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Fay's restaurant gongs for 2006
By Fay Maschler, Evening Standard 28.12.06
New blood: Bar Shu has imported five new chefs from Sichuan
Convincing winners: Piedmont style at La Collina
Good wine at Bedford and Strand
Brazil comes to Fitzrovia at Boteca Carioca
Tough to get a table: new life has been breathed into Scott's
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In the second part of her pick of the year, Fay focuses on Asian, Italian, Latin American, gastropubs and places where it's tough to get a table.
A TOUCH OF CHILLI, SICHUAN PEPPER, GINGER, YUZU, MUSTARD SEED, PEAS BLOSSOM
Anthony Sousa Tan, head chef of ATAMI, has worked in and helped develop the cooking at Nobu and Zuma. The definition of celebrity at these modern Westminster premises may have to be stretched to include a Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, but the food bears comparison with those glitzier enterprises - and sometimes surpasses them.
Try silky tofu, marble beef, soft-shell crab rolled in cucumber with mizuna leaves, Chilean sea bass, king crab in its shell and the inventive desserts. Drink your sake chilled.
In some cultures hua jiao (Sichuan pepper) would probably be classified as a narcotic, given its numbing and tingling effect on the tongue and lips. It is the spice that drives the cooking at BAR SHU where five chefs have been brought over from the south-western Sichuan province of China. Scholar of the region, Fuchsia Dunlop, is involved in helping interpret the food to a Western clientele. It blows your mind. I love it, but note that, like most restaurant critics, I am keen on eating offal.
I suspect that contemporary Beijing is a dead ringer for Walworth Road, so perhaps it shouldn't be so surprising to find a huge Cantonese restaurant there at the foot of a brutal bluepainted concrete block. The banqueting hall premises of DRAGON CASTLE boast giant fortified doors, a pool and fountain, red lanterns and bulbous chandeliers.
Don't be fobbed off with a menu for round-eyes. All the good stuff is on the Chinese menu, fortunately written in English. Daytime dim sum is excellent.
This has been a slow year for interesting Indian restaurant openings. I have a reader to thank for directing me to the notably good-value PALKI in Golborne Road, where the Bangladeshi chefs take pride in cooking Bengali food with its emphasis on freshwater fish and the kick of a slick of mustard oil. And the sweet waiters are proud to serve it.
The paperless lavatory - instead there are jets of warm water and gusts of warm air - at SAKI (meaning happiness) in West Smithfield, delightful though it is, cannot compare with the thrill of finding such precise, evolved Japanese food served by friendly staff in quirky premises complete with deli. I have heard that a new sushi chef has arrived who is even better than the chap he replaced.
I was recently on holiday with a group of people I'd never met before. Every single one asked which was my favourite restaurant. I've got about a dozen, but one that I use regularly as punctuation between other meals and somewhere to meet my extended family is ROYAL CHINA CLUB. The dim sum during the day is as superior as the phrase Royal China suggests. In the evening, once you get to know the managers Stone and Cookie, you can hand over ordering decisions to them. That is luxury.
EVERYONE LOVES AN ITALIAN
Oddly, given the bank balances of the locals, restaurants often struggle to survive in Primrose Hill. LA COLLINA has succeeded at an address that has seen several changes of incumbent. Chef Roberto Bullio is from Piedmont, a fact revealed in several dishes on the reasonable fixed-price Italian menu - the more you eat, the better the value. His charming girlfriend Cristina Nobile lives up to her name in managing the crush of customers in the cramped rooms.
The same formula of a different set price depending on how many courses you choose obtains at TRENTA, the restaurant that has taken the place of the diminutive Al San Vincenzo, near where Tony and Cherie have bought a house. Cover charge - here £2 - is something Tony might consider banning in a new bill, but great breads and fantastic pasticceria are sent out by chef Silvano Mazzoli, which helps justify this anachronism.
Naples is the hometown of Pasquale Amico, chef of VIA CONDOTTI, and it shows in the admirable rusticity and particularity of his cooking. Claudio Pulze, who has a knack of buying faltering sites and spending a frugal amount on re-fitting, has successfully created a neighbourhood restaurant with a witty name in an area best known for designer clothes shops.
