The Ebury11 Pimlico Road, London SW1 (020-7730 6784)
Patterson’s
4 Mill Street, London W1 (020-7499 1308)
When I review two restaurants in the same piece it is often a giveaway that I did not feel monstrously strongly about either of them. You know me, I get so carried away wittering on about my private life or trying desperately to be funny about some chef’s name or the cultural relevance of snark fritters on a bed of boojums that I am often pushed to fit in even one restaurant. So when I do two, it is usually because the old opinion juices are running a little dry. It’s January 2004, another cold year of small bombs and slow trains, what do you, truly, feel strongly about?
I’ll tell you where I’ve been this week, though. I’ve been to The Ebury down in Pimlico, a good-looking restaurant from the always reliable Tom Ettridge on the site of an old pub (and thus a “gastro-pub”), and to Patterson’s in Mayfair, a new restaurant on the site of an old restaurant (and thus a “gastro-restaurant”) from Raymond Patterson, who ought to be bloody reliable seeing as he was head chef at The Garrick Club for ten years, and if you aren’t reliable there then, by God, they’ll flog you off for gin money to the first American who offers a decent price, as if you were no more to be honoured and treasured and nurtured than some piffle such as the sainted copyright for Winnie-the-Pooh.
And I’ll tell you what I thought of them. I thought they were both pretty good. I ate pretty well. One or two small hitches. But good cooking, mostly. And not unreasonably priced.
Hey ho, here we go then. The Ebury stands on the site of what was once The Ebury Arms. It is standard gastropub idiom to drop the “arms” or “tavern” or “head” or whatever made the old place sound like a pub and leave only the nebulous hint at location which makes a place sound “trendy”. Where once the fat and neckless men of Ebury met at “The Arms” (because they knew already where it was) to drink beer and talk football and wife-beating, now fashionable barflies meet at “The Ebury” for good food and a dose of quaint old Pimlico.
Downstairs we now have a big-windowed and dramatic bar serving an extensive and well-made range of cocktails and seafood in snazzy surroundings among sexy people. Which is fine if you like that sort of thing. And I do. It’s very Fulham, without the awful stigma of actually being in Fulham.
Upstairs is a modest dining room, lit, ill-advisedly, by big whorish red lanterns, and catered by the very talented Derek Creagh, who came to Ettridge’s previous gastropub launch, at The Wells in Hampstead in the spring, straight from Heston Blumenthal’s Riverside Brasserie (and, before that, The Fat Duck). He’s packed in his luggage such Blumenthalian wonders as triple-cooked chips and
super-slowmo braising and all sorts of other stuff (which I would know about if I’d been to the Fat Duck).
Here, he fed me a physically light but palatally super-heavy duck liver and foie gras tartine, roasted quail with deep-fried quails’ eggs, and a brilliant wood pigeon on parsnip risotto. Pork belly is braised to a caramel with Savoy cabbage and chorizo, and two cuts of excellent venison, one roasted, one braised, appear on a deliriously inventive chestnut tarte tatin. Deep, hearty, well-considered dishes, sops to the nostalgic heart and the winter-emptied stomach.
The service was very slow indeed, but I don’t think that really matters. Wherever you go service is sometimes slow, sometimes quick. Sometimes too quick. If someone asked you the exact time lapse you required between arrival and starter, starter and main, main and pud, pud and bill, could you tell them? I doubt it. You’d be in and out within the hour and grumbling that there was nothing to do now but go home to bed. And anyway I was dragged down to The Ebury by a mutual friend of mine and Ettridge’s (I don’t know the man himself) who kept texting him to say “service abominable, Coren enraged”, so I feel I should let it slide.
Now, Patterson’s. Easily named to reflect the name of the owner and chef. One day it will no doubt be bought by Mr Ettridge and have its name changed to “The Patterson”. As it happens it is next door to one of my favourite pubs in the whole wide world, ever: The Windmill, or, as we used to call it at Tatler, where I worked some years ago and which is just around the corner, “The Institute of Pie Excellence”. Here, they serve as good a steak-and-kidney pie as you will ever feed upon, which is touted as “Three times national champion” and engenders many a hilarious quip about what a sad end it represents for dear old Red Rum.
Patterson’s. Rhymes with Mattesons. Mmm… Mattesons. Purveyors of reclaimed porkmeat patties, balls and leaves through the ages, and by no means a pleasant precedent with which to rhyme. Still, it is a pretty, very lunchy little place full of men in suits and staffed by a phalanx of Pattersons: Ray’s missus works front of house, two daughters wait at weekends, and young Tom is not only the restaurant manager but gets to work at 6am every day to bake the bread (nepotism clearly not working as well for him as it might).
Underseasoned if anything, the food. Caramelised sweetbreads on artichoke and salsify had been treated well in terms of heat and time and had admirable internal consistency and crust but a lack of salt (and whatever other clever things my favourite chefs put on my favourite glands) meant that they did not taste especially different from the ’chokes and salsify. I added salt - I have arms - and all fell into place. My dining companion enjoyed her crab pancake with a Gruyère glaze, but then she does the place’s PR, so she would like it (don’t worry, she didn’t pay, it was my little treat) - I found the crab, for the record, a little soupy.
Plates of beef Wellington with a Madeira and truffle sauce went past by the dozen to the fatboys at the other tables and looked marvellous: tight, pink meat, snugly ballotined in golden pastry. I took a supreme of turbot with smoked salmon and dill butter sauce off the lunch menu. Good fish. Needed a spot of salt. My companion had something she liked. Can’t remember what. But I liked the sound of the Dover sole with lobster tortellini and champagne sauce and, for the flesh-dodgers among you, an intriguing butternut ravioli with trompettes and a vacherin sauce (I want to see more cooking with vacherin, you lazy buggers, it is only with us for a few months!). Most charmingly, I noted the availability of an “oyster lunch” for 12 quid, featuring ten Pacific Rossmores, a plate of cheese from La Fromagerie and coffee and truffles. Just the thing for Mr and Mrs Atkins to shed those post-Christmas pounds and then drop dead of a heart-attack at 43.
The Ebury
Food: 7
Place: 8
Service: 6
Score: 7
Price: three courses à la carte, £29.50
Patterson’s
Food: 6
Dining room: 6
Service: 7
Score: 6.33
Price: three courses à la carte, £35, or set lunch three courses £19
E-mail feedme@thetimes.co.uk if you know somewhere I ought to review and want to go there with me.
