Smashed #28
The UK restaurant scene digested
When ‘The Best’ is More Than Simply Good Enough
Josephine Bouchon will never make The World’s 50 Best Restaurants list. Claude Bosi’s recently opened, smart Lyonnaise-style bistro on the Fulham Road is simply too good for that. I’ve chosen my words carefully; ‘simple’ and ‘good’ are not things the judges of the World’s Best Restaurants list are interested in. They want the absolute extremes of ambition, creativity and complexity, the finest ingredients on the planet and wine lists to delight true oenophiles.
There are exceptions, sort of. Don Julio (no. 10) in Buenos Aires is an upmarket steak restaurant with a world-class wine list, and Asador Etxebarri (no.2) is a grill restaurant, albeit one that serves a 14-course, €280 tasting menu. But in general, you should expect lengthy, chef-led experiences accompanied by detailed explanations of culinary philosophy and technique and probably some history and geography lessons thrown in for good measure. There will be plenty of interactive theatre too, and maybe even some audio/visual elements as at Alchemist in Copenhagen.
That’s why dining at any of the 50 Best Restaurants could easily cost ten times the amount we paid last week for an a la carte lunch for two at Josephine (£185.15 - full disclosure: we were comp’d a glass of Crémant each because they recognised my name) but would it be ten times better? We had flawless food and service, comfortable seats and enjoyed the convivial atmosphere of a buzzy room full of people celebrating (we even joined in with a couple of rounds of ‘Happy Birthday’ for neighbouring tables). The food was memorable too; I won’t forget that perfectly cooked chunk of sweetbread served in a lake of morel mushroom sauce anytime soon.
You don’t have to look too far to find negative coverage on Grub Street, New York Times or Fool magazine and I’ve written enough about my criticisms of The World’s 50 Best list in the past (this article sums up my feelings) so I don’t want to rehash my arguments yet again. However, I do feel that the list has become increasingly irrelevant to the average diner. In the past, it would have been possible to try out at least some of the restaurants via a reasonably priced lunch deal, but because of the increasingly theatrical and complex nature of a World’s 50 Best restaurant, that option has all but disappeared.
In the UK, the only top 50 choices are Kol, London (no. 17) which charges £145 for seven courses plus snacks for its lunch menu that’s available Wednesday to Friday only (full 11-course tasting plus snacks is £175) and Ikoyi, London (no. 42) which offers a bargain £200 lunch on Wednesdays and Thursdays. The full tasting is £350.
Delving further into the top 100, Brat, London (no. 65) offers an a la carte menu, including whole turbot for £185; the Clove Club, London (no. 80) where the short tasting, available Thursday to Saturday lunch is £155 compared to £195 for the full shebang; Mountain, London (no. 94) where lunch a la carte is offered all week and a John Dory costs up to £99, and Core by Clare Smyth, London (no.97) where the a la carte costs £175 at lunch compared to £195 at dinner and is available Thursday to Saturday. Lyles (no. 87) has the most accessible offer with a reasonable lunch a la carte available Tuesday to Saturday, where the most expensive item is a Mangalitsa Collar with Butterhead Lettuce and Anchovy for £37.
(As an aside, you’ll have noted that every single UK entry to the top 100 list is in London. Over 1000 people worldwide vote for the World’s 50 Best Restaurants. How come enough of them can make it to a Basque village an hour outside of Bilbao to vote Asador Extabarri the second-best restaurant in the world but apparently none of them can escape the gravitational pull of the M25? If I were Gareth Ward (Ynyshir), Simon Rogan (L’Enclume), Mark Birchall (Moor Hall) or Mark Donald (The Glenturret Lalique) I’d be pretty miffed about that.)
I’m not criticising any of the restaurants’ pricing policies. If that’s what it costs to deliver what they want to offer, then that’s what punters have to expect to pay. But it seems to me the people who can afford to pay that sort of money on any sort of a regular basis are an elite group. The actual audience for the World’s 50 Best Restaurants might as well be a private dining club and the results only available to them by subscription. What we mere mortals need is a World’s 50 Nicest Restaurants list where the chefs are not geniuses who have spent a decade researching stuff and need to present it all on crockery that costs £400 per plate accompanied by a tricked-up PowerPoint presentation. But somewhere like Josephine Bouchon where the Soufflé au Saint-Félicien is historically good, the house wine is sold by the inch and everything is terrific and lovely. That sounds like the best sort of restaurant to me.
