders. I’ll be honest, I didn’t know what was brain, and what was not, I scraped what ‘meat’ I could from what I hoped were jowls, and ate almost all of the tongue. Tête de veau is accompanied by sauce ravigote, the version here best described as nuclear egg mayonnaise, with a mustard hit specifically designed to kick the shit out of whatever it is smeared upon. For that, I am eternally grateful. I would be lying, however, if I said I cleared my plate.

Sole Meuniere

I did what I could. My girlfriend had sole meuniere. It was exquisite, and she let me have much more of it than usual, clearly out of pity. Sadly, the last mouthful of delicate fish revealed a piece of tongue she had hidden beneath it – the result of a greatly appreciated gesture of empathy she had simply been unable to complete. There was a plate of mixed vegetables too, which were perhaps the only real evidence that this might not be the perfect restaurant – I thought they resembled leftover Chinese, but by this stage my critical faculties had deserted me.

Crème brulee, chocolate mousse & suggestive biscuit

I had a crème brulee – I’m pretty sure it was excellent – and there was a chocolate mousse with a speculoos biscuit poking out of it slightly rudely that was a little heavy but perfectly acceptable. With coffees, the bill was €104 excluding service, which seemed about right for the ‘experience’. Next time I am in Belgium, I fully intend to revisit Taverne du Passage, and have a fabulous meal. I will just make sure I avoid this particular homage to cattle, if you’ll excuse an Orwellian pun. Despite what Nigel Farage, Norfolk and half the Tory party may think, we cannot blame Brussels for everything that goes wrong in Europe.

Jan 2013

If you ever need chocolate, lace, waffles, beer, mussels or endless references to Martin McDonagh’s rather good 2008 film, you will find them in Bruges. We took a short break there simply for the sake of it rather than because we’d accidentally shot any children whilst assassinating priests or wanted to find midgets dressed as schoolboys. We did climb to the top of the belltower, but were unable to throw ourselves off as all the openings are covered in wire mesh.

Bruges is a beautiful medieval city that has been attracting visitors for centuries before Colin Farrell turned up, despite what social media seems to think when you tell it you’re going there. Some of the architecture might well be described as ‘chocolate box’, but then that’s probably why it holds such a vast number of chocolatiers. We had a very pleasant time wandering around and hardening our arteries whilst trying not to turn our ankles on the cobbles. I suspect the combination of alcohol, confectionary, cobbles and canals make Bruges quite a dangerous place to live, but it’s marvellous for a long weekend.

Scallop cerviche

Inevitably we indulged in moules frites, chocolate fondues and beer stews, but a quick Google search had led me to the slightly more refined doors of Den Gouden Harynck (which I’m certain translates as The Golden Herring, but you try finding a free Flemish translation service online,) a one Michelin starred restaurant owned and run by Philippe and Marijke Serruys, which I was quite excited about, with, it turned out, very good reason.

The restaurant is located in a back street behind the main art gallery, making it both central and yet somehow a little like your own private discovery. We were shown into the smaller of two rooms – the larger held far more tables, here it was just us and another group which meant the whole atmosphere was perhaps a little more restrained, but also gave us ample opportunity to concentrate on the food. This was formal dining, but the staff were unstintingly friendly, welcoming and patient with a number of my idiot questions which all made for a rather special experience. We opted for the four course tasting menu, although an inability to ignore the cheese trolley, amuses bouches and petit fours meant we ended up with considerably more than that.

Seed-crusted bream

An initial shot glass of salmon with a wasabi cream and salted lemon was a palate tingling glimpse of things to come and was soon followed by perfect bread rolls, which kept on arriving (I was told to stop at three) as did a little marinated sardine with beetroot puree – a little too fishy for my other half apparently, but I thought the earthy beetroot balanced out the oiliness of the fish very pleasingly. I was pretty pleasinglied all round if I’m honest.

