Royal Mint Street, E1 (020-7481 2602)
I am always open to suggestions from readers, no matter who they are. I do not
modify my faith in a correspondent’s judgment on the basis of his or her
social, financial, racial, or professional status. I am not a snob. So when
I was phoned up with a restaurant recommendation by a self-made
multi-millionaire, chess grandmaster, Daily Telegraph columnist and
major international landowner who runs not only an entire bank (as far as I
can gather) but co-owns Home House in the West End and one of my favourite
restaurants, Scotts of Mayfair, I did not ignore him just because he is a
working-class scumbag from Bolton.
I know he is a working-class scumbag from Bolton because I was at university
with him. We were both at Keble College, Oxford. It was a college that
described itself on the prospectus as “very friendly”, which turned out to
mean, disappointingly, that it was full of working-class scumbags from
Bolton. Dave was one of them. And the only one of us who came to any good.
The restaurant he phoned me about was Rosemary Lane in East London. As it
happened, I had been planning to head down there anyway, having received a
charming circular letter from the executive chef, Cristina Anghelescu, about
the “organic farmers of the California Central Coast, the artisan
cheesemakers of the Lake District and the classic technique of French
Cuisine”, which had inspired her to open the place. I am a sucker for all
that honest-to-goodness, Mother-Nature-at-play stuff.
I was particularly entranced by her promise to use “heirloom tomatoes”, which
are by no means shrivelled little buggers once owned by her great-aunt, but
genetically protected fruit with a minimum 60-year breeding history and
which are all the rage just now, don’t you know?
I looked Ms Anghelescu up on the internet and discovered that she was either a
Romanian violinist or an American woman who had e-mailed organicfood.co.uk
to say she was opening her first restaurant, was influenced by the great
Californian cookery gurus Alice Waters and Joachim Splichal, and wanted the
names of good local suppliers. It turned out she was both. Although not the
same Romanian violinist I had found, but a different one. No surprises there
- all Romanians are violinists. (Speaking of Romanians, whatever happened to
Rumanians?)
Dave knew none of this. All he knew was that a decent restaurant had opened up
in his neighbourhood for the first time and he had to ensure its survival.
Ideally without buying it. The fact that there is only one decent restaurant
within an hour’s walk of his home is entirely his fault. Only a
working-class scumbag from Bolton, looking for a home on which to spend £48
million (or something) would buy the only detached townhouse in Tower
Hamlets. Did he not know that people like him are now allowed to live in
Chelsea, Hampstead and Knightsbridge, whence all the posh people have moved
out to make room? There is nothing in Tower Hamlets except The Times and
a lot of scary housing estates for people to hide in when they have mugged
people on their way to work at The Times. Four times I have been
mugged between Shadwell Station and News International. Four times. I do not
envy our Iraq correspondents their distance from home, only the relative
personal safety they enjoy.
Still, life around the plant will be a little more tolerable now that Rosemary
Lane is there. It is inside what used to be a small pub on Royal Mint Street
(formerly called Rosemary Lane, until town-planners decided to change and
ennoble the herb in the road name) and has by no means been given a swanky
Californian makeover. The bar is still there, the boarded floor, the
florally textured ceiling-flock, and the wood-panelled walls that led,
inevitably, to wistful reminiscences of Oxford life. Not that poxy old Keble
had any wood-panelled rooms. Rosemary Lane even still has the dartboard and
the smell of old beer. Both of which Keble certainly did have. Best of all,
there is Nobuko, the Irish-Japanese sommelier whom I featured droolingly in
reviews of both Zuma and Lola’s. I swear she’s following me.
The food is terrific. I’ve been twice now and very much enjoyed amuses-bouches
of Cheshire blue cheese and prosciutto with a slice of fig and a tiny
pied-bleu mushroom risotto. Although the shock of seeing amuses-bouches
(lawks-a-mercy) in Shadwell nearly stunned my swallowing reflex into spasm.
Dave’s favourite dish, and mine, is the “Soft Shell Crab Club”, a gorgeous
deep-fried crab split in half and separated by rashers of crisp, translucent
prosciutto, avocado and, when they are available, Great Auntie Monica’s
wedding tomatoes, on a creamy nage featuring tiny red fish roe which,
Cristina says, ought to be flying fish but aren’t (down with Tower Hamlets
fishmongers as compared with those of the American West Coast) so come from
some other long thin, orange fish (possibly native to the Thames at Tobacco
Dock).
Lobes of foie gras were sautéd on a round tartine of brioche that looked like
a ramekin-moulded pile of couscous, and garnished with orange tomato jam,
which was pretty, but a bit sweet. There was also a poached egg on white
asparagus with parmesan and white truffle vinaigrette or crisp Gressingham
duck breast with a salad of Japanese cucumber, pears and daikon cress. A
great selection for those of us wearied by samey old gastropub or
“modern-Italian” assortments of hastily plated clichés.
The main courses followed the Californian model of a central piece of clean
protein accompanied by complex-sounding galimafrées of fruit and vegetables.
Thus an excellently done piece of John Dory lowered proudly over its
caramelised lemons with cape gooseberry and shallot compote, celeriac purée
and root crisps. Scallops (roasted to quite a firm consistency with a salty
crust) came on a fennel salad with ruby grapefruit and red onion, braised
young leeks (which wore their self-proclaimed youth a little wearily, I
thought) and poppy seed vinaigrette.
The two most brilliant dishes, though, were the curls of dense, salty, oily
fried eel on a stunning truffled pea ragout with all sorts of
unnecessary-to-mention fiddly bits (again I beg restaurateurs to use more of
this wonderful watersnake - if the punters are squeamish, lie, call it
“Guyanese longfish” or something) and the grilled filet of lamb’s neck which
made a rich, meaty change to boring old leg and shoulder and was not
overpowered by a fat handful of olives braised in French wine, golden
beetroot vinaigrette, fresh herb, etcetera…
The puddings were all great fun and as lavishly sourced as the rest, there
were additional intermezzi of fruit fool (once a cube of gooseberry, the
other time a boule of blackcurrant), great coffee and a nice little wine
list starting at £12 and only twice breaching £50.
If you can get over the preposterously incongruous location (underneath the
Docklands Light Railway flyover from Hell to Nowhere) then you should find
Rosemary Lane - for modesty, quiet ambition, charm and value - one of the
best new restaurants you’ve been to in ages. Whether you are a jaded old
ponce like me or a working-class scumbag chess grandmaster millionaire from
Bolton.
Menu: 8
Charm: 9
Location: 4
Score: 7
Price: prix fixé is £16 for three courses. À la carte with grog about
£40 a head.
Café Spice Namaste
16 Prescot Street, E1 (020-7488 9242)
Wapping’s other great find. Flagship for Cyrus Todiwala’s Parsee revolution,
with an interior as brightly coloured as the beautifully spiced and lovingly
presented food.
Wapping Food
Wapping Hydraulic Power Station
Wapping Wall, E1 (020-7680 2080)
Modern Euro-fusion type stuff served in a dramatic old power station with
diverting modern art installations that change regularly. Great wine list.
Views of Times executives numbing the pain with cheap Shiraz and
local boy Sol Campbell entertaining his “mates”.
Are you a working-class chess grandmaster with pots of cash? E-mail
feedme@thetimes.co.uk and we’ll go out for lunch
