You are here: »
Home » Posts filed under Gastropub
"Let me explain the concept at Tex Mex Tapas", the evening will invariably begin. "On this side of the menu are a bewildering number of completely unrelated items that look good value at first until you realise that each is the size of a postage stamp and you'll need about ninety to gather enough food together to form a decent meal. They'll arrive as and when we, the restaurant, decide to send them to you, not in whichever order makes the most culinary sense, and most will be straight out of the fridge as our tiny kitchen could never cope with cooking them all to order. On the other side of the menu are dishes that fall into the more usual starters and mains portions, except you'll have no idea what to order because you won't know how hungry you'll be after filling up on "tapas". Right, still or sparkling?"
No no no no no. Stop that nonsense right now. Tapas is Spanish, and only Spanish, bar food. If you want to come up with some wacky eye-catching concept for your latest restaurant venture then knock yourselves out - you're certainly in the right place in a city that already boasts a dessert restaurant specialising entirely in mango and will soon have somewhere you can go and eat hot dogs paired with champagne - but please, for the love of God, leave tapas alone. Tapas means cold Manzanilla, sliced Iberico ham and saucers of hot croquettas, it does not just mean 'small plates of whichever food you like', and it is certainly not anything so mundane as a 'selection of starters'. José in Bermondsey, Brindisa at Borough Market, Pepito in Kings Cross, these are tapas bars. Tapasia (I can't even type the name without cringing), a place on Old Compton street serving tuna sashimi with foie gras, and lamb cutlets with kimchi, is, clearly, not.
So when we sat down at Bistro Union in Clapham's smart Abbeville Road on Friday, my heart sunk when the words "let me explain our concept to you" and "this side of the menu is sort of English tapas" were uttered by our waitress. Issues with the misappropriation of the word "tapas" aside, I just think if you have to "explain a concept" you have something to hide when it comes to the food, but perhaps that's unfair - I suppose anywhere has a right to try something different. We ordered about 6 or 7 from the "English tapas" menu to share between the 3 of us and a main each, and hoped the self-consciously English menu tasted better than it looked.
In the main, it did. Some of the bar snack things were very nice indeed, such as the 'sausage and sage puffs' which were sort of a savoury wrapped pastry thing containing sausage meat, and anchovy toast which involved Bistro Union's own approximation of Gentleman's Relish anchovy spread. A fish finger sandwich was nice, too, with good texture contrasts and nice light mayonnaise, and the house bread was an interesting sourdough thing involving chunks of apple; not anywhere near as weird as it sounds.
But I'm afraid there were also problems too big to ignore. "Peas in a pod" (£2) was literally just that, a bowl of plain garden peas untreated in any way, fine if you like plain peas but I just wish they'd done something to them to justify me being in a restaurant. New season garlic was another victim of excessive simplification, just a halved roasted garlic served next to a small blob of tasteless goat's curd, neither ingredient shining. And "whelks and pickled shallots" were actively horrible, the seafood having the texture of rubber and no flavour at all, and the pickled shallots doing nothing to ease their passage through the gullet. The whelks were so distressing, in fact, I put out a panicky tweet asking if they really were supposed to taste like that; the general consensus came back that basically, yes, they are. I'm sure I've had them before though, without suffering quite so much of a negative psychological and physiological reaction.
Mains were, on the whole, better. A toad-in-the-hole was, needless to say, nowhere near as good as the Yorkshire pudding my grandma used to make but then we've been over that territory before - it was at least generously proportioned and containing very good Cumberland sausage. A lemon sole was slightly overcooked and swimming in butter but it was a nice fresh bit of fish and accompanying horseradish celeriac was lovely. Best of the bunch was my quail which was crunchy and soft in all the right places and served with a top quality Caesar-salad-a-like using Berkswell goat's cheese instead of parmesan - clever stuff.
