35-36 Great Marlborough Street, W1
(020-7437 5280)August. The dog days. Breathing is an effort and the air that zephyrs across my palate on its way to the wizened bellows that are my lungs is thin and doesn't taste very nice. It's all carbon dioxide and dust. I should be a tree, then I wouldn't even have to make the effort to eat. And in a month or so my leaves would fall off and I could sleep until April. Mmmmm, sleep. It's too hot to sleep in my house just now so I usually sleep in the garden, in the dry grass, listening to desiccated rose heads rattling to earth. Or apples from my little tree pinballing thumpily to the ground through the rambling rector I've been trying to grow up its spindle of a trunk. I woke this morning when a plum fell on my head, which means they are ripe. There are lots of plums on the plum tree, funnily enough, even though the leaves curled up and fell off a long time ago.
It wasn't really the plum that woke me. It was the foxes. They come in the early morning to roll in my compost heap, dig up my pansies to eat the roots (unless that's the squirrels) and to make little homes under the back wall that necessitate the murder
of my poor old clematises, with their brittle stems. They also like to decorate my lawn — it may be some sort of vulpine Changing Rooms thing — with the licked-clean Whiskas cans of my next-door neighbour's cat. I wish they would just eat the cat. But then, of course, they would be slaying the goose that lays the nearly-empty catfood cans. And they know it, the bastards.
My dad said I should just buy some wolf piss from the zoo to spray around the perimeter — foxes know better than to risk the company of wolves for a pansy root and a half-composted plum — but, my word, you should have heard the zookeepers laughing when I phoned. "Sure you can have some wolf piss," they said. "But you'll have to come down here and take the sample yourself."
Truly, these are dog days. Do you know why they are called the dog days? Bet you don't, bet you don't. Because only mad dogs and...? Nope. Because the weather makes us lazy as dogs? Because you feel like lying around on your side with your belly in the road and your tongue on the pavement? Because it's the best time of year to eat dog? No, no and no. It is, in fact, a corruption of "doge days", when the Doge leaves the intolerable heat of Venice for his summer retreat in the Alps.
Actually, I lied. It isn't that at all. It is because in late July Sirius, the Dog Star, is in conjunction with the Sun and is so strong and so bright that the Ancient Romans thought that it augmented the heat of the sun during the 20 days either side of the conjunction, and so called those days the "dog days", or "dies canes" (or maybe "canibus", don't ask me, I'm no classicist).
So last night, as I was nodding off under the plum tree, I scoured the night sky for this Dog Star, this Sirius or Alpha Canis Majoris, which is supposed to be the brightest star in the sky, twice the size of the Sun and 20 times more luminous (its apparent magnitude reduced, however, to -1.37 by 8.7 light years of distance) and I couldn't find it. All I could see was orange streetlight reflected on a grey cushion of smog-cloud and the scowling eyes of the foxes in the bushes, waiting for me to nod off. These are the fox days, I am afraid, of my summer, and the dog doesn't get a look-in.
In the morning, to cheer myself up, I went to Leon for lunch. Leon is a new fast-food outlet just off Regent Street opened by a couple of chaps with middling foody credentials, heaps of enthusiasm and infectious proselytising zeal for their mission. Yes, mission. A mission to provide conscientiously sourced (mostly British), healthy, seasonally sensitive food which is all those things only as a route to, rather than as a substitute for, fantastic flavours, all delivered as fast as the fastest current
model for such things which is, tragically, McDonald's, and at a price that is relatively accessible. "Natural fast food", they call it.
And they have done it, and it is a miracle. Leon is the future. It is one of the rare restaurants I have encountered that actually makes sense. A commitment to free-range chicken, grass-fed sheep, wild or organically farmed fish and the best possible vegetables (often, but not religiously, organic) makes buying British almost always the most sensible option, and this in turn forces a level of welcome seasonality to the menu, for which it apologises quite without necessity as far as I'm concerned.
In the vulgar hustle of the Oxford Street/Regent Street armpit (hard by Carnaby Street), the word "Leon" sunk in relief in brown concrete is a beacon of unfussiness, of middle-class sense amid the tacky senselessness of Union Jack bowler-hat stalls, Nike megastores and fridge-cold sandwiches from Pret. The front of the shop is open to the world and there is the incongruous joy of a row of quickfire tills with burger-chutes surrounded by blackboards listing seasonal specials. McHeaven.
For the exchange of a handful of shrapnel, grilled free-range chicken with an expert light aïoli, or with a zappy salsa verde, will shoot down these chutes. Or beautiful lamb shish marinated in lemon juice and cumin, or crunch-coated fish, or "haloumi and happy carrot" all served as wraps in flatbread or with rice and salad in a cute little box the size and shape and weight (when full) of a 400-page hardback novel.
Everything is marked to draw attention to its various nutritional brownie points, with not just the familiar "V" but also signs that indicate freedom from gluten or lactose or the presence of "good carbs" or "good sugars" — oh yes, Atkins/Montignac/ South Beach/Hamptons is easy at Leon, and even the puddings foreground low glycaemic index (GCI) alternatives such as fructose.
I scoffed great little mezze that hovered around the two quid mark, including a generous tub of dense, herby Moroccan meatballs, and a rich, red, meaty pot of butter beans stewed with chorizo. Among the many salads is one of "Superfoods" that is a regally green pile of broccoli, green beans, sugar snaps, avocado, quinoa (a low GCI Peruvian pulse), seeds, sprouts, feta, lemon and olive oil which is touted as "Food of the future" and should help you live for ever.
The fruit salad is "seasonal and English so no Air Miles", the coffee is, unusually, both organic and fairly traded — this is truly conscience-salving stuff. And the point is it all tastes damn fine, costs relatively little, and comes at you quick, quick, quick in the heart of London's mirthless West End, even on such dog days as these.
If Leon has its way, and spreads across the nation as widely as it deserves, we will soon be much leaner, happier, cleaner, better people than we are at the moment. Leon is the future. Leon is one dog that will surely have his day.
Food: 7
Attitude: 8
Vision: 9
Score: 8
Price: £10 for a sound meal.
Patogh
8 Crawford Place, W1 (020-7262 4015)
Tiny Persian cafe off Edgware Road offering marinated char-grilled kebabs of organic chicken and lamb with very fresh herbs and salad on huge rounds of flatbread. Eat at the wooden tables, or take away.
Plant
47 Poland Street, W1 (020-7734 7528)
Vegetarian takeaway joint serving very fresh salads, organic scrambled eggs, aubergine parmigiana, lots of tofu, etc. Healthy and quick, relatively tasty.
