I have had a tendency in the past to talk up the north London restaurant scene in the hope that my endorsement will underpin faltering property prices and protect my long-term financial wellbeing. But I’ve just sold my flat, cashing in on the reputation I have made for Kentish Town as “the 21st-century St-Germain-des-Prés” and so now I can be honest.
We do not have, in north London, a first-rank, trouser-bursting, drop-dead stonker of a modern poncy restaurant. We have the best gastropubs, we have the best Greek and Turkish restaurants, some very good Thai, Indian and Chinese places and some decent fish and chips, but to boast restaurants of the top rank we would have to claim Locanda Locatelli and the Orrery as north London, and quite what that would do to property prices in Portman Square and Marylebone High Street I dread to think.
Islington flatters to deceive, Highgate has only estate agents, and Hampstead remains a gastronomic joke. Primrose Hill
is a cop-out and Finchley no longer exists. Hendon was closed down in 1985 and I believe Borehamwood has a Happy Eater. Beyond that we have to look back to 1989 when Crouch End was named Restaurant Capital of London by some organisation whose name I forge (Bisexual Pescivores Against The Poll Tax, I think it was). Harry Morgan in St John’s Wood still does a decent salt beef sandwich but Tom Aikens he ain’t.
Elisha Carter, on the other hand, is. And perhaps even more so, by being slightly less so. He is the new chef at Lola’s and, like Mr Aikens last week, is a reducer of great flavours to their composite parts for the purpose of re-presenting them to you in new and surprising ways, because it’s fun and because he can.
Lola’s has threatened before to bring serious fine cooking to north London but no sooner had Hywel Jones cast his spell on the locals last year than he was off to Pharmacy in Notting Hill; in came Robert Reid from The Oak Room and out he went again shortly afterwards - following a difference of opinion with the management over his role.
After the Reid experience Lola’s brought in this Carter chap, then closed down for a refurbishment. The cooking now on show is astonishing in both its conception and its discipline, and it will become north London’s first destination joint in years if news gets out. What is more, as a younger and less well-known property, Carter may well be here for the long term, like till Christmas.
The Roman columns and pianist are gone from the lovely old tram shed but little else has changed and there is still the visual excitement of that split-level dining room (like Rick’s in Casablanca, except less so without the piano), dominated by the huge arched window with views the length of Upper Street, and the whole place washed with sunlight at lunchtime, floor-length muslin curtains riffling in the breeze.
The food was sensational. Highly wrought, perhaps fussy
to a pie-blown, red-nosed old trencherman like you, but sensational.
There was a pale, peachy little consommé, clear as tears but tasting of the meatiest gazpacho - which was truly shocking in a gentle and giggly way. There was “duck three ways” that will bring a tear to your eye: foie gras, rillettes, breast (confit or just plain braised, I’m not sure) and sticky chorizo, all mortared with a sort of mousse and rolled in a dream, then sliced to produce a five-coloured cross-section of ducky circles, and served with a remoulade that does all the good mustardy things that celeriac does and then turns out to be turnip. There’s also a heap of something cold and red and beetrooty served on a spoon.
Marinated cod from the edge of the fusion-world slid on to a big square of glass with warm squid tender as cheese, and was given a Provençal lift with etchings of basil and tomato and olive, and then powered up again with a bright, nutty rouille. Rabbit ravioli floated in a carrot consommé that was the warm younger sister of the invisible gazpacho, and butternut squash tortellini arrived on a plate positively singing with the greenness of asparagus and tiny broad beans. A similar green overture, this time of braised lettuce and artichoke barigoule, sang a darne of seabass sweetly home.
Best end of pink new season lamb was laid down in a row with collapsing flakes of slow-cooked shoulder and crushed peas, and when I went back a few days later the long plate had on it a sort of chicken boudin, a raviolo of roast chicken, baby onions and leeks and a small thud of sweet potato. There was fillet of veal with spicy sausage and herb gnocchi and everywhere lovely use of minuscule mushrooms, crepinettes of this and beignets of that, never two mouthfuls the same as each other.
I’m not a big pudding eater (I’m just a big pudding) but a banana and raisin millefeuille contained a dangerously alluring abstraction of banana paired with a completely different banana shadow in the sorbet. No two banana-flavoured things ever taste the same, or much like a banana. I had a swipe at the chocolate fondant too, which was a corker, and my life was changed just a smidge by the strawberry soup infused with lavender and goat’s cheese panna cotta.
I’ve been back and back and back. Lola’s rocks. It truly deserves to be north London’s primary destination joint. Jerome Cailleau, the restaurant manager, indicates each component of your plateful with a little finger that is as muscly and hairy as Chazz Palminteri, and the sommelier, Nobuko, is an ethnic Japanese oenophile with a mind-blowing pure Dublin accent (if you’ve been to Zuma you’ll have noticed her, possibly even resolved to marry her).
Morfudd Richards, the owner, hustles around as ever. Elisha Carter does not come out of the kitchen to prance around after lunch in front of suspected critics. The signs are good for the long run. A converted tram shed, a Welsh lady owner, a suave French conductor on the floor, a Japanese sommelier with an Irish accent and a young black chef approaching the top of his game. That is what north London is all about and yah boo sucks to everywhere else.
Cooking: 9
Dining Room: 8
Location: 9
Price: £50 a head for great food and wine à la carte. Three-course lunch £18.25 or £32.75 with matching wines by the glass.
Restaurant choice: Northern lights
Locanda Locatelli
8 Seymour Street, W1 020-7935 9088
It may be south of Marylebone Road, but it’s north of Oxford Street. I’m claiming it. Everyone’s new restaurant of the year in 2002 except for me, who was dismissive of it in an attempt to gain attention. I was wrong, clearly. Great Italian food, famous chef, and even if it’s too close to Selfridges to count as North, Giorgio lives round the corner from me, and that’s good enough to call him one of our own.
Samphire
135 Fortess Road, NW5 020-7482 4855
A modest bistro, as befits humble Tufnell Park, but a brilliant kitchen. A change of staff at the front of house deprived us of Serge, north London’s first proper old school maître d’, but Dirceu Pozzebon, the chef, has more than enough charm to keep the place singing.