An opening salvo of scallop cerviche was one of those happy dishes where you can taste everything separately and yet it all works together beautifully. Raw scallop can be a bit soapy, but here it zinged with freshness, picking up little hits of balsamic, rock salt, dill, chive and miniscule shreds of cauliflower. Frankly I’d have liked more, but luckily M. Serruys knew what he was doing with portion size – not one of my strong points.

Venison noisettes

Seed crusted fillet of bream was cooked to perfection with the bite of the seeds married to the moist fish in a way that has seen me buy four seed mix from Tescos in what can only be described as a triumph of hope over expectation. Unfortunately, the arrival of ios7 means I can’t work my dictaphone app properly and have forgotten exactly what the accompanying puree was (mushroom?) but it worked perfectly with some caramelized cabbage and basil dressing. This was  superb cooking, even if it is really annoying to eat it with a guy trying to work his dictaphone.

Luckily, I definitely remember the main course of small noisettes of pink venison topped with lardo and singing in perfect harmony with a quince puree, mushrooms, cranberries and lardons. I don’t like Brussels sprouts and my girlfriend doesn’t like parsnips so the fact that they both made such brief appearances on our plates should tell you everything else you need to know.

I’m not going to tell you about the cheese board. Just look at the accompanying picture and tell me you could have resisted it. Especially not accompanied by prune and walnut bread, homemade piccalilli and an apple reduction. Dessert was a martini glass filled with passion fruit and berries like the poshest fruit salad, elevated to something totally other with an anjelica herb ice cream and tuile that added texture, a change of temperature and even further sophistication, were that possible.

By now I was pretty much in a making funny noises and being told not to lick the plates kind of mood, and the waiter was lucky I didn’t hug him when the complimentary petit fours, chocolate mousses and fruit jellies appeared. As did the chef to enquire whether or not we were being looked after, which we were very happy to answer in the affirmative. Our bill came in just shy of €200, without service. A small tip (literally) – you don’t appear to be able to leave gratuities on cards in Belgium which was a shame as the service was faultless (sadly we didn’t have much cash on us.) I’m not sure when I shall next be in Bruges, but one thing is for sure, when it is mentioned in future I shall be thinking a lot more about food being finished off than people. If you don’t get the reference, watch the film. And then go to Den Gouden Harynck and eat the food.

Originally posted Dec 2013

As a former schoolboy and resident in Bath, I have walked down the London Road at all times of day and night, and in all sorts of states. The traffic island by the bridge leading out on to the Warminster Road was the scene of a miraculous discovery by a search party in the wee small hours many years ago. I can say nothing about what was found except that (most of) it had been purchased at The Hat & Feather the evening before – anyone with a passing knowledge of Bath in the eighties and nineties will know what I mean. The London Road itself used to become progressively dodgier the further you went along it – there was a famous stabbing at the Longacre Tavern a few years ago, and any pub whose history includes both the words ‘famous’ and ‘stabbing’ is probably best avoided. This has become easier as the road itself has somewhat gentrified, a process which has included the little-mourned departure of The Longacre Tavern.

Black pudding Scotch egg

The best known pub in the area now is a very different beast, and has attracted acclaim far and wide for both its food and its attitude. I first went to the King William one hungover morning some years ago after a friend’s wedding, having heard good things and in need of a Sunday roast. The roast was excellent, but the price tag gave me a bigger headache than the one I’d brought with me. However, they were clearly ahead of the curve, as the eye-wateringly expensive Sunday lunch has become very much the norm these days – happily on this visit, the bill seemed far more reasonable.

Crispy pigs ears

My friend Philippa, who has appeared in Food Ponce a couple of times, has had the very good sense to move to Bath and as I was working there in the evening, lunch seemed a mind-bogglingly stupid thing not to do. The King William is the kind of space that the phrase ‘lovely little pub’ was invented for, with its relatively tiny bar snuggled in between two rooms containing the kind of furniture that is probably a lot more expensive than it looks. It is almost impossible not to fall in love with a place that offers crispy pigs’ ears as a bar snack so I ordered some. To be honest, they were a bit more crispy than ear-y, but tart(ar)ed up they made a marvellous nibble and I was just glad they were there.