Review of the Reviews
Grace Dent, The Guardian
Roe, London
I wrote about Roe in Smashed #21 where you can read my concerns about a 500 cover restaurant in Canary Wharf. But if anyone can make it work, it’s the boys from the phenomenally successful Fallow. Its size might be the most notable thing about it if Dent’s review is anything to go by: ‘an absolute beast of a venue’, ‘a hulking football pitch of a restaurant’ ‘Did I mention that the place has 500 covers?’ ‘the place is far from intimate’ ‘Roe is bigger than some former Soviet-era Russian states’ ‘a restaurant can be big as well as clever’. No doubt Insta-friendly dishes like snail vindaloo flatbread (the new snail porridge perhaps? Chefs Jack Croft and William Murray did work for Heston after all) will help turn the conversation about the restaurant towards the food.
Best line: ‘Roe’s menu dances rather daintily and deftly between “pub grub”, “fever dream” and “Noma”’
Worst line: N/A
Did the review make me want to book a table: I don’t think there’s any need to book, have you seen the size of the place?
Brett, Glasgow
In which Grace stuffs her face in Glasgow, has a whale of a time and tells us exactly why she enjoyed it so much. It’s the perfect restaurant review. You’re probably thinking to yourself, well, isn’t that the job? It should be, but as we’ll see from other reviews this week, so much can get in the way; mainly writer’s ego and a surfiet of style.
Brett is sister restaurant to chef Lorna McNee’s acclaimed Cail Bruich. Dent says it’s a wine bar, the website says it’s ‘a modern European restaurant with an open kitchen in Kelvinbridge, Glasgow, designed to suit all occasions’. Whatever, the food coming out of that open kitchen sounds pretty amazing. Former Restaurant Gordon Ramsay chef Colin Anderson is knocking out the likes of a ‘generous bowl of Orkney scallops, fried until golden and served in a macadamia nut cream’ served with ‘scallop consommé with finger lime and coastal greens’ and ‘painstakingly boned chicken wings are served with tiny, salty clams in a rich, smoked chicken emulsion and dotted with a fiery scotch bonnet sauce’.
And it’s not just about the food. ‘The service is great – warm, relaxed, proud of how delicious the food is, and always there, while also not being there at all. On a warm Friday night in Glasgow, which is always a bit magical, I can think of no better spot than one of the tables in Brett’s window, to sit, eat and watch the passing nightlife.’ When’s the next train to Glasgow?
Best line: ‘Brett resolutely holds a fig leaf over its fanciness, as if to say, “Don’t mind us, we’re just rendering down some Angus beef fat while plating côte de porc with langoustine sauce and yellow carrot. Nothing to see here!”’
Worst line: N/A
Did the review make me want to book a table: Aye
Tim Hayward, Financial Times
Cloth, London
In contrast to Grace Dent’s straightforwardly enjoyable and inspiring review, we have Tim Hayward’s rather involved and ever so slightly cryptic take on Cloth, a new wine bar and restaurant close to Smithfield Market. Hayward appears to really, really want to love the food of chef Tom Hurst who he has followed around London from Brawn, The Marksman, Levan and Lasdun like some middle class plaid-shirted foodie stalker. So keen is he not so say an overtly and unmediatedly critical word, that we find Hayward tying himself, and us, up in convoluted knots of prose that lead us along a path as complex and wandering as that of a middle class plaid-shirted foodie stalking a young chef.
Let’s break down his take on Hurst’s dish of Dorset crab, celeriac, almond. First off, there’s no adjective in the menu description which Hayward thinks is a bad thing. It’s not the end of the world however because Hayward has something else to read: Hurst’s creative process in the dish itself. Like a detective in a 1950s repertory theatre play, Hayward takes us through the clues:
Hayward: ‘Crab is superb in a mayonnaise. The shreds of white meat give texture and the brown meat brings flavour’
Sidekick: I see, tell me more.
Hayward: ‘A celeriac remoulade has shreds of vegetable that are similar in texture to white crabmeat’.
Sidekick: Yes, yes dear boy, go on!
