Since the Pitt Cue van shut up shop for the winter, and ignoring the temporary Electrolux marketing campaign perched on top of the Festival Hall, there has been nowhere good to eat on the South Bank. "But what about Skylon?" I hear some of you say. OK, let me rephrase that... nope, sorry, there is still nowhere good to eat on the South Bank.
Oh, it's OK I guess, in a beige, Michelin-frotting, tourist-baiting kind of way. It's just that in a year when London's restaurants have, at all levels, proved themselves once and for all to be the envy of the world, Skylon feels tired and dull, a 90s throwback of obsequious service and soft furnishings that has survived, it seems, purely thanks to a nice (but by no means knockout) view of the Thames and a never-ending supply of sufficiently moneyed overseas visitors.
Call me spoiled, call me hopelessly ungrateful and out of touch, call me a whingeing little good-for-nothing who should stick to reviewing burgers (see the comments on blog posts passim for more suggestions in this vein) but every next word of the Skylon menu made me sigh a little harder. It's a list of dishes expertly designed by someone who knows exactly what London diners wanted fifteen years ago - Beetroot/ Salmon/ Crab/ Scallops for starters, Halibut/ Salmon/ Duck/ Chateaubriand for mains, Panacotta/ Chocolate fondant/ Crepes Suzetes[sic]/ Cheese (£7 supplement, 'natch) for desserts. And at £45 for three courses, it's pushing towards what you might expect to pay in (to pick a few), Racine, Medlar and Bistrot Bruno Loubet, all of whom have more style and panache in their coatroom tags than Skylon have in their entire offering.
"Canapés", an outside-catering standard mini quiche and some kind of duck paté on toast, arrived carelessly arranged and while my friend was in the loo. Then before we'd had a chance to try either of them, the starters, too, arrived - mine a well-timed and nicely seasoned portion of room-temperature quail accompanied by pellets of dry couscous and a tiny dollop of yoghurt. It needed a sauce, but it also needed to be a few degrees hotter and not looking like it had been hanging around for twenty minutes. My friend's crab was heavy on soily brown meat and as a result tasted cheap, like something out of a jar of Shipham's.
With the assumption that you couldn't cock up a chateaubriand too badly we'd ordered this to share, and in fact it wasn't bad - nicely medium-rare with a decent crust and seasoned well. The potato & ceps fondant was very rich but reasonably enjoyable in a sloppy, mushroomy kind of way and the Madeira jus showed someone in the kitchen knew what they were doing, but the beef wasn't of particularly high quality and we found ourselves relying too much on accompanying veg (salsify and shallots amongst others) to pep it up. There was a whacking £12 supplement for it, too.
Although the cheese trolley looked promising from a distance, ultimately the idea of getting the hell out of there proved more inciting than the chance Skylon may redeem themselves in the final hour, so we paid up - £78 a head with one glass of house champagne each and a bottle of one of the cheapest wines on the list. It was, like the Oxo tower just further down the river, a complete waste of time and money, an anachronistic bear-trap of a place hoovering up Southbank revellers while their guard is down after too many cups of Christmas Market Glühwein. Well, at least that was my mistake. But it won't be one I'll make again.
4/10
Spot the odd photo out - my own shots in the dark restaurant came out so universally badly that I thought a sneaky press shot might be OK just this once.
I'm sure I never used to be scared of heights. But as the glass lift at the Heron Tower torpedoed up into the sky, and the traffic of Bishopsgate dropped alarmingly away, I found myself gripping the handrail tighter and tighter. My friend who had agreed to come along for the ride that evening was taking no chances - she had her back to the view and her eyes tightly shut. I bravely attempted to enjoy the experience until the point where I realised we were nearly level with the top of the Gherkin and still rising, whereupon panic set in and I stared at my shoes until the doors opened on the 39th floor.