Chicken livers

There is a perfectly sound bar menu including pretty much everything you’d expect – fish and chips, steak, a burger – and a changing lunch menu, with three options for each course, none of which were exactly rewriting the rulebook, but then we have rules for a reason. A gorgeous black pudding scotch egg came with a perfectly runny yolk and a homemade piccalilli with just enough wince to cut across it. Chicken livers on toast are simple enough to do, and therefore very easy to cock up, which they avoided with perfect cooking and a rich creamy sauce subtly undercut by thin strips of what may well have been ever so slightly pickled mushrooms.

Wild mushroom, pearl barley and parmesan

For main course, wild mushroom, pearl barley and parmesan was exactly the earthy delight you’d imagine – with shards of parsnip to elevate it from comfort food to something a little more refined. My pan-fried haddock with shallot and caper potatoes and caper butter looked divine, although I generally believe bowls are for fish to live in rather than to be served on. It was cooked to perfection with a crispy skin and everything tasted fine except, and it pains me to write this, the fish. We both tried it and agreed that it retained that slightly fishy tang denoting a slight lack of freshness, which is really not what you expect from somewhere doing everything else so well.

Pan fried Had It

It always strikes me as a little odd when wines are described as drinkable, as you would think that was the least they should aim for, but both a Maccabeo Chardonnay and a Picpoul de Pinet were exactly that. Desserts didn’t really tempt us as neither of us felt like brownies or brioches or cheese at lunchtime and so we asked for the bill. By this time, the bar was unsurprisingly full, although in one this size that’s not all that difficult, and the smiling manager handed me a bill for £50 excluding generally excellent service. I was far too English to mention the fish, and it seems uncharitable to bring it up again now, but I do so merely to highlight how pleasant the rest of our experience had been. The King William is a fine pub that deserves to be doing as roaring a trade as its size allows, and on my next visit, I’m sure that fishbowl will be nothing more than a distant memory.

Originally posted Nov 2013

There are certain ‘destination’ restaurants, and if you drop enough clangingly enormous hints, sooner or later you might even get taken to one. I had stamped my feet and said “But I want to!!!” like some kind of middle-aged Verruca Salt so many times that my girlfriend’s principal reason to take me to Tom Kerridge’s Hand & Flowers for my birthday was probably to shut me up. I didn’t of course, but I am beyond grateful to her and may well be quiet for an extended period now, especially if I’m given some of his pork scratchings to nibble on.

Crispy pig’s head

There may be more beautiful phrases in the English language than ‘Two Michelin starred pub’ but I can’t think of any. In this case, however, I would have to take certain issue with the pubbiness of the whole venture. Mr Kerridge’s recently enhanced TV presence and the clear brilliance of his cooking meant that the first thing we noticed on our arrival was the rather large extension being attached to the side of the building. Admittedly there is nothing inherently un-pubby about that, (although I wonder how many other pubs are expanding at this point in the recession,) but even the most battle-hardened CAMRA member would have to admit there are very few ‘proper’ pubs doing two sold-out lunch sittings on a Monday in late October. Again, that is not a criticism, but reading up on the pub, they have advertised four bar stools set up ‘for locals’, and I have to say that if I fancied a pint in Marlow, I’m not sure a stool squashed up against the bar of the Hand & Flowers would be where I’d have it. This is not a pub. It is a restaurant that happens to be in a pub, and if I sat at the bar, ordered a Guinness and took my paper out, I’d feel about as out of place as Marcus Wareing in a Wimpy, no matter how warm the welcome. The Hand and Flowers is all about the food, and I have very little issue with that.

