Food and Drink in London

My shingle friend

Unlike Jay Rayner, who (to bastardise Mark Twain) presumably regards a walk as a good ride in a Golf spoiled, I rather like a stroll. Even better, a healthy yomp on a crisp winter's day. Better still, a healthy yomp on a crisp winter's day by the seaside with a splendid lunch to look forward to.

And so to Littlehampton. There's a sentence you don't come across very often...

The occasion was a kind of strange self-congratulatory treat after Antonia and I had both successfully been off the booze for a couple of weeks (it looks so trivial in writing). I say strange because the two weeks weren't quite up and the treat therefore involved... no drinking. But somehow we muddled through. We were staying in Bailiffscourt Hotel, of which more, I think, when we go back: the quality of the breakfast and the general level of service suggest we really ought to try the food in the restaurant proper rather than the making do with the decent enough fare available in the rabbit warren of parlours and lounges.

Got to love a hotel that provides wellies, though, so on Sunday morning, after a pre-breakfast swim in both indoor and outdoor (!) pools and, of course, a richly deserved post-swim breakfast, we set off on the two-mile walk along the beach to Littlehampton in search of a rather special café Antonia knew all about. Now I'm no expert, but this was a bloody long two miles. Not only was it blowing a fierce gale (despite the glorious sunshine), the beach was also of the big-pebbles-making-it-very-tough-on-the-calves-and-very-easy-to-fall-over variety. And when we finally reached the pier that we (rightly) assumed would bring Littlehampton into view, trendy beach café and all, the relatively modest walk stretching out in front of us turned out to be a sadistic optical illusion as the path took us on an inland diversion that must have added at least another mile and a half to the trip. No matter: all very bracing and worthy and we'd certainly earned our lunch.

And a very fine lunch it was too. The venue was the East Beach Café, a striking addition to Littlehampton's long, straight seafront. All dramatic curves and overlapping shapes evocative (on the outside) of shells and driftwood and (inside) of the weathered chalk pebbles we'd been slipping on an hour or so earlier.

The building is the brainchild of Thomas Heatherwick, a designer cum architect who's not above dropping in unannounced with his family on a busy Sunday lunch service to see if the staff and the cooking can live up to the space he's created for them. I'm happy to say that they can: not only did they find room for the Heatherwick clan (and the two of us), they served up some real treats.

I started with a dainty ramekin of potted shrimps, out of the fridge long enough to wake the flavour up a bit but not to melt the delicately crispy surface of the butter on top. Underneath, well judged spicing kept things interesting without dominating crustacea that had clearly gone in super fresh. For Antonia, big meaty field mushrooms on toast, which looked the business. For mains, I had a special of sea bream with sprouting broccoli. Brilliantly simple and - frankly - simply brilliant. Antonia had a mixed leaf and green bean salad with mini Welsh rarebit toasts. And chips, obviously. All good stuff.

So both a building and a menu that utterly confound expectations for seafront dining. Not for the East Beach Café sausage, egg and chips, soggy cod and squeezy sauce bottles in a damp and dingy dump. Instead, a stunning building, fresh fish, home potted shrimps and (in the evening) guineafowl terrine with quince paste. And on a freezing cold Sunday in the second week in February it was packed. Apparently it is every day.

Would that every seaside town had a place like this to walk to. (Jay, you might want to take a cab.)

East Beach Café, LittleHampton, West Sussex BN17 5NZ 01903 731 903

True love pays

(This photo really has nothing much to do with this post. I just saw these cakes in the Hoxton Food Hall and thought they looked cool.)

So a couple of weeks ago, in a rare flush of organisation that was only tempered slightly by the rapid realisation that the world and his mother (or at least his girlfriend) had already had the idea, I went on the hunt for somewhere nice for dinner on Valentine's Day. Now this is something I've historically avoided, partly through (often) having no-one to take, but also because I can cook a bit and I was pretty sure I was going to get ripped off in a rammed restaurant trying to squeeze every last penny of starry eyed lovers. But this year, partly because I didn't think I'd have a functioning kitchen come the big day, I thought it was worth a stab and was delighted that an online booking via OpenTable seemed to have bagged us a table at Theo Randall.

Now I have never been to Theo Randall, but I knew it by reputation and I thought it would be about right: newly designed room, upmarket Italian fare, plenty of veggie options for Antonia etc etc. A bit like Locanda Locatelli (which is great) but somewhere new for both of us. Perfect.

