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Five to try: Comfort Eating
Evening Standard 25.02.09
UPSTAIRS BAR AND RESTAURANT
89b Acre Lane (entrance Branksome Road) SW2 (020 7733 8855) £38
Comfort has been designed out of so many restaurants. Frequently what is wanted is a cosy nest where, like little fledglings, we'll be fed. Philippe Castaing, who owns Opus Café on the ground floor, has created two welcoming, cosseting floors above. Chef Daniel Budden, ex-La Trompette in Chiswick, prepares a sensibly brief seasonal menu with dishes such as foie gras and chicken liver parfait, beef bavette with wild mushrooms and praline baked Alaska.
PEARL LIANG
8 Sheldon Square, W2 (020 7289 7000) £34
Difficulties endured in finding this restaurant can be shrugged off once you have settled on to the banquettes or throne-like chairs upholstered in Schiaparelli pink that wind through the spacious premises. Reasonable prices for superior Cantonese cooking mean this is a frequent haunt of mine, the cold platter a regular order, emperor chicken my latest discovery. Check the free dim sum for children deal.
LE CAFÉ ANGLAIS
8 Porchester Gardens (Whiteleys), W2 (020 7221 1415) £35
Conviviality is something chef/proprietor Rowley Leigh admiringly invokes. One of the best menus in London with good deals and a handsome dining space where you can usually get a table on the spur of the moment makes Le Café Anglais a home from home for the many regulars. The rotisserie is the spinning heart of the kitchen, the list of hors d'oeuvres one of the most civilised things to have appeared in recent times.
ODIN'S
27 Devonshire Street, W1 (020 7935 7296) £52
A Patrick Procktor watercolour of Peter Langan still illustrates the menu at this restaurant, which Langan opened in the Sixties. Procktor and other artists “ate down” their works and Langan, with the help of Brian Sewell, added to a collection that makes a fascinating, soothing setting into which Anglo-French food and old-fashioned service fit like a glove.
MURANO
20-22 Queen Street W1, (020 629 8089) £40 (lunch)
Comfort can be derived from paying less than you otherwise might have to, as with the £25 lunch. The menu devised by Angela Hartnett is full of excellent conceits, many springing from her love of Italian food. Head chef Diego Cardoso, who has worked with Hartnett at The Connaught, maintains a consistent high standard. More vegetables than usually creep into Michelin-starred cooking are happily healthily in evidence.
Prices estimate a meal with wine for one.
Reader views (1)
I see so many reviews about places that serve all of this Anglo French/Italian etc. But where are the places that serve traditional English food like Steak and Kidney Pudding/Pie, Lancashire Hot Pot, Roast beef with Yorkshire Pudding and three Veg, Spotted Dick, Jam Roll and custard etc etc?
I can get plenty of that Italian and French food here in New York, but where am I going to dine when I pay a return visit to Blighty eh?
- John Bowles(Ex Pat Englishman), White Plains, New York,USA.