Despite the odd horror, then, we actually just about still found enough to enjoy and with a final bill of £31 a head with a glass or two of wine each and a single slice of (unremarkable but not unpleasant) raspberry tart to share, you certainly get a lot for your money. But there was just something about the overall idea of Bistro Union that didn't quite work - from the try-hard ever-so-English menu that seemed to constrain and annoy instead of provide focus, to the oversimplified dishes that were probably aiming for unpretentious but ended up looking spartan and unfinished. There was also the added irritation of a cover charge which 'covered' sparkling water we didn't want and bread we didn't ask for, which automatically loses points around these parts. There's a possibility Bistro Union could evolve into a good neighbourhood restaurant once they abandon the "concept" of "English tapas", loosen up a bit and lose the whelks. Until then, my advice I'm afraid is to stay away.
5/10
There are few experiences more surreal than being the only customer in an empty restaurant and being comprehensively ignored by every member of staff. Certainly, there are times in life where the ability to make yourself invisible would come in handy - to avoid having to contribute in work meetings perhaps, or if you find yourself on the front row of a particularly confrontational stand-up comedy gig - but in a restaurant, it's not ideal. After a period staring thirstily towards Manson's handsome bar, while groups of waiting staff prodded importantly at cash registers and generally got on with the kinds of things waiting staff do when there isn't a customer at the other side of the room waiting to be served, I was beginning to wonder if the District Line had finally done what it has been threatening to do all these years and I'd died somewhere en route to Parson's Green. Not having been a particularly good Christian (I could never get over that whole "believing in God" stumbling block sadly) I began to worry I was trapped in Food Blogger Hell, condemned to pitifully flap for attention for all eternity, hungry, thirsty and forlorn.
In the midst of this existential panic, my friend arrived, helpfully reassuring both that I was not dead (at least not yet) and, by the fact that she'd managed to get from the front door to the table without being greeted or even noticed, that if I was in Food Blogger Hell, at least I wasn't alone. And then, finally, we managed to get served, and for the few precious minutes it took us to drink our aperitifs (sparkling wine and rhubarb, very good indeed but you'd hope so at £10.50 a glass) all was well with the world.
It wasn't that the food at Manson was bad, exactly - most of it was fine, some of it was good, and it did all look the part - but it was occasionally quite... odd. Take my starter of turbot with pigs trotter sauce; the sauce very well executed in that classically-trained way, being perfectly reduced and rich in flavour and colour, it just didn't sit very well with the fish - it felt like a sauce meant for a bloody hunk of rare venison or aged beef steak. And the fish itself was the strangest texture, not dry exactly but dense and congealed - fresh fish should break into moist flakes, but this split apart like meat jelly and I really missed a nice crispy skin. Caraway-cured sea trout though, paired with lightly pickled vegetables, was a more successful experiment and the pretty coils of Romanesco broccoli made for a very attractive plate of food.
Catastrophically underseasoned Mallard (as in, it was completely unseasoned) spoiled what could possibly have been a better dish, although even without sodium's helping hand I didn't detect much flavour in the meat. It was presented in a deep bowl which at first I thought was strange until I realised the duck and the salad vegetables were sitting on top of a wonderfully rich game soup of some kind - I could have easily just swallowed a pint of this on its own as nothing else was worth the effort. More ill-advised experimentation also affected my friend's roast gurnard - let's just say there's a reason you don't often see parsnips and fennel seed yoghurt on the same plate, although even that aside, the fish was overcooked and dry.
In the manner of a line manager tasked with motivating his staff, I will follow up bad feedback with good by saying the cheese course at Manson was very nice. Consisting entirely of British and Irish cheeses, a number of which were unpasteurised and unfamiliar to me, we particularly enjoyed a nutty semi-hard Doddington and lovely fluffy unpasteurised goat's. Some of them had sweated slightly under the heat of the bar where they were kept but nothing too disastrous and they were generous both with the portions of cheese and the basket of crackers. I suppose it's not rocket science, serving cheese, but credit where credit's due.
I'm prepared to believe that I didn't get as much out of an evening at Manson as others might. It is, after all, a lovely room in a nice part of town and although staff got off to a bit of a shaky start, once it was all underway dishes arrived at a good pace and usually with a smile. But I'm afraid there were enough mistakes with the food, and enough weird textures and odd flavours, to make me uncomfortable and I can't honestly say that I'm confident enough in their ability to pull off a good - even normal - meal to warrant a return visit.
