To review or not to…

After reading a damning review in the Times of Jason Atherton’s new venture last week, I was left wondering what purpose is served by a bad restaurant review.

Certainly they’re funny, as long as they’re well written. It gives us a delicious sense of schadenfreude, as we shudder to think about the poor chef whose livelihood is about to go up the spout because someone didn’t like their steak. But are they really fair?

In English lessons we were told that no opinion was ever wrong, because literature was subjective to the reader. One man’s Hardy is another man’s Jilly Cooper. Surely the same thing can be said about food?

Admittedly, it’s unlikely that anyone is going to argue that bad service, or a cold main course, or a forty minute wait for a cocktail is ever acceptable. But when restaurant reviewers begin to criticise the dishes, is when I begin to question the point of the review.

So what if you don’t think that vanilla salt goes with a chocolate pudding? Or if you don’t like the size of the sharing plates. Evidently someone did, which is why they’re on the menu, and who knows, maybe quite a lot of other people like it too. It’s hardly fair for one person’s taste, simply because it’s put into print, to influence the number of people that it can.

And chefs, like everyone else, are subject to human error. Imagine you had a bad day at work, and somebody wrote a double page spread about how hopeless you’d been. And since reviews are mostly about new openings, imagine that this was your second week in a new job. It’s not really on, is it? Surely it’s far better to say nothing at all?

Of course I’m not suggesting that if restaurants serve sub-standard food, or have waitresses who look at you like you might possibly be leperous they should be allowed to get away with it, I simply think that people should be able to form their own opinions.

So, in the spirit of that, I welcome yours.

A hidden gem – Dinner at Chez Manny

If there’s one thing London doesn’t lack, it’s restaurants. Everywhere you look there’s another one, from the fine-dining luxury of Mayfair to the spit and sawdust pie shops of the East End, you never have to go far for a meal. This is marvellous in a multicultural, rich-heritage-of-culinary-history sort of way, but it does make it rather hard to sort the wheat from the chaff.

Talk to any Londoner about eating out and I’ll bet they come up with the same response: ‘We want a good, neighbourhood restaurant, where the food is great and you don’t have to book months in advance.’ I’m no exception to this, and as a South-West Londoner, was eager to accept an invitation to eat at Chez Manny, a French brasserie on Battersea High St.

Owned and and run by Manny himself, with new head chef Jean Yves Guiomar in the kitchen, the place has a relaxed and convivial atmosphere, compounded by the welcome you get from Manny the minute you walk in the door. Exuding Gallic bonhomie, he showed us to our seats as if we were old friends. The décor of the restaurant is simple, clean and modern, but with subtle enough lighting that it doesn’t feel stark. The front side is entirely floor to ceiling glass, which we were told opens up completely in the summer, extending the restaurant onto the cobbled stones of the High St. Very continental.

The menu is one you would expect in a back-street brasserie in Paris. French classics such as snails and duck confit sit with more seasonal specials like wild garlic soup, and everything sounds uncomplicated, and above all, appetising. I kicked off with a homemade terrine, with my friend Will opting for the more robust tartiflette. (I’ll confess I made him order this. Being an ex-chalet girl I’m a massive tartiflette snob and I wanted to see how it would fare…) It fared very well indeed, creamy and cheesy with just the right amount of seasoning. My terrine was also delicious, flecked with pistachio and finer cut than many, which made it all the easier to pile onto some of the best bread I’ve had in ages.

For our main courses I opted for sole meuniere, while, in a somewhat foolhardy error of judgement, Will went for cassoulet, a gut-bustingly filling mixture of Toulouse sausage, confit duck and pork, slow-cooked with haricot beans and topped with toasted breadcrumbs. A traditional French peasant dish, this example was near faultless, although following a tartiflette the sheer quantity (not to mention variety of meat) caused something of a problem, and Will was forced to concede defeat half-way in.

My sole was wonderful, with the right balance between butter and lemon and the fish just flaking and not flabby or overcooked. It was accompanied by glazed carrots and sautéed potatoes, which I found a little heavy – I would have preferred a salad  – but their presentation is definitely more authentic. An iced raspberry parfait for pudding was the perfect palate cleanser after the buttery sole, and despite the groans of over-indulgence, Will still managed to polish off an exemplary crème brulee without too much trouble.

Our meal was washed down with an excellent Languedoc white, with a complexity of flavour that belied the very reasonable price tag. In fact, the wine list in general was great, and Manny is definitely the only Frenchman I’ve met to recommend a new world wine to me!

We came away full, sleepy and definitely a bit heavier, but above all content, and slightly smug in the knowledge that we had indeed found a neighbourhood gem. I will be returning to Chez Manny in the very near future.

Chez Manny , 145-149 Battersea High St, SW11 3JS

020 7223 4040

Readers will receive a 20% discount on their bill if they quote ‘woman&home’ when booking between Sunday to Thursday.

