Cheese and Biscuits Restaurant of the Year 2010 - The Ledbury

When people find out I'm a food blogger, their response is invariably "So which is your favourite restaurant, then?". Actually that's not quite true - their first question is usually "What's a food blog?" but once that has been explained, that's their second question. And without trying to be difficult, my response to that is "I don't really have one." Because I don't - I have many favourite restaurants depending on mood and location and cuisine, and picking just one is pretty much impossible. How on earth do you compare the spice and fire and belly-aching fun of Chilli Cool with the sophisticated French style of Racine or the gutsy, comforting British fare at the Harwood Arms? They're all brilliant places in their own way, equally enjoyable, equally rewarding.

And yet here we are, and I imagine you've already noticed the title of this post, so obviously I do think one particular restaurant has something to mark it apart from the rest. Before I get on to explaining my reasons, though, and in the spirit of various other far more experienced and respected critics, here's a brief summary of the best and worst of 2010.


Best bar is a difficult one, because although I enjoy knocking back a rhubarb gin and tonic as much as anyone in the glittering downstairs space at Bob Bob Ricard, and believe me I have done on far too many occasions this year, we still can't escape the fact that Brian Silva's bar at Rules is still the pinnacle of achievement in this field, and so, for the 2nd year running, it's still my favourite place to pop in for a drink. If you can, try and go while the Christmas decorations are up - with the log fire going and the smell of pine, it's the most wonderfully festive place to guzzle a Negroni.


Best PR campaign special mentions go to Twitter kings @Polposoho and @DishoomLondon, who by simply engaging with all feedback, good and bad, in a friendly and professional way have shown, by example, the very best way to use social media to spread the word about your restaurant. It surely helps that they are both great restaurants, but their energy and commitment are still impressive. The overall winners, however, are the guys behind the Owl and Pussycat in Shoreditch, who left such a thoughtful, reasoned and detailed response to my rather grumpy review that it even made me want to go back and give them another go, which I guess is exactly the reaction they were hoping for. So well done them.


There have, sadly, been plenty of contenders for worst PR campaign, not least of which Cantina Laredo who began by booking in various groups of bloggers to try their new "gourmet" Mexican restaurant, then promptly cancelled them in a fit of pique when we all started writing up our awful meals. Then they tried a different, equally worrisome tactic - inviting rival restaurateurs in for a free meal, taking a photo then posting it on Twitter as if it was some kind of official endorsement. That Cantina Laredo is a hugely overpriced, mediocre Covent Garden tourist trap isn't really the issue here - their cackhanded response to criticism should serve as an example of how not to go about managing the image of your business. But the defensive attitude of Cantina Laredon't pales into comparison to that of Dego, who as the only restaurant ever on this blog to have their PR "guru" openly leave belligerent comments on a bad review of their client, as well as presumably cajoling friends and staff to do the same on this and other restaurant review sites, take the crown for worst PR campaign overall. I am, however, eternally thankful to "jp", "Liza C", "SP" and the rest of the Dego shill gang for being so entertainingly useless.


On a similar note, I'm sure I would be justified in making Dego my Worst overall restaurant, as my meal there was truly appalling, but let's not forget, back in August, a restaurant so diabolical, not just inept but actually pro-actively evil, that in comparison makes Dego look like the Fat Duck. Please, please Aberdeen Angus, I beg of you, please go out of business as soon as you possibly can. London and the world will be immeasurably better off with your demise.


Now, on to best overall restaurant. I had many, many fantastic meals this year, more than I could ever hope for and certainly far more than I can safely mention here without either boring you all senseless or leaving some very worthy contenders out. But honourable mentions should go to Polpetto, a charming and shabbily glamorous room tucked away up an anonymous staircase in Soho that serves some of the very finest and most interesting Italian food in London; Hawksmoor and Goodman, which manage to outdo each other on every visit and are the finest ambassadors to British beef - and British steak restaurants - you could wish for; Brawn, a brave and brilliant new restaurant in Hackney which is an instant classic; and I could hardly go without mentioning my two favourite Vietnamese places, Mien Tay in Battersea and the Viet Grill in Shoreditch, each always great fun.