6/10
I was invited to review Manson
The Admiral Codrington, or "Ad Cod" if you're feeling particularly insufferable, is a pub so smart the only way it can still, with a straight face, be called a pub is because it's in Chelsea. Locals probably come here to slum it, but to your average Londoner gazing upon the substantial dark wood bar, expensive lotions and hand towels in the gleaming conveniences, not to mention the "dining area" with its white tablecloths and Reidel wine glasses, this is a restaurant, albeit a restaurant that has Kronenburg on tap. But who cares about fixtures and fittings; I was here for one reason only, tipped off by a number of fellow burger fanatics on Twitter and eager to see what all the fuss was about.
Ironically given my rant last week about dual menus, the Admiral Codrington's is an odd split of standard gastropub fare on the left (crab linguini, burrata and heritage tomatoes, fish and chips) and an exciting list of Jack O'Sheas steaks and gourmet burgers on the right. I wouldn't have ordinarily felt compelled to deviate from my incurable red meat addiction but a small bowl of comped chilli salt squid (yes, full disclosure time - we'd had a bit of a chat on Twitter beforehand and they did know I was coming) showed at least that they know how to deal with seafood too - these were fried crunchy golden brown and really rather good. Pork scratchings were only slightly less than perfect because the scratchings themselves were cold and the apple sauce was warm - I'd have preferred it the other way round.
At £15 the 8oz house cheeseburger is confidently pitched alongside London's other market-leading offerings from Hawksmoor and Goodman, and as such has a lot to live up to. Fortunately, and surprisingly for something coming out of the kitchens of a Sloaney gastropub and not a dedicated steakhouse, it is absolutely brilliant. A glossy brioche bun, lightly toasted, holds a generous thick beef patty (aged, though they don't say for how long) topped with cheddar and resting on a layer of sliced tomato and mayo-loosened salad. Sliced pickles add that all important tang and extra texture, but the real star here is the meat itself which while cooked perfectly medium still managed to have a wonderful crunchy crust - a feat none of the other £10+ burgers in London have managed. I do have issues with the use of cheddar - the chef told me he'd like to try an American cheese version but is worried how the regulars would react (sod 'em, I say), but it was at least all melted properly and not, like the version at Honest Burgers, cold and claggy.
The special on the menu on Saturday was a chilli cheeseburger topped with chipotle-braised ox cheek, Monterey Jack and chilli slaw. If you think that sounds like there's a lot going on, you're not wrong - I would really liked to have tried some of those elements, particularly the braised ox cheek, outside of the burger as a dish in their own right, as I wasn't completely sold on the idea of combining them all inside a sesame bun. Having said that though, it was all undeniably very tasty, and in fact my friend said she preferred it to the house cheeseburger, so this is probably just a case of me being an unreconstructed burger snob rather than the idea as a whole not working. Also, and impressively, this burger was ordered medium rare and arrived just so, the centre of the beef that extra bit more purple.
The Admiral Codrington burgers are a real find, and even in this "gourmet" price category represent pretty good value for money when you consider the quality of the meat and the fact they come with lovely crispy chips. I'm not going to get carried away and herald London's new wave of world class burgers because let's face it, three in the city over £10 worth eating is hardly Mission Accomplished - we're not yet New York. But that a talented chef with a love of proper American food has been given a bit of room to age his own beef (I'd love to go back to the Admiral for a steak) and make burgers how he thinks they should be made is perhaps just yet another sign things are moving in the right direction. And for that, we can all be thankful.
8/10
Although I try to never approach a restaurant expecting it to be brilliant - there's only the inevitable can happen when you set your prospects too high - there was a part of me really hoping my meal at the Gilbert Scott was great. Then I could lead this review with the subtitle "Great Scott!" and go on to draw many tortured parallels between the painstakingly researched retro menu and the Back to the Future films. Actually, on second thoughts, perhaps it's a good thing it wasn't great after all.
That's not to say there wasn't just about enough to enjoy. Worth a journey almost in its own right is a mooch around the fantastic and lavishly restored Midland Grand Hotel (sorry, I should say the St. Pancras Renaissance), the intricately painted high ceilings and gothic carved stone pillars making you wonder if this is what it might be like having lunch at Hogwarts. The first room you find yourself in is the bar, which produces cocktails every bit as impressive as the room - my Bloody Mary was powerful and tomato-y, and garnished with some kind of preserved or marinated cherry tomato on a metal cocktail stick shaped into a flying swan. Nice touch.