Dinner at Hawksmoor

Ever since an expert in Porto told me I had very masculine taste in their eponymous drink, I’ve come to the conclusion that accepted feminine sensibilities about food don’t quite ring true for me. Which is partly why I jumped at the chance to have dinner at the new branch of steak restaurant Hawksmoor in Seven Dials, Covent Garden. Having sampled their Spitalfields branch a few months ago, I knew that the quality of their meat is second to none, and their cocktail list makes Tom Cruise’s Brian Flanagan look like a child playing at potions. So could this second restaurant live up to its city cousin? The steaks, if you’ll forgive the unforgivable pun, were high.

The Hawksmoor at Seven Dials is housed in the old Watney Combe brewery, and they’ve certainly got a reputation to live up to. The brewery’s original owner back in the 1800s set up an annual steak supper – famous for its generous beef steaks and servings of ale, it played host to several royals over the years. Owners Will Beckett and Huw Gott have stayed true to the original theme, furnishing the dining room with reclamation scuffed parquet flooring, doors and tables so the restaurant has none of the uncomfortable gleam you so often get in new establishments.

The menu is to die for – bold, uncomplicated dishes speaking of a kitchen so happy with the quality of its ingredients, it doesn’t need to dress them up. Six Cumbrae oysters were sweet, clean, everything they should be, and clams in bacon bone broth were full of flavour without being overly salty.

But of course, you come here for the steak. Sourced from Longhorn cattle reared in Yorkshire for butchers The Ginger Pig, the meat is almost embarrassingly well hung, with a rich gamey flavour and a pure hit of smoke from what must be a hellishly hot grill. Blackened and charred on the outside, it was the perfect pink inside that I have been striving for since cooking school. My rib-eye was as tender as fillet, and the sirloin, though rarer than we’d anticipated, was all the better for it. Bearnaise and their heavenly stilton hollandaise were faultless, and the herbed salad provided an excellent foil to the richness of the meat.

A word on the chips though. Go for the beef dripping – they’re infinitely superior to the triple cooked option; crisp, fat and fluffy, and just begging to be dipped into those butter sauces.

Sticky toffee pudding and quince crumble were both delicious, although to be honest we were pretty finished off by the steaks.

My only small criticism would be the service, which was rather too slow at the beginning (and there was quite a debacle about a cocktail), but picked up as the evening progressed so really wasn’t a big deal.

All in all, the best meal I’ve had in absolutely ages, and one of the most fun places I’ve been for dinner. The wine and cocktail lists are wonderful, a tiny bit light on the vodka, but they still rustled me up a bloody good martini. It’s not cheap, expect to pay around £150 for two with wine and cocktails, but then when the food is so exceptionally good, I really think the price tag is justified!

11 Langley St, WC2H 0207 856 2154, thehawksmoor.com

The Great Kebab Debate

Last week, after officially welcoming in the festive period with ice skating and mulled wine at the Natural History Museum, my friend and I found ourselves peckish, and decided to head down the Old Brompton Rd. Turning down the Argentine steak place, the Scandinavian eatery and the ever so English restaurant-cum-pub that was bursting at the seams with South Ken power families, I finally dragged my wilting companion into the strip-lit Lebanese, the window of which was completely taken up with kebab skewers.

‘Is this not a kebab shop?’ she asked, somewhat hesitantly… ‘Yes.’ I replied, and strode straight in.

Because this is the sort of kebab shop that it’s socially acceptable to visit. The sort of kebab shop that will serve you chargrilled chicken and lamb in marinades exploding with flavour, sitting atop fluffy flatbreads and mountains of crunchy salads, drizzled with yogurt so creamy it tastes like it just came from the cow. In short, it’s one of the best meals I can think of.

I feel a bit sorry for the poor old kebab. It’s got a bad rep. Visions of staggering drunks, doner spilling out of their mouths while they swear at the pavement are arguably the first things that spring to mind when you think of one. My housemates at university used to suffer from what they called ‘kebab remorse’ the morning after a particularly heavy night, and it’s painful to recall those hideous few months when an ex of mine discovered the doner pizza…

But grotty takeaways in the wee small hours aside, what exactly goes into a kebab? It’s really not that bad. Of course there’s the choice of meat. First and foremost is the doner meat (doner in Turkish literally meaning rotating roast.) Please resist the urge to shudder.

In authentic kebab houses, this inverted cone of flesh is merely lean lamb slices, stacked on top of each other and topped with a good portion of fat to keep the meat moist while it cooks. OK, in many of the takeaways you’ll find on the high st, these have been replaced by a block of solid unidentified ground meat (like a giant pointy meatloaf I suppose), and these are the ones to steer clear of.

This rotating method of cooking is actually very effective, as it gives the sinews time to break down and makes the meat deliciously tender.

If the lamb doesn’t take your fancy, there’s usually a chicken option. Again, in a good kebab house they will have marinated chicken on skewers, which they will chargrill to order, giving you an end result that tastes like the best barbecue ever. Nothing frightening there.

Once you’ve decided, you will be presented with a flatbread full of salad and pickles, topped with your meat and finished off with a generous slug of sauce. Spiced yogurt and chilli is delicious. Garlic sauce is less acceptable.

