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An awesome and ridiculous film that leaves you thrilled beyond the point of your natural endurance
2012
Theatre
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Blood Brothers
Music
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London,
David Sexton's rating
Reader rating
Description: "Oozing class", this "traditional" and "glamorous" Theatreland "classic" yet again inspired more survey reports than anywhere else in town; an "unbeatable" fish pie heads up the "brilliant" but "unfussy" fish-and-seafood menu served in its "cosy" panelled rooms.
Food: 
Service: 
Ambience:
Phone: 020 7240 2565
Website: http://www.j-sheekey.co.uk
Open: J. Sheekey is open for lunch Monday to Saturday from 12 noon until 3.00pm and from 12 noon until 3.30pm on Sunday. Dinner is served from 5.30pm until 12 midnight Monday to Saturday and from 6.00pm until 11.00pm on Sunday.
Good for: Romantic meals, Business, Good food, Ambience.
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Authentic look: J Sheekey's new oyster bar is perhaps the most convincing in London
In France tonight they’ll be eating oysters like crazy for “Réveillon”, perhaps after midnight mass. And then again on New Year’s Eve.
Quite right too. You can keep your mince pies and sausage rolls. Oysters are the most healthful and restorative food in the world. And they needn’t be expensive. In France, every self-respecting brasserie serves oysters at a reasonable price, with a glass of Sancerre or Muscadet thrown in.
But in London they are far from the pauper-fodder they were in Dickens’s day. “It’s a very remarkable circumstance, sir,” says Sam Weller to Mr Pickwick, “that poverty and oysters always seems to go together ...”
J Sheekey, part of Richard Caring’s enormous, plush restaurant empire, alongside Le Caprice, The Ivy, Scott’s and the rest, has just expanded by turning what used to be a secondhand bookshop into an oyster bar, though you would never guess its novelty from the décor (by Martin Brudnizki) which aims to look like it has been there since about 1900 and succeeds admirably. There is a big horseshoe-shaped bar with nice lighting, and a dark-wood-panelled room, bedecked with specially commissioned thesp-snaps by Alison Jackson.
It’s about the most convincing seafood bar in town. The service is Gallic, charming, expert — and most of the food is prepared before your eyes. To mark the opening there’s a special offer of a glass of Théophile Roederer champagne — light, decisively fizzy — with a half-dozen rock oysters from Strangford Lough in Northern Ireland, for just £15. Given that the glass of champagne on its own costs £11.25, that’s a bargain. These oysters are salty, fresh, not the greatest but still worth eating, although perhaps with some shallot vinaigrette rather than just a squeeze of lemon, which is all the natives ever require.
West Mersea natives, one of the most vital tastes you can ever put in your mouth, cost £32.50 a dozen — nearly £3 a mouthful. At the best place to eat them, the Company Shed in Mersea itself, they currently charge from £10.80 a dozen for the smallest up to £18 for the whoppers. Since there’s nothing to do with an oyster except open it and eat it the price comparison is stark.
The rest of the seafood at J Sheekey is also good but pricey. Dressed crab (£12.50) was a fresh-tasting little mound, topped with a sophisticated version of a Marie Rose sauce and grated egg, not quite a match for the more generous, rustic serving of crab toast enjoyed at the Bull & Last in Highgate for £7 a couple of weeks ago.
Smoked eel (£11.25) was two thick chunks, strong and oily, served with nice buttery halved Rosevale potatoes, horseradish and some purely decorative cress.
Sheekey’s fish pie (£9.75) is the relative bargain here: rich and comforting, with a good potato topping, crowned with breadcrumbs concealing big chunks of salmon, smoked haddock and white fish, possibly pollack, swimming in a sauce so buttery that it was more a mustardy hollandaise than a béchamel. Unfortunately, the first one we were served was undercooked, leaving the fish raw. When we sent it back, instead of apologising, the waiter was truculent, asking if the next one was “hot enough for you?” as though we were the problem.
You can drink brilliantly here if you don’t mind paying for a small glass the same price you’d pay for a bottle in the offy (good Macon Les Personnets des Deux Roches 2007, £7.75 a glass). And you can be ceremoniously brought tap water in a wine glass if you have the front to go beyond “still or sparkling?”
It is indeed easy to carry on enjoying yourself here — and hard to stick to the miser’s ration of one glass and six oysters (total calorie count almost nil). So poverty and oysters still go together — only these days the other way around.
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
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