It's worth the petrifying journey, though. At least, Duck & Waffle on the 40th floor is. I'd like to tell you a little more about sister restaurant SushiSamba below, but after waiting 20 minutes for someone to pour us a glass of champagne, then giving up, that will have to wait for another time. It seemed popular enough, and of course everywhere you look there's that incredible view, but the bar staff seemed more preoccupied with accusing each other of petty crime ("He keeps stealing my muddler", "Would you like me to have a word?") than serving paying customers. First week nerves perhaps.
No such issues at Duck & Waffle. Shown to a windowside table overlooking Tower Bridge, we got our champagne within 30 seconds of asking for it, and from that moment onwards everything was gloriously, effortlessly enjoyable. A mysterious sealed bag was the first thing to arrive, along with a bijou portion of cod tongue fritters. The bag contained strips of spiced pig's ears and were exasperatingly moreish - I was trying so hard not to fill up on 'snacks' before the 'main' courses arrived but these tender bits of seasoned pork did not help. The cod tongues, ironically presented on newspaper like chippy fish, were lovely too, moist and crunchy and accompanied by a chunky tartare with bits of boiled egg.
Oysters were next, and no complaints here either. They had each been properly loosened, and retained a perfect amount of brine.
These pretty little things were slices of raw scallop on apple, topped with black truffle and lime. They arrived on top of a big pink brick, and we were told that if we considered the scallops a bit underseasoned to give them a "rub on the brick", which was actually raw Himalayan salt. They didn't need it, being perfectly seasoned already, and the combination of lime, truffle and raw seafood was incredibly successful.
Next, our favourite dish of the evening, a stunning rabbit ragout pasta topped with pecorino. Rabbit is a tricky old bird to get right, but this was preternaturally moist and rich, mingled with super-silky ribbons of pasta.
The two dishes ordered from the 'Brick Oven' section of the menu, while perfectly edible and well presented, paled slightly in comparison to what had come before. Lamb cutlets were overcooked and underseasoned - I half thought about asking for that salt brick back, but decided against it. Quail had been very cleverly (and presumably very laboriously) boned and rolled and wrapped in pancetta before roasting, but there was something unbalanced about the flavours - too much salty pork, not enough game bird. It may be, though, that we were just stuffed by this point and it's easier to pick fault when you're not ravenously hungry. They were both still very much worth the money.
Somehow between us we found room for a chocolate brownie with a fantastic peanut butter ice cream, and as the sun set spectacularly over West London we paid up and shifted next door to the Duck & Waffle bar. Here, enthusiastic and creative staff working on unusual "inside out" stations (there's no 'bar top', encouraging customers to feel closer to the drink-making process) are trialling inventive twists on traditional cocktails. Their "gin and tonic" comes with a gin-spiked yuzu sorbet floating on top of the tonic, and looks and tastes extraordinary. They are working, too, on a Negroni which comes inside a frozen globe of ice, which you smash apart with a little hammer to release the liquid, and coming soon is a drink which arrives inside a bag full of fruit essences - you pierce the bag, it collapses releasing the fruit mist, and you finish off with the cocktail. Sounds like a reason to go back, to me.
And believe me, it's not the only one. So often with restaurants in beautiful or otherwise desirable locations, it's a case of "never mind the food, look at the view". And the view from the top of the Heron tower is, make no mistake, unfathomably gorgeous - more than once last night we found ourselves just staring across London, speechless with awe. But the dishes from the kitchens at Duck & Waffle were reasonably priced, made with skill and served with care. It is, I'm guessing, possible to leave with a bill of £35-£40 a head if you're careful with the booze and although we didn't - ahem - quite manage to reign in our cocktail consumption I still don't feel anything was excessively priced. There are things I'd change - the stools in the bar raise your head up to just the height of the large window frames, meaning you have to duck under or peer over to see a proper view, and security at ground level meant a bit of a queue just to get into the lift - but these are niggles. Duck & Waffle expertly walks a line between spectacularly glamorous and accessibly homely, and I defy anyone to spend an evening here and not have the time of your life. I intend to be a regular.