A PASSION FOR ART, DESIGN AND FOOD
Oliver Peyton, once a bad-boy rock-n'roll restaurateur, has mended his ways and is devoting himself to improving catering in the public spaces of galleries, museums and shops. Indigenous produce honourably nurtured is at the heart of his operations and can be appreciated at THE NATIONAL DINING ROOMS in the Sainsbury Wing of The National Gallery, where you eat lavishly in the restaurant part and with more restraint at the communal tables of The Bakery.
In 2006 Peyton has also taken over the restaurant of The Wallace Collection and given it a French accent, launched the endearingly easygoing menu at The National Café in the East Wing of The National Gallery and opened the charming Meals in Heal's, making insouciant reference in the design to the shop's association with the British Arts & Crafts movement. Not bad for one year.
UPSTAIRS DOWNSTAIRS
Guerrilla restaurants - enterprises that open and close quickly with their location known to a select few - are apparently the future. The just-for-Christmas Reindeer in Brick Lane, set up by the chaps from Bistrotheque in Bethnal Green, is an early example. Ultra-discreet doors in the wall, reminiscent of dives in New York's Lower East Side, have been a feature of this year.
One such opens onto stairs leading to UPSTAIRS BAR & RESTAURANT in Brixton, run by Philippe Castaing, owner of Opus Café. A chef from the burgeoning diaspora who have worked for the Nigel Platts-Martin group offers a small, well-formed, imaginative menu in cosy surroundings.
Just a framed menu on a wall in Landor Road, Clapham, alerts potential customers to FOUR O NINE above the Landor pub. Chef Iain Smart, previously at Chez Bruce in the NP-M group, is cooking not as well as his mentor Bruce Poole but well enough to up the level of gastronomy in Clapham.
In Covent Garden go down the stairs to BEDFORD & STRAND to find the sort of operation that used to be called a wine bar but, thanks to its owners being in the wine trade, one with an exciting drinks list and also carefully considered food. It is a delightful independent exception in an area struggling in chains.
A CRITICAL MASS OF GASTROPUBS
What is there left to say about gastropubs except that they breed like rabbits - from the same two parents. An exception to the gastronomic part of this rule is the food at BACCHUS in Hoxton, which utilises laboratory cooking techniques favoured by the likes of Ferr·n Adrià and Heston Blumenthal.
Chef Nuno Mendes has worked for the latter, and owner Philip Mossop is keen to offer what he describes as "Fine Dining in Trainers". It is a brave, praiseworthy effort but the sous-vide preparation is sometimes reminiscent of boil-in-the-bag.
Tom and Ed Martin, owners of The Well, The White Swan, and The Gun, have this year opened THE EMPRESS OF INDIA in Victoria Park. Supplying "all the human frame requires" ( breakfast, dinner, lunch and tea), they are fortunate in having Tim Wilson, formerly of Medcalf, as chef.
You could cite THE NORFOLK ARMS as part of the gentrification of King's Cross. Fortunately the revamp has been done with intelligence and flair, exhibiting a passion for basically Spanish food, wines and sherries, although the owners are said to be French. Stepney is holding out against the forces of foccacia. L'OASIS, where Irish-born chef Bernadette Ford is cooking, lives up to its name. The menu is unusually flexible and accommodating and there is plenty of space to sprawl.
A LITTLE LATIN MAGIC
Just in time to fulfil the prediction that South American was going to be the new trend in London eating, the Brazilian BOTECO CARIOCA in Fitzrovia and Cuban LA BODEGUITA DEL MEDIO in Kensington opened towards the close of 2006.
Feijoada, the national dish of Brazil based on casseroled smoked pork and black beans served with accompaniments of rice, spring greens, fresh orange sections and toasted manioc flour (farofa), is done extremely well at Boteco Carioca, as are grilled meats and fruit-based Caipirinhas. Staff are charming.
