27a Hay’s Mews, W1 (020-7499 3331)I have just opened a letter containing the most exciting thing in the world. And I have the comparative experience to make that declaration in the fullest confidence, because at least three quarters of the letters I open contain the least exciting thing in the world, which is dreary-arse press releases from newly opened chain restaurants and third-rate gastropubs, grimly announcing the new “Summer Menu”. This always features some sort of novelty risotto, a carpaccio of something amphibious harvested by Monsanto from an obscure iterative loop in the food chain, and a booze promotion called “let’s get jugged in July” or “serious smoothies for hassled hotties”, designed to get fat people in synthetic clothing so rat-arsed, they don’t notice how bad the food is or how sunburnt they are.
So imagine how delighted I was to open a letter from Tim Finney, an octogenarian Worcestershire reader who sympathised with my recent attacks on the new menu at Pizza Express, and find that he had enclosed a Pizza Express menu from 1971 - 33 years out of date, but so much more invigorating than the new range of frappuccinos at some pikey high-street clip-joint of the 21st century, I can’t tell you.
At the top is the familiar logo with swirly bits, like an Art Deco garden gate, and the main copy font is also identical to today’s. But the pizzas, oh, what glory. Of the 14, only nine have survived. Three of the pizza's disappeared I can remember - the “Prawn” (prawns, olives), the “Neptune” (tuna, anchovies, olives) and the much-lamented “Marinara” (anchovies, garlic, no cheese) for seeing for the first time the “Pietro” (anchovies) and the lusciously titled “Onion and Anchovy” (onions, anchovies).
There is a wonderful tinge of brownness to the menu. Almost every pizza is mostly anchovies (seven out of 14 as opposed to the modern ratio of 4/22). There is a sense of the wonderful convenience of salt-cured fish preserved in oil, in a world where refrigeration is still a namby-pamby luxury for the rich. I was two years old in 1971, and had no notion of a gastronomic atmosphere (so palpable in the menu) which felt like the war had only just ended and you couldn’t have extra cheese without stealing somebody else’s ration book. And not a thing on the menu cost more than 48p.
Among the frantically touted innovations on the “new” Pizza Express menu of 2004 is a starter of ten olives called Olives Marinate, which has the word “new” next to it in red capitals. And yet under “antipasto” on the 1971 list is a single option: olives. Not new, then. They used to cost 20p and were served with “gyula”, but I am afraid I have been unable to find out what “gyula” is, or are, or were. I thought I might phone the number at the bottom of the menu where customers are invited to phone the Directors with any comments. But the number was given as GER 7215, and I have no idea what that means.
So instead I went to a new restaurant in a new chain about which I knew nothing but had heard good things. The chain is owned by an organisation called MARC, which I guess is like SPECTRE or DRAX, and is planning to take over the world with excellent restaurants instead of a special nerve gas fired from space which makes men die and ladies take their clothes off. And, if the Greenhouse is anything to go by, I say we put up no resistance.
Off a cute little mews in Mayfair is a decked walkway through verdant new looking gardens, like something off Ready, Steady, Garden! (if that’s a show), which leads into the ground floor of a tower block and a lovely, long, low restaurant, quiet and grown up, with well-spaced tables, bronze drapery and quiet, elegant, well-informed staff. (In truth, it was always a restaurant, cheffed by such stars as Gary Rhodes and Paul Merrett, but that was before the doomy advent of MARC.)
The chef, Bjorn van der Horst, has worked for Robuchon and Ducasse and was chef de cuisine at Picholine in New York, before opening Gaia for MARC in Greenwich, Connecticut. Bjorn has clearly put the years of hurt that followed the split-up of Abba and his divorce from Agnetha well and truly behind him.
From a menu that utterly dazzled me, I chose chilled pig’s trotters which emerged as sweet footmeat in a cool, dark gêlée under curls of salt-cured foie gras with a teensy salad that included shavings of apple and a purple pansy, and then Dorset salt-marsh lamb of unparalleled tenderness and intensity with sweet little artichoke hearts and a goat’s cheese brioche. I also tasted a starter of wild sea bass tartare accompanied by a lime crème fraîche studded with sevruga, and a nice, firm John Dory with parmesan dumplings and clams, and have dreamt ever since of the almond gazpacho with smoked paprika shrimp and braised rabbit leg with chestnut pappardelle, bleu des Causses and summer truffles that I will have next time. The cheeseboard was sound enough and there were enough little unbidden watermelon vodka shooters and pots of labneh with breadsticks to send me out into the night quite staggering with fullness, even without pudding. The food is delicately and sexily presented without a hint of fussiness or any compromise of flavour. And the menu achieves that prized and golden rarity of feeling classical and adventurous at the same time: a daily changing “Classic Cuisine” option offered me poulet de Bresse, while the pan-seared foie gras, had I had it, would have come with espresso syrup and amaretto foam, the roasted Perigord duck with spiced dhal, foie-gras foam and a crispy samosa.
The wine list is one of those enormous, scary ones, and the chirpy Spanish sommelier was so keen to help me that he pretended not to speak enough English to understand that I wanted to look at it for a minute before choosing (until you’ve at least glanced at a 100-page list, you have no idea what you need help with) so I closed the book and asked him where he was from and he said “Spain”, and I said one wouldn’t have to be Henry Higgins to have guessed that, and I asked where in Spain, and he said “Galicia”.
So I had a bottle from Galicia, a rueda made mostly of verdejo (which I’d never heard of). By gum, it were stonking. Forty quid is a lot for Spanish plonk, but it came on like a seventy quid Meursault which is the sort of grog you want to be swilling in a gaff like this. And the Spanish are so much nicer than the French.
I dare say MARC will grow and grow, and I shall become a loyal devotee, and then, when the restaurants have all become rubbish in about 2037, I will drag out the old Greenhouse menu and wax lyrical about the days when the tasting menu was only £75 a head.
Room: 8
Service: 8
Cooking: 9
Score: 8.33
Price: three courses à la carte £55, set lunch £32, or £75 for seven-course tasting.
Midsummer House
Midsummer Common, Cambridge
(01223 369299)
With such brilliantly executed “novelty classics” as sweetbreads flamed in chartreuse, trout tartare with mustard ice-cream and garlic tarte tatin, this place is quite reminiscent of The Greenhouse, and with its conservatory dining room it has a better claim to the name. It is also more convenient for the Fens.
Le Gavroche
43 Upper Brook Street, London W1
(020-7408 0881)
I had lunch here last week and was simply blown away by the gull’s eggs on artichoke with caviar, some stunning wild salmon, and John Dory as beefy and sweet as I have ever known. It’s still the best lunch in London.