Nothing was quite right about our meal at the Oxo Tower restaurant. But before you settle down for a long and satisfying dose of schadenfreude, I should also say that nothing was that bad about it either. Everything, from the decor to the service to drinks and (most importantly) the food weaved a fine line between disappointing and just about acceptable, never dropping below the former and rarely rising above the latter, and so I can neither wholeheartedly recommend it or condemn it. It's a frustrating place, wowing you with superficial glamour while never quite satisfying on any other level.
Take that view, for example. The Oxo Tower is on the 8th floor of a building right on the south bank of the river Thames and is blessed with one of the most fantastic vistas in the city, a grand, sweeping panorama encompassing St Paul's cathedral all the way round to the Savoy hotel. Quite understandably the staff are keen to show it off, and we were offered a seat on the terrace accompanied by cocktails and nibbles. But while I should have been enjoying the view I couldn't help being distracted by the scruffy old uncomfortable chairs, the weird Astroturf on the floor which made me feel like I was sitting in a B&Q garden furniture display, and the regular misuse of apostrophes in the cocktail menu. Also, am I wrong to expect a lychee and rose petal martini to be pink or at least be garnished with rose petals? It tasted OK (and was "only" £10, actually a pretty good price for a cocktail these days) but again, there was just that overwhelming sense of "not quite". The nibbles were pretty interesting though, a fancy black box with drawers containing olives, home made (and very good) pork scratchings and some delicate potato crisps.
Once reseated inside, the general sense of discomfort only continued. So keen are Oxo Tower to show off their fantastic view that there is absolutely no guard against the early summer sun, and anyone unlucky enough to be seated facing west had to squint at their date and the table in front of them until sundown. And yet, eating with one hand and using the other as a visor, an amuse of gaspacho was genuinely lovely, well seasoned and with nice fresh vegetable flavour. Perhaps the food would be worth it after all.
A quail starter was nearly right. Clearly a lot of work had gone into boning the teeny leg and breast portions, and the selection of summer vegetables was cooked perfectly and very pretty. But the bird itself was soggy, smelling rather more of the oil it was cooked in than of nice fresh poultry; it seemed they had sacrificed a nice browned skin and crispy texture for tender moist flesh with slower cooking. Which is a bit of a shame. In a similar vein, a crab starter was fairly underwhelming, just a blob of fresh crab meat and salad, although an accompanying mini rye loaf was very good indeed, as was the selection of house breads. Whoever's in charge of baking at Oxo Tower knows what they're doing.
Mains were more disappointing still. Despite being told the lamb came medium rare, it was overcooked and chewy, didn't have a great deal of flavour and was rather a chore to eat, although the accompanying cheese "crumble" (kind of a mini cottage pie) was - bizarrely - gorgeous. And I don't know what they'd done to my lemon sole, but this usually robust and flavoursome fish was bland and mushy, in dire need of seasoning - or something - to lift it, and the collection of insipid vegetables and froth beneath tasted like pond water. Even the "caviar" on top was muted, with hardly any flavour at all.
Although we skipped dessert, they were nice enough to bring what would otherwise have been the complimentary pre-dessert of raspberry panacotta. It was nice enough, but certainly nothing interesting enough to make us wish we'd gone for a full extra course. Same goes for the petits fours.
The bill for two came to £141. We had ordered a £36 bottle of Beaujolais and a £4.50 side of French beans, but that total doesn't include the cocktails (which they strangely didn't charge us for); as I say, none of it was technically inedible but I think I am entitled to expect a little more dazzle from a meal that sits alongside places like the ever-reliable Galvin @ Windows in this price category and style of cuisine. And Galvin can even beat them on the view. For somewhere that asks so much of your wallet, the Oxo Tower never gives enough back to represent value for money, and value for money is really what it's all about. The restaurant was at capacity last night - clearly there are enough people who think "never mind the food, what about the view", but I'm afraid I'm not one of them. And I can't see myself returning.