Drinking mojitos based on white rum and lime is a must in the evocation of Havana's Bodeguita del Medio opened by Simon Drummond Brady and Ranald McDonald of Boisdale fame. New Zealander Jake Young in the kitchen thinks up ways to embellish traditional Cuban cuisine. Were Hemingway alive, would he hang out here? Maybe.
TRY FOR A TABLE IN FEBRUARY 2007
Where Christopher Corbin and Jeremy King go, will their customers obediently follow? The chaps who made Le Caprice, The Ivy, J Sheekey and latterly The Wolseley numbers on the speed dials of the beau monde have opened ST ALBAN in a faceless block in a part of Regent Street that I thought was called Lower Regent Street. No historical or architectural impositions on the interior have resulted in a look, created in partnership with architects Stiff and Trevillion, that is a curious tribute to the Seventies.
Chef Francesco Mazzei's Italian is emphatic and mostly laudable but the menu lacks what I thought was one of the secrets of the pair's success - kind-hearted empathy for any culinary mood a customer might be in. It is full to bursting now.
I suspect the announcement of "sorry fully booked" at TOM'S KITCHEN could sometimes be attributed to the front-of-house staff struggling to cope at the much anticipated opening of the diffusion line from celebrity chef Tom Aikens. A soft opening would have helped, but apparently time ran out. I'm planning a Been There . . . And Back Again article for the New Year.
The difficulty in getting a table at SCOTT'S, re-opened this month by Caprice Holdings, was probably exacerbated by stories in the media about free food and drink due to a licensing problem - but it might just have been good news spread by word of mouth.
What was once a London dining institution has had glorious new life breathed into it. The capacious crustacea bar in the centre, a fish-based menu that does our island proud and the feeling of solidity conveyed by the design probably all contributed to Terence Conran's overheard quiet word of praise, "appropriate". Unfortunately the licensing problem has been resolved. You have to pay.
ADDRESSES
ATAMI, 37 Monck Street, SW1 (020 7222 2218) £110.
BAR SHU, 28 Frith Street, W1 (020 7287 6688) £90.
DRAGON CASTLE, 114 Walworth Road, SE17 (020 7277 3388) £70.
PALKI, 44 Golborne Road, W10 (020 8968 8764) £55.
SAKI, 4 West Smithfield, EC1 (020 7489 7033) £90.
ROYAL CHINA CLUB, 40-42 Baker Street, W1 (020 7486 3898) £100.
LA COLLINA, 17 Princess Road, SW1 (020 7483 0192) £70.
TRENTA, 30 Connaught Street, W2 (020 7262 9623) £80.
VIA CONDOTTI, 23 Conduit Street, W1 (020 7493 7050) £90.
NATIONAL DINING ROOMS, Sainsbury Wing, National Gallery, Trafalgar Square, WC2 (020 7747 2525) £100.
FOUR O NINE, 409 Clapham Road, SW9 (020 7737 0722) £90.
UPSTAIRS BAR & RESTAURANT, 89b Acre Lane, SW2 (020 7733 8855) £70.
BEDFORD & STRAND, 1a Bedford Street, WC2 (020 7836 3033) £70.
BACCHUS, 177 Hoxton Street, N1 (020 7613 0477) £85.
EMPRESS OF INDIA, 130 Lauriston Road, Victoria Park, E9 (020 8533 5123) £85.
NORFOLK ARMS, 28 Leigh Street, WC1 (020 7388 3937) £68.
L'OASIS, 237 Mile End Road, E1 (020 7702 7051) £64.
BOTECO CARIOCA, 93 Charlotte Street, W1 (020 7637 0050) £70.
LA BODEGUITA DEL MEDIO, 47 Kensington Court, W8 (020 7938 4147) £75.
ST ALBAN, 4-12 Regent Street, SW1 (020 7499 8558) £105.
TOM'S KITCHEN, 27 Cale Street, SW3 (020 7349 0202) £95.
SCOTT'S, 20 Mount Street, W1 (020 7495 7309) £115.
Prices estimate an a la carte, three-course meal with wine and service for two.