And then I got the call. Let's charitably say that it was OpenTable and not the restaurant that called me because of a quirk of the online reservation system rather than the restaurant's embarrassment at what they were planning to charge us. "There's a set menu that evening Mr Bush, and it's £95 for three courses," said the nice lady. "Perhaps you'd like to have a look at the menu on the restaurant's website and give us a call back." Too right I would.

And it was true. Ninety-five quid. For three courses. I've been known to splash out on that much and more for a tasting menu but for three courses with precious little choice that has to be some sort of record. And from a generous selection of veggie mains and pastas on the à la carte menu we'd have been left facing the three words every vegetarian dreads at this time of year: wild mushroom risotto.

Fuck that. We're off to Magdalen.

Happy Valentine's Day.

x

Still or sparkling...?

The thing about trying to get in early when a new restaurant opens (on this occasion the second day – and yet still the estimable Dos Hermanos beat us to it... just what is their secret?) is that you open yourself up the kind of teething troubles that inevitably beset a new business. You have to put up with a few lapses in knowledge among the staff, the odd vague or ambivalent advice on wine selection. But you do so with an air of forgiveness, knowing that what you'll get is (generally) people keen to please, the odd bargain here and there and – with a bit of luck – a healthy boost in visitors from the search engines.

The Water House, then, is a bit of a curate's egg (and therefore just about as expected for as aspirational restaurant in its opening week). Keen and affable staff, certainly, most of whom seem to have tried most of the items on the menu (good, but surprisingly rare, attention to detail). No obvious jitters in the kitchen, either, which turned out decent quality – if unspectacular – food with no lengthy delays. Here and there, though... the odd problem. The manager, enthusiastic enough in his welcome, seemed to be on permanent lookout for people he could give "the tour" to. This involved a trip outside to view the pipes (more on this shortly) and a consequent lack of attention to the diners, particularly those trying to order their bill. Too many restaurants let themselves down by making the process of leaving at the end of the meal drag on, and while it can certainly be forgiven in a new restaurant that hasn't even got its credit card machine working yet, I really shouldn't have had to go and find my own coat. Could have helped myself to all sorts in that cupboard...

Like its sister establishment Acorn House, the Water House is committed to an ecological and sustainable business model. Food is seasonal and locally sourced, water is drawn from the neighbouring Regent's Canal to feed the heating and cooling system and so on. And like Acorn House, this worthy heart is not worn on the restaurant's sleeve (although it is present on the back of the slightly rubbish T-Shirts the staff wear – yours for £8 if I recall). While some restaurants make a great (often slightly desperate) play for the green card, with paragraphs of mission statement guff of the menu and practically birth certificates for the chickens, these guys let you judge the food for itself, only filling you in on the tree-huggy details (and taking you on the tour) if you ask a few questions. Missing a trick? Maybe. But a refreshing and confident approach nonetheless.

I started with a winter salad: an interesting array of greens, including dandelion leaves, with some good contrasting flavours, studded with some slightly over-frazzled pancetta and bullets of pomegranate. I'm not normally one for a plainish salad but this was surprisingly pleasing. Antonia had the burrata di bufala, which came on toast with some crushed olives and was creamy, stringy and very moreish.

For mains I had pork loin with aubergine and spinach and a paprika sauce. This was pretty good but arranged in such a way (see crap pic) that you were pretty much guaranteed 30-odd identical mouthfuls, and consequently the dish dragged on after a while. Nice balanced flavours though, the smoky paprika and aubergine complementing the well judged spinach and perfectly cooked pork.

Antonia had potato ravioli in a rather loose cream and truffle oil sauce. A smallish number of big, flat ravioli with not much filling. A bit disappointing: it's not often you hear a vegetarian saying "It's not often I finish a meal and find myself craving a bacon sandwich". We shared a plate of good cheese to follow, let down slightly by the Montgomery cheddar, which felt like it had been pre-sliced some time ago (less obvious if this was the case with the rest).

The wine list is all organic and quite spendy, with only one or two bottles below the £30 mark (they have further selections by the glass). We were on tap water last night (presumably not from the canal) so we came out shy of £70 including service. Not cheap but certainly not bad value for some (almost) excellent quality grub.

So decent enough food and worthy without shouting it from the rooftops. Worthy of the trip, though, and the slightly scary diversion off the already slightly scary Kingsland Road? I'm not so sure.

Water House, 10 Orsman Road, London N1 5QJ 020 7033 0123

From the ridiculous to the sublime

After nearly three weeks on the wagon (strange but true) I'd been drooling for most of yesterday over the thought of the cool hit of a dry martini. A dinner plan had fallen through slightly but Antonia and I stuck to the bare bones of it by arriving at Angelus for an early supper. The lounge bar behind the restaurant is a lovely space for a pre-dinner sharpener and we duly settled in and ordered one each. Quel domage. Comfortably the worst DM I have ever had. Wetter than a mermaid's wet bits.