Why then, overall, the Ledbury? A few reasons, not least of which the food, which is as close to perfection as you could ever want and never fails to satisfy on every single level. The dishes that Brett Graham is turning out are not just wonderfully presented, technically brilliant and bursting with fresh, seasonal flavours, they always have that extra touch of mystery, a surprise ingredient or an unusual texture that speak of a true craftsman at the very top of his game. I can still remember the first time I ate his scallop ceviche with horseradish snow - the sweet plump scallops topped with spicy ice, surrounded by a slick of bright green pesto, a perfect dish if ever one was made - and I'm sure I will for the rest of my days. But add to that the service, professional and friendly without being too stiff or too casual, a bright and comfortable room, and a good value lunch menu, and you have yourselves the best restaurant in London. Much as I was tempted to award less high-falutin' (and let's face it, cheaper) establishments the top gong, I find myself looking forward to my meals at the Ledbury with childlike glee and giddy excitement that is matched by nowhere else.


Looking forward to 2011, trips to Japan, New York and Italy are on the cards if the snow ever melts, but closer to home the first big red mark on the diary is Heston Blumenthal's Dinner, where I'm booked into with a combination of optimism (for a new direction for this obviously talented chef and the team behind him) and fear (for my bank balance). But aside from such big-name arrivals, and mindful of the howls of protest I will surely receive from fans of Madrid or New York or Tokyo, I am fiercely of the opinion that there is no greater place in the world right now to eat out than London. Maddeningly wallet-draining it may occasionally be, but for sheer variety, exuberance and idiosyncratic charm, there is nowhere like it, and nowhere else I'd rather be. So many thanks, as ever, to everyone who has read this blog at any time over the last 12 months, in numbers that bewilder as much as they delight, and all the best for Christmas and the New Year.

Pictures from the Ledbury (1st and last) kindly supplied by Hollow Legs

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Dishoom, Covent Garden

Last night, as I shuffled down St Martins Lane on my way to dinner, I couldn't help casting a glance towards Cantina Laredo. Everything looked the same as my previous visit - the phalanx of superfluous staff huddled around the entrance, the hotel buffet décor, the tourist clientele. A table of middle-aged women were watching in rapt silence as a portion of £7 guacamole was prepared table-side, each with a slowly melting margarita in hand. To be fair, they looked like they were enjoying themselves, and for a second I doubted myself - am I so much of a foodie snob that my own idea of what constitutes a good meal is so far out of step with normality I expect perfection from restaurants that can't be expected to provide it? But then I thought of Mien Tay and Bob Bob Ricard and Rules and Tayyabs and then realised, no, it's not me, it's them. Cantina Laredo are just a bit crap.

Fortunately, a furtive glance through the front windows was as close as I got to Cantina Laredo, as I was on my way to Dishoom, another brand-new restaurant in Covent Garden which had enjoyed a very successful launch campaign. Billing itself as "London's first Bombay Café", it's certainly a lovely room, with high ceilings and art-deco fittings, and even at 6pm there was a great buzz about the place. The staff, too, looked the part in their smart monochrome outfits and were certainly friendly, but were manically over-attentive, which created some bizarre and often hilarious moments throughout the evening. More on that anon.


There's a really interesting drinks menu at Dishoom, including a G&T infused with Indian tea and a mojito involving cardamom and cloves. My pomegranate and sweet chilli martini was delicious, thick with tropical flavours and a perfectly judged chilli hit; I enjoyed it so much I ordered two. The house crisps too were brilliant, sprinkled with a red powder that tasted of citrus and chilli and deftly fried with no unpleasant flavour of cooking oil (take note Gauthier). It all would have made a perfect start to the meal, had I not been interrupted every ten seconds by a barrage of questions -

"Can I get you some more crisps?"
"No thanks I haven't finished these yet."
"Would you like another drink?"
"I haven't finished this one yet."
"Have you decided what you want to eat?"
"I've only just sat down!"