Now, a friend of mine may still laughingly bring up the time that I tried to justify my midnight takeaway choice as being ‘just a chicken salad pitta Nancy, what’s the big deal?!” , but really, that is all it is! In terms of fat content, a well-made kebab is right at the back of the queue. Lean meat, loads of veggies, flatbread and a lick of yogurt. It’s hardly sinful. And if you’re not too inebriated to notice, the complexity of flavours in your mouth is just fantastic – the piquancy of the marinade mixing with the smoky meat, the cool yogurt and the sharp, vinegar hit of the pickles. It knocks cheesey chips into a cocked hat any day.

So let’s not leave the kebab to languish in the alleyway of drunken regret any longer. If you are lucky enough to live near a good Lebanese or Turkish restaurant, try it for dinner. They’re always reasonably priced, and you really won’t be disappointed. Just steer clear of the establishments where the clientele are singing rugby songs…

Dinner at The Avenue

Refurbished and revamped by D&D Group earlier this year, The Avenue restaurant in St James’ is now headed by chef Mikko Kataja, who has placed a strongly British and seasonal emphasis on the menu.

I can imagine it’s usually full up with suits at lunch time, but on the Friday evening we were there, it was mainly couples enjoying a quiet dinner.

As well as being very British, the menu changes according to the seasons, with chilled cucumber soup, pea risotto and English strawberry salad all featuring at this time of year. The food presentation is innovative – my starter of Scottish scallops with samphire and sauce vierge was served on a long wooden tray, with the scallops on the half shell resting on a bank of broken up and sea-washed shells, reminiscent of a shingle beach. The scallops themselves were cooked exquisitely, the soft yield of the flesh contrasting perfectly with the salty crunch of the samphire, and the sharp piquancy of the sauce. My companion predictably ordered the potted foie gras with walnut and date toast – an effortlessly delectable combination.

My main, simply described as ‘roast cod, octopus and English chorizo’, was much more complex than its humble description suggested. While all three separate components appeared on the plate, there was also a ‘sausage’ made from blending the chorizo and the octopus and poaching the puree – both surprising and delicious. What was almost more impressive was the detail in which our fantastic waiter was able to describe this process to me – I swear he could go into the kitchen and cook it himself. Sirloin of beef, anchovy butter, wild rocket and bone marrow was more simply presented, although with no less care, and made for an outrageously tasty (if outrageously filling) main course. Although best avoided for those with high blood pressure, I think…

My rose set cream, strawberry salad and sorbet was a very refreshing conclusion to the meal – the cream was not overpoweringly floral, and its richness very well set off by the strawberries. The British cheese plate was varied and well thought out, although I could barely eat more than a mouthful!

Our overall impression of the restaurant was of a very competent chef, working with excellent produce and putting his own signature onto each of the dishes. The staff were absolutely faultless throughout – I think we could almost have invited our waiter to sit with us he was such good fun! The only pity was that it wasn’t busier, something I was surprised by on a Friday evening in the west end, although the front of the restaurant belies its cavernous size, and I think this may be why it is overlooked by the evening dining crowd. I would thoroughly recommend it though, perhaps as a site for a boozy lunch if you’re shopping around neighbouring Mayfair.

The Avenue, 7-9 St James’ St, SW1A 1EE

The Great British Restaurant Scene (or food faux pas no.1)

I’ve just come back from a very, VERY disappointing lunch, and decided to have a little rant about it. 

What is it about mid-range British restaurants?! The ‘eatery’ (I can’t bring myself to call it a restaurant) that my colleagues and I just got back from (under our offices, FYI), is one of the worst offenders. A dauntingly big menu set off alarm bells immediately, as did the fact they’d run out of the first three things I ordered. 4^th choice was a platter of roasted squash, red onion and goat’s cheese and my friend plumped for fish pie – one of the most offensive versions of this beloved dish I’ve had the misfortune to come across. It had been sitting in the dish so long the outside had gone black, and was covered with the sort of cheese you usually only find on a fast food burger (still in its pre-sliced strips, no less.)

However, worse was yet to come. After rooting around for a good five minutes, my friend finally found the fish. That is, she found what appeared to be a whole can of tuna that had been dumped unceremoniously in the middle. Tinned tuna? In a fish pie?!  If this is what the British public deems acceptable I’m hanging up my apron.

Mine was almost as bad. Rather than the bountiful platter of lovingly roasted veg I’d been looking forward to, what appeared was some teeny tiny pieces of squash, coated to suffocation in inexplicably tasteless oil and half-heartedly chucked together with a bit of mouldy old goats’ cheese and some raw red onion. How appealing.

So did we complain?, I hear you say…The answer, of  course, is no. We’re English. As a nation we will sit and put up with bad service, bad food and bad wine with a beatific smile of gratitude on our faces. The only thing we won’t put up with, is bad manners. Fortunately, our waiter looked a little like Joe from X –Factor, so naturally we couldn’t think badly of him at all.

I would welcome similar food rants about gastric atrocities near you. Shall we name and shame?!