And then through we went to the vast dining hall, stretching into the far distance in a gentle curve, framed by even more lavish gothic detail and 20ft high windows. It was a bit of a surprise in fact, given the huge space the restaurant architects had to work with, that so many of the tables seemed squashed so close together; we were sat in-between two other couples barely two feet away on either side, and the table to our right had their chairs arranged onto one side as if our meal was part of the afternoon's entertainment. I munched with practiced nonchalance on the (nice) house bread, all the time acutely aware I were being watched silently from the corner and trying desperately not to catch their eye.
Starters were as good as you might find in a half decent gastropub, though not really worth the price tag. "Mushrooms on sippets" (£8) despite the eye-catching title was in fact just mushrooms on toast, edible but surprisingly bland for something containing huge chunks of bone marrow. "Dorset crab, brown and white crab, pear, hazelnuts" (£10.50) was better, the crab in particular being brilliantly fresh and sweet and with a generous scattering of shrimp, but although we liked the addition of pear and hazelnut the huge pile of unseasoned rabbit food dumped on top needed dressing and seasoning. Even a squeeze of lemon would have lifted it.
I enjoyed my chicken and snail pie (£17.50) although, again, you have to wonder about the price. It's a nice space to eat in and I'm sure the billions of pounds spent on this huge listed building need to be clawed back somehow, but really, this was a pretty small pie, only half filled with presumably cheap ingredients, and although having plenty of flavour and nice tasty pastry it didn't exactly feel like value. "Soles in coffins" (£22) was good, perfectly cooked, meaty lemon sole wrapped into little parcels (maybe these were the aforementioned "coffins") and with more very tasty brown shrimps and crunchy samphire. We couldn't taste any vermouth in the cream though, and despite the trendy retro title this was in the end a fairly straightforward dish.
We had heard lots of good reports on the desserts at the Gilbert Scott, not least the "Mrs Beeton's Snow Egg" (£7), a sort of an Ille Flottante topped with crunchy toffee bits and containing a hidden cache of liquid caramel inside. It was pleasant enough, not a great deal more than the sum of its parts, but there's still plenty to like even in a by-the-numbers Ille Flottante and the addition of the hidden caramel was a nice touch. Much better, in fact enough to push the overall experience up another mark out of ten, was a hilarious deconstructed "Jaffa Cake" (£7), with sharp slices of whole orange marmalade pressed onto a chocolate and biscuit dome and accompanied by a delicate scoop of Earl Grey ice cream. It was at once familiar to anyone who had scoffed Jaffa Cakes in their past (and I imagine very few British people haven't) and also fresh and inventive, a genuinely inspired dessert and one that had also presumably taken a bit of time to get right, and in contrast to the savoury courses, then, a remarkable bit of value.
With a bottle of sharp £35 Austrian Grüner Veltliner and a single Armagnac taking place of a coffee or cheese course, the bill came to £154.75 for two. It's (sadly) not a fortune by central London standards and nowhere near as violatingly expensive as some other hotel restaurants (hang your head in shame Apsleys), but it still felt (with the exception of that Jaffa Cake dessert) like an unremarkable gastropub lunch taking advantage of its location to bump up the prices by 50%. Also, the bill included an item guaranteed to make my blood boil, a cover charge of £2/head which "covered" no more than two slices of OK bread and butter each. Service was haphazard, too - the staff seemed to congregate in nervous groups from time to time, furtively whispering amongst themselves, before splitting and dashing off into the corners of the room, all the while cleverly avoiding eye contact with any guests. It took a great deal of time to track one down and pay the bill, although they were pleasant with it. I'd write it off as opening period nerves although the place has been opened over a month now and I can't see it improving a great deal further.