Even more irritating were the tiny thimble-sized glasses of tap water which required a refill every thirty seconds; after half a dozen refills my waitress (understandably perhaps) asked if I would like a jug of water on the table. This sounded like a very sensible option until I realised they wanted paying for it. "It costs a pound, and 20p goes to a water charity in India." "Where does the other 80p go?" I asked, admittedly rather sarcastically. She grinned awkwardly for a few seconds until I put her out of her misery - "I think I'll stick with tap, thanks".


Eventually, if largely just to stem the constant requests, we ordered some food - a couple of starters, a couple of items from the grill, the house black dhal and a small selection of bread. And about a minute later, it all arrived. At once. The speed was simply astonishing; anywhere less salubrious I would assume it would have been hanging around under a hot lamp but no, this was all just cooked very, very quickly to order and arrived piping hot. Impressive stuff, if a little overwhelming.


The calamari were pretty good - interesting sweet spicing, moist tender flesh and - delightfully - including the crispy tentacles as well as the more usual body meat. They were slightly too greasy for my liking but my dinner companion didn't have an issue with them so that's probably just me. The house dahl was delicious, thicker than most dahls perhaps but none the worse for that, and if the worst thing I can say about the chilli cheese toast was that it tasted like a nice bit of cheese on toast then I suppose it can't have been bad. Probably not very Indian though, I don't think.


The grilled items were tasty if not spectacular. Chicken tikka was moist and with lovely crunchy bits of char on the outside, but the spicing was a bit tame and sweet. Similarly, lamb chops were impressively charred and nicely pink and moist inside, but neither the meat or the marinade was particularly flavourful. It's impossible not to compare any South Asian lamb chops with those at Tayyabs, and although these clearly used better meat (I'm sometimes not even sure the lamb chops at Tayyabs are anything you could technically describe as lamb) I would take those scraggy-looking but powerfully spiced offerings over these any day. The bread's better at Tayyabs too, although I did quite like the Dishoom roti.


No word of a lie, by about 6:20, 20 minutes after we'd sat down, 15 minutes after we'd ordered and about 14 minutes after the food arrived, we were done. I can eat pretty quickly at the best of times (years of practice, you see) but here it was a frantic rush to taste as much as you could before it all went cold, which would have been ideal if we were off to see a play (the pre-theatre crowd could do far worse than eat at Dishoom) but as we weren't seemed a bit of a shame. Still, the food was fresh, attractive and very reasonably priced - our bill came to about £50 for two with quite a lot of food and three alcoholic drinks - and in Covent Garden that puts it head and shoulders above most anywhere else.


Cutely, and possibly in a nod to the original Bombay cafés, Dishoom bring the bill to your table in a little metal cup with a bell in the base, with the instruction to "ring the bell when you're ready to pay". I put my credit card in the cup, and looked up. From the other end of the room, a young waitress caught my eye with a terrified, rigid stare. I stared back, assuming eventually the penny would drop and she'd come over and let me pay, but no - she stayed quite still, occasionally casting darting glances around the room to the other staff, as if waiting for permission to move. Eventually, I realised the poor girl had been instructed not to do anything unless the proper procedures were followed, and once I dutifully rung the bell cup, she raced over with an expression somewhere between gratitude and relief.

In the starkest possible contrast to the place a couple of doors down, and despite the bonkers service, I left Dishoom happy. The food wasn't the best thing about my meal, but it's honest, interesting and fresh enough to stand out amongst most of the dross in the area, and is well worth the very reasonable prices they charge. Of course you can get better Indian food elsewhere, but it's still a lot better than it needs to be considering the number of hungry, clueless tourists that will wander over from Leicester Square, and anywhere better than it needs to be is good enough in my book. It's a restaurant with a character and style all of its own, with heart and energy and not a £7 guacamole in sight. I'm sure it will do very well.

7/10

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