Hayward: ‘Celeriac and crab pair beautifully. Why not bind celeriac shreds with a mayo flavoured with brown crabmeat?’
Sidekick: By jeepers, you’ve got it Hayward old man! Pour me a glass of your finest single malt and let’s celebrate. Oh, what’s that? It’s not a flash of genius you say?
Hayward: ‘It would have been in a small helping on top of some of that excellent house-baked sourdough. Instead, it was presented alone on a small plate in a large chef’s-ring mould…’
Sidekick: Do large chefs have their own ring moulds Hayward? Oh nevermind, go on.
Hayward: ‘…looking exactly like a turned-out tin of tuna. A small forkful revealed it to be gorgeous and indecently rich.’
Sidekick: Bit like Taylor Swift, what what!
Hayward: ‘But looking and, frankly, tasting a little like gourmet cat food’
Sidekick: Steady on old chap, I happen to be a Swifty don’t ya know.
Hayward: ‘It was impossible to know how to attack it and indeed how far to proceed with it. It was an amazing thing, but lacking vital context.’
Sidekick: Vital context, yes, yes I see. So, any chance of that single malt now…
Hayward says that he wishes ‘every restaurant presented food that I had to engage with, think about, parse and judge’. If that was the case I would have to give up this newsletter, this review alone has been challenging enough to decode. As far as I can tell, Hayward is up for eating Hurst’s ‘near misses’ in order to enjoy the ‘palpable hits’ and intends to do so ‘many times’. At least there’s only going to be one review.
Best line: N/A
Worst line: ‘here was a lump of unannounced silverskin in among the meat, an unforced error that should have been spotted, but it at least reminded me of the long process of turning a cheap cut into something this glorious’. The equivocation is going to be the death of me.
Did the review make me want to book a table: I’m in weekly rep until 1959.
Charlotte Ivers, The Sunday Times
Ottolenghi, Bicester
I went to an Ottolenghi restaurant once. It wasn’t my idea. It was expensive. It was OK. I have quite a few Ottolenghi cookbooks, they are excellent, I use them quite a lot, although not recently I must admit. I will put that right soon. Charlotte Ivers has gone to Bicester Village to eat at a new Ottolenghi restaurant and says that ‘it feels as if we are eating at the soggy outpost of a dying empire’ but then, as if lacking the courage of her convictions says that ‘You can still eat well at his other restaurants, especially Nopi and Rovi’. So the empire isn’t dying then? I don’t know.
If Ivers’ description is accurate, it sounds like the first Ottolenghi will have heard about his Bicester outpost will be when he reads her review. He will certainly be thinking that he ought to pay it a visit and pronto. There’s ‘dry focaccia and a drier cornbread’, chargrilled broccoli with chilli and garlic that is ‘basically raw’, aubergine with pomegranate seeds, saffron yoghurt and pine nuts that are ‘barely roasted’ and ‘listless’. At least there wasn’t a surfeit of pomegranate molasses (see David Ellis’s review of The Counter below, after the paywall), although frankly, it sounds like the restaurant could do with a pallet-load of the stuff to cover over all the problems with the food.
The ‘congealed’ mac and cheese with za’atar pesto sounds like something ChatGPT might come up with if you asked it to create an Ottolenghi-like dish. I tried and it said ‘Charred Eggplant with Buttermilk Sauce and Za’atar’. It’s fun, give it a go if you’ve got five minutes to spare. You probably haven’t because you are special and important and really busy.
I can’t blame Ivers for going to Bicester Village to review a new Ottolenghi restaurant. I’m sure her editor insisted. Think of the clicks that name can conjure up. But given that the other main culinary draws there are a branch of the terminally mediocre Cecconi’s and an Asian restaurant called Shan Sui that has one other outlet in Heathrow Terminal 2, you can’t expect to be anything other than underwhelmed, no matter whose name is above the door.
Best line: ‘Tables crammed together so you can’t get up from the banquette without plonking your bum in next door’s labneh. Memories of an airport departures lounge’
2nd best line: ‘I want drama in the mouth,” is how Ottolenghi famously set out his mission statement in 2011. I’d settle for a hint of plot.’
Did the review make me want to book a table: I’m waiting in for a delivery of a pallet of pomegranate molasses.
Subscribe to continue reading this week’s Review of the Reviews.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Smashed to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.