The Gilbert Scott is not a bad restaurant, and given the choice between this and any number of other horrible chains lurking up the road at Euston station, I know which one I'd prefer to have welcome people into London, or indeed sent happily on their way. And I did notice an "Early Supper" menu served between 5:30-6:30 which at £24 for 3 courses is a slightly cheaper way of getting your fill. So maybe I'm just picking fault because I can, and because the mistakes are easier to notice than anything else, and not because there's anything here that would really put most diners off. In this glorious old building, in an area of London not blessed with much else worth spending your money on, it's doing a pretty good job. Not quite great, then, but perhaps good enough.
7/10
Another week, another interesting new opening in Camberwell. I seem to have been spending a lot of my time around these parts lately, although admittedly most of that is down to the marvellous Silk Road and my insatiable desire for their home-style cabbage. If you've not made the effort to visit this unassuming little Xinjiangese and haven't yet sampled a healthy handful of cumin-spiced lamb kebabs or a big steaming bowl of belt chicken noodles or yes, that silky, stocky hand-torn cabbage, then you have a real treat in store. It's the kind of restaurant every spice-loving Londoner wants as their local, and I love it.
But this post isn't about Silk Road, and the Crooked Well isn't an uncompromisingly authentic specialist in unpronounceable regional Chinese cuisine or a gritty East-African canteen with no cutlery, it's a strangely familiar, brand new and very smart gastropub. And if you've come to this area of town looking for interesting ethnic budget eats (and I can't think of any other reason you might find yourself here) the sight of this place with its polished wooden floors and £15 main courses of confit duck and roast guinea fowl may seem incongruous to say the least. I'd never go so far as to say a posh gastropub doesn't belong in Camberwell any more than I'd say a budget Sichuan doesn't belong in Bloomsbury, but there is opening a restaurant sympathetic to the needs of its locals, and there is crossing your fingers and pretending you're in East Dulwich when you're not.
Residents of East Dulwich of course would find the Crooked Well very much to their liking. House bread - a sourdough of some kind - was very tasty with a lovely crust and the salted butter good enough to match up to anywhere on Lordship Lane. The truffle mayo with my asparagus starter was excellent, too - flecked with a generous amount of fresh black truffle and lovely light (presumably home made) mayonnaise, although I'm not sure how seasonal asparagus are in mid-July. And a pork belly dish with tuna creme fraiche sounded weird on paper but turned out to be rather nice, a cold summer salad with soft rolled pork and crispy crackling.
Mains were only slightly less enjoyable. I had a lovely bone-in pork chop, tender and juicy and cooked very well, although as you can see from the photo above the advertised "gremolata" was nothing more than a few miniscule blobs of green sauce - they really would have been better off either not mentioning it at all or being a bit more generous with the application. And I'm afraid a confit duck leg with saffron aioli and chickpeas was uncomfortably heavy on undercooked, crunchy chick peas and light on any kind of acid or citrus to cut through the duck fat. The duck itself was moist and delicious, it just didn't have anything else to help it down. Mind you, there's still a lot to be said for a nice bit of confit duck and this generous portion was nevertheless polished to the bone even if most of the rest of the plate was left untouched.
I liked the cheese arrangement at the Crooked Well. From an attractive board of seven French and English cheeses you are invited to have as many as you like for £2 per portion, and I was even more delighted in my own geeky way to be told they were all unpasteurised. Of the three I went for, all were a perfect temperature and in very good condition, the highlight being a thick, gooey Affine au Chablis (the rind is washed in white Burgundy). They also left us a big basket of more than enough salty crackers, so no penny pinching there.
The Crooked Well is a perfectly decent gastropub, competent and comfortable and somehow fairly unremarkable in every way other than the fact it is in Camberwell and not nestled amongst expensive florists and Cath Kidson outlets in some South London "nappy valley". But it deserves to do well in the same way as any new business trying to make a living serving fresh food deserves to do well, and I have a sneaking feeling that it probably will do well, eventually, as creeping gentrification of this corner of SE5 brings the kind of customer that doesn't mind spending £30 on their dinner (that would be me, then) and appreciates a decent cheeseboard. Not everything about my meal was perfect but the service was friendly and absolutely on the ball (easy when we were the only people eating, but still appreciated) and it was all very easy to enjoy, especially once I realised they had a bottle of Fernet Branca behind the bar and weren't afraid to use it. There are more exciting, and cheaper, places to eat around these parts, but there's always room for another good restaurant. I wish them well.
