Morning:
14°c
Some fares could fall by more than a third when Oyster is extended to every national rail station in London, it has emerged
More...
New Moon is nothing if not an international advertisement for the hungry virtues of virginity and young people can’t get enough of it
The Twilight Saga: New Moon
Theatre
A smart, prickly and rewarding view of sexual and emotional confusion
Cock
Restaurants
Kitchen W8 is a bargain for this area, if such sophistication is what you crave
Kitchen W8
Too long and drawn out but very entertaining with excellent special effects
This is a peculiar play and does not work for me. Some of it is very funny but there are real flaws
Alex has a strong powerful voice and was faultless, she is far better now than she was on the X-Factor
London,
David Sexton's rating
Reader rating
Phone: 020 7248 2469
Open: Open Mon-Sat 12-4.30pm, Sun 12-3.30pm.
Mastermind: Candice Webber, head chef at St Paul’s
Eating in a historic building is a lovely idea but almost invariably a disheartening reality. It is, for example, absolutely uplifting simply to be in Hawksmoor’s lovely Orangery in Kensington Gardens but to enjoy lunching there you have more or less to ignore what’s on the plate, even in the glass.
The market leaders in this form of catering are “Digby Trout”, words to strike fear, in my experience. The firm specialises in operating restaurants “within venues where eating may not be the prime reason for our customer’s visit”, as they carefully put it, a doctrine they put into practice quite mercilessly. Venues include such places as the Royal Institution, the Tower, Duxford, Stonehenge … and the Orangery.
There’s often a good reason why the cooking in such surroundings has to be modest. When no alterations to historic buildings are allowed by English Heritage, for example, restaurants have to be run more or less without kitchens, serving up meals on wheels, in effect. Even allowing for that, the discrepancy between the splendour of the surroundings and the ropiness of the food is often dismaying. Surely it must be possible to do better?
Harbour and Jones is a catering firm set up by Patrick Harbour and Nathan Jones in 2004 to bring “an exciting new dimension” to the business and it now employs 300 people, serving banks, law firms, TV companies, theatres and the like. The Restaurant at St Paul’s is their first stand-alone venture.
We went to a special evening press opening last month and weren’t greatly impressed. The food was hit and miss — tooth-breaking pork scratchings, sour sauces — and we noticed, in the rest of the crypt, not in the restaurant itself, masses of mice scampering around, slightly offputting to delicate sensibilities. It’s an old building, to say the least, large too, so perhaps only to be expected. Still...
Returning for lunch last week, though, proved throughly enjoyable. This corner of the crypt has been pleasingly converted by the architects Wells Mackereth, working with the Surveyor of St Paul’s. The walls are whitewashed, there are terracotta tiles on the ground floor, seagrass matting on the mezzanine, nice plain oak furniture. The kitchen, masterminded by head chef Candice Webber, is reassuringly visible and seriously equipped. There are only 48 covers and the table spacing is generous.
The menu is absurdly British, opening with “Britain in a glass — rhubarb & apple juice with English sparkling wine” quoted at “6 British pounds”, a daft formula. Yet, surprisingly, this mannered list delivers. Two courses cost £16, three courses £20 and they are a fair bargain.
“Scottish squid, peas, mint & chilli” was some really fresh-tasting pieces of squid, quick-cooked, with fresh peas , deep-fried mint leaves and little strips of pepper — very simply enjoyable. Wood pigeon with a herb salad was warm, gamey, a little chewy — but that’s wild pigeon for you — nicely dressed with parsley, chives and cooked cranberries. It’s quite gutsy stuff for a place that’s aimed at least partly at tourists as well as City locals.
“Cep-spiced roast pollock” was two big pieces of moist, flaky white fish, with a brown crust that didn’t taste of much, though that was no loss, the fish itself being so good, pleasingly accompanied by buttery samphire and cool spears of cucumber. “Seared sea trout” was a little overcooked, although far from spoiled, served with an adventurous salad of yellow bean and fennel, refreshingly sharpened by verjuice, although a little too crisp to my taste.
From the short list of puddings, lemon verbena tart was a pretty straightforward curdy job, with a delicious poached peach on the side. Neal’s Yard cheese was well worth a £2 supplement. Served with good toasted bread and wonderfully winey sultanas were great big hunks of perfectly conditioned Stichelton blue, soft Wigmore ewe, and a top cheddar, Montgomery. Here the British thing made absolute sense.
Where it makes no sense at all is on the short wine-list. English wine remains, quite simply, a mistake, for those who try to drink it at any rate. Three Choirs “Winchcombe Downs” Rosé from Gloucestershire, listed at £20.50 a bottle, bears little resemblance to wine as ordinarily understood, more the juice of some kind of rightly little known pink gooseberry. But there are decent riojas, red and white, and some bottles from Chile and the Languedoc, starting at £15.50, if no claret or burgundy.
Service isn’t British at all. In fact, we initially had a waitress whose English wasn’t quite up to the job, in odd contrast to all the talk of Norfolk chickens, Cornish potatoes and Eton messes, although the Sardinian waiter who took over was completely charming in a way no Englishman ever manages.
So there. We’ve lunched at St Paul’s, or at least in the crypt, and enjoyed it greatly. It can be done. Historic buildings need not serve historically bad food. Next, please.
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