So after a decent enough meal, at least for the carnivorous half of the party (who got to suck on a pigeon's head), we decided to pop along to The East Room, a new offshoot of Milk & Honey, the members-only drinking club in Soho. The East Room, behind an anonymous door at the southern end of Tabernacle Street, is dangerously close to the office so I was keen to find out if it would do as a new after (or during) work drinking establishment.

And a great bar it is too. The main room is big but very comfortable. Lots of comfy sofas and plenty of bar stools if you want them. There's a buffet set up in the corner (not sure what the deal is there) and Enomatic machines dotted around the walls that will serve you up taster measures or glassfuls of some very fine New World wines. Once you've equipped yourself with a special card loaded up with cash the idea is that you can sample wines outside your usual budget, or just ones you're not sure about, without committing to a whole bottle. You can apparently keep an opened bottle in these gadgets for ages without the wine going off. They're not the most attractive machines but it's a nice idea and it'll be interesting to see if it catches on. Alas, I don't think they take Oyster cards.

So in theory you could go to East Room, buy yourself a glass of wine and not talk to anyone at all. Which, this close the usual anti-service hub of Hoxton, is quite frankly a pretty attractive prospect. But then you'd be missing out on one of most compelling aspects of the whole establishment: the staff. We could not have been better looked after. From the nice ladies who took our coats to the chap who was mixing our fantastic martinis to the head barman (who I am sure is the chap who plays Spiderman) who scurried off to choose us some brilliant wines from the magic machines... everyone was polite and professional but also friendly, clearly knowledgeable and refreshingly enthusiastic. Not something you can say for many of the bars in the area.

It's open to those members of the public who can find it for the next few weeks. I think they may have said till the end of April. And look: it's nearly home-time on a Friday. I'm off there now...

The East Room, 2a Tabernacle Street, London EC2A 4LU 07000 THSTRM (if you please)

Hugh's Chicken Fun

What with all the fuss about the Channel 4 chicken welfare programmes, I suppose I should've got round to telling you about a trip Ben and I had to River Cottage in which chickens played a starring role.  Way back last May, Ben had bought me a birthday present of a course at Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's River Cottage HQ.  Early in December we drove down to Dorset for 'Hugh Cooks Christmas'.  This was a cooking demo by Mr FW followed by the eating of the same meal that had been demo-ed.

An atmosphere of fun and informality was apparent as soon as we arrived.  Having been tractored down to the HQ we found ourself being briefed in a yurt while glugging a surprisingly alcoholic aperitif.  The main demo room held about sixty people, in front of them the demo kitchen, complete with an enormous overhead mirror so you could see what was going on.  At the back there was a a bar, astonishingly run on a cost-price basis.  'Twas clearly the season to be jolly.

The demo was interesting enough.  Hugh's an engaging, watchable performer . . . you don't need me to tell you that.  I picked up one or two good tips and it was interesting enough, next time I'll go for something a bit more advanced or specialised though.  He was trying to persuade us that it would be better value to buy two good quality chickens for a Christmas lunch rather than one larger turkey.  So the main demo was about that.  As well as that we were shown how to make venison carpaccio, devilled crab, mussels in leek and cider and a chocolate torte.  With this kind of cooking, the ingredients come to the fore.  When we tasted these later the huge advantage of good quality produce became startlingly clear.

The canapes were just great.  Smoked pollack rarebit . . . mmmm, had to go back for more.  Merguez with paprika yoghurt.  Nom nom, more please.  Beetroot with creamed cheese.  Just so much better than you thought that could be.  Finally, a delightful smack in the face from the devilled crab.  Hit me one more time. 

The demo room was reconfigured into a festive feast room and we sat down for the main meal.  The seared loin of venision was melt-in-your-mouth tender and full of flavour, accompanied by a citrus dressing that made you note how good it was.  The mussels were fresh and moreish.  And what was most surprising about all of this?  Hugh was still around . . . he'd been supervising all of the cooking and had stuck around until it all went out.  I'd expect your typical celebrity chef to scarper at the first opportunity.  When the chicken finally arrived it was getting pretty late and a Christmas-style meal wasn't quite what I needed . . . but the food was persuasive.  The chicken was absolutely fantastic, succulent and firm in just the right measure.  The star for me, though, was the River Cottage bacon, here cooked with brussel sprouts.  That might well be the best bacon I can remember having.

You can find out about River Cottage events here.  I thoroughly recommend a vist.