An appalling photo of a stunning scallop

We were taken to a sturdy table in the snug and slightly darkened main room of the restaurant – if I’m honest, a little more natural light wouldn’t hurt – and settled down with the menus and a palpable air of excitement. This was only heightened by the arrival of some light as a feather sourdough and a soda bread with a deliciously sneaky black pepper bite. We also got a slab of deeply satisfying salted butter that I half wanted to take to Dover and wave at the French to show them what butter should really taste of. We were also brought a little newspaper cone of fat whitebait and Marie Rose sauce, which pleased me no end. Not enough places serve whitebait to help you think, no matter how many times Jeeves tells us fish is good for the brain.

There is a very reasonably priced set menu at £15 for two courses or £19.50 for three, not to mention award winning fish and chips for £16.50 but, dear reader, it was my birthday. My crispy pig’s head was a joy to behold in every sense, a thin stick of perfect crackling setting off the unctuosness of the croquette (my other half even described it as “ a bit dirty – like really, really, really good KFC”, and I kind of knew what she meant.) The pigginess quotient was further increased by the addition of a beautifully rich sliver of pancetta and one of the best black puddings I have ever tasted and sharpened by a slice of pickled rhubarb, a coulis and a few fronds of chickweed. And yet this was not the best of the starters. Blowtorched Scottish scallop came in a densely satisfying mead and beef stock, further enriched with shavings of truffle and a flowery hint of nasturtium and apple. It tasted both familiar and yet unlike anything we had ever eaten before. While my starter may have been a wonder of technique and assembly, this was a veritable piece of alchemy, and probably the best thing we ate all day/month/possibly year.

Duck breast and faggot

Main courses were also excellent, although with a couple of minor reservations. As a complete sucker for The Great British Menu, I had to order the duck breast (winning dish 2010,) slow cooked immaculately, if not from the biggest duck. A juicy duck faggot, stickily rich duck sauce, duck fat chips and savoy cabbage with confit duck leg made this one of the duckiest dishes I have ever eaten even if the cabbage was a little over seasoned. Similarly, curly kale with crispy ham hock could have been improved with the crispiness not doing the meat any favours, but luckily I had a glass of very fruity Argentinian Trapezio to moisten it back up again.

Glazed apple tart

A tenderloin of Wiltshire pork was a sublime piece of meat, accompanied by another deeply flavoured and sticky piece of malt glazed cheek and garlic sausage with a little ham, potato dauphine and a mustard mayonnaise. The one thing we couldn’t get our heads around was a pickled mustard leaf. Try as we might, we both just found it too pungent and over-powering. Tom must like it, as you don’t throw a flavour this robust at a dish without giving it some thought, but it wasn’t for us. Maybe we should have asked him as he bustled through the restaurant at this point in his whites – the fact that the chef who had gained the Michelin stars was doing the actual cooking probably allows us to forgive him for the mustard leaf.

There were no quibbles about dessert. A perfect glazed apple tart came with an almost nutty burnt milk ice cream, but did not quite match my tonka bean panna cotta, which was almost (but not quite) incidental to the fireworks of the poached plums, baby meringues, plum sorbet and ginger wine jellies that sat on top of it. This was another stunning looking dish that ate as beautifully as it looked.

Tonka bean panna cotta. Mid-eat.

I didn’t get to see the bill, but I’m sure it was some considerable way north of the hundred pound mark, and for this level of cooking, not to mention the sense of occasion, it felt well worth the price, which of course one would say when one’s not paying. The second sitting had begun, although we were not hurried along in any sense, and we left feeling happy and very well-fed – just not much like we’d been to a pub. Luckily, that evening we went along to see The Book of Mormon, and the amount of gratuitous swearing involved meant we redressed the balance somewhat. It’s not a traditional musical, in much the same way that, try as it might, The Hand & Flowers isn’t a traditional pub, but you won’t catch me complaining. Unless you’re a pickled mustard leaf.

Oct 2013