7/10
It says a great deal more about my inexcusably spoiled attitude to London dining than it does about the excellent team behind the Magdalen that I only just resisted the temptation to dismiss the menu as "familiar". It is only familiar, of course, to hopeless restaurant addicts like me - there's the pig's head and gribiche I had at the Prince of Wales in Putney; the calves brains and capers from Racine; braised kid and artichokes from the Anchor & Hope. I'm not suggesting that any of these places invented those things (although the more knowledgeable of you are welcome to provide a more comprehensive back-story if you fancy it), but familiarity should not always be a stick to beat restaurants with - it should be a source of pride, and is to the benefit of us all, that the best dishes are passed around the gastropubs of London in tribute by enthusiastic chefs. There's nothing wrong with a familiar menu if it all tastes good, and the food at Magdalen certainly all tastes very good indeed.
Rabbit bruschetta were fresh and summery and though slightly over-oiled (actually, quite soggy if I'm going to be honest) were still a fairly decent mix of textures and flavours. I have a bit of a troubled history with rabbit; so many places cook it so badly that for a while I thought there was something about bunnies that made them inherently unsuitable for eating, and it was only a freshly barbecued version with aioli from a local restaurant in Catalonia a few years back that convinced me they were worth bothering with at all. Here the rabbit meat was sweet and juicy and as good as (I imagine) it can be.
I loved my starter of smoked anchovies, radishes, green beans and duck egg. The salad was dressed perfectly (and actually seasoned quite aggressively, fine for me but a bit too salty for my friend), the anchovies were tasty and soft (if not very smoky for some reason) and the egg was boiled to a nice runny yolk. Unpretentious, using top ingredients and displaying just enough technical skill to be worth the money, it was a classic gastropub starter. My friend's chilled cucumber soup was also delicious, studded with sweet brown shrimps and topped with dill, and very attractive to boot.
Hereford rump, white beans, spinach and rosemary was about as good a dish as I can remember from a restaurant like this, and I relished every second of the, er, 30 seconds or so it took to shovel it down. The beef itself was seared to a lovely pink, and was all incredibly tender, but it was the sauce that it came swimming in that made it really special - rich and brown and, for want of a better word, just very, very "beefy". An incredibly successful way of serving what was presumably not the most expensive cow money can buy - just cook it well and top up the flavour with a bit of extra effort in the kitchen. Top marks. And a friend’s baked brill was equally technically accomplished, with a great crispy skin (there should be some kind of law against serving fish any other way) and a silky butter sauce spiked with salty samphire.
Looking back now, I can hardly bear to think how close we came to not ordering the Magdalen cherry & almond tart. We were stuffed and slightly sozzled (well, I was), the midsummer sun was beginning to set over Tower Bridge, and had we thrown in the towel after the main courses I still would have considered it one of my favourite mid-range meals of the year. But we were enjoying ourselves very much and I quite fancied an excuse to neck a small glass of Jurancon before the train ride home, and so we thought it would be a good idea to share a dessert. What arrived was one of the greatest little cherry and almond tarts I've had the pleasure of eating in my whole life. Buttery and syrupy, with a generous handful of juicy cherries and scattering of toasted almonds, the filling was beautifully light, slightly crunchy on top and with a delicate but solid base that broke under the slightest of pressure from my spoon. Was it just that it was fresh out of the oven, was it the effect of the sweet wine, or is the pastry chef at Magdalen one of the great unsung heroes of London gastronomy? I don't know, I didn't want to know, I just want to go back and do it all again.
Detractors amongst you will point out that for the prices they charge at Magdalen, you would hope the cooking is at least very good. And yes, with £8 starters and £18 main courses and £6 desserts, while not being anywhere near unreasonable, it is perhaps more than you could spend in some local restaurants. But cooking of this style and quality - accessible, unpretentious, terrific cooking; cooking of warmth, flavour and spirit, not perfect but always enjoyable, this is not something you find in every neighbourhood. In fact, it's not something you find very often, anywhere. Magdalen is a restaurant that anyone can enjoy, and deserves to be enjoyed by as many as possible.
9/10
I was invited to review Magdalen.
