Last week I was miserable and I made a bit of a thing of it. This week, on the other hand, I went to a restaurant on Baker Street called Galvin. And I can’t imagine ever being miserable again. At least not when I’m inside it. Later, when they’ve cut me loose into the night, that’s another thing.
I had been looking forward to it for ages. It is named after two brothers, Chris and Jeff Galvin, and I already knew Chris’s work reasonably well. He used to cook at the once fantastically good Orrery on Marylebone High Street (before that street’s emergence as one of London’s gastronomic hotspots) and brought Michelin-starred dining to within a sniff of North London. Literally: Orrery was, is, 100 yards south of Marylebone Road, and with a brisk northerly you could sometimes scent the pooey whiff of truffle in the lower reaches of Regent’s Park. Unless that was the truffly whiff of poo. Little brown treats that nestle beneath trees. Hmmm…
Chris left Orrery in 2003 to be executive chef at the newly opened Wolseley, where he oversaw a brilliantly conceived but, I thought, erratically executed menu, and I had long hoped that he might go back to the kitchen for a bit – rather than continuing to devise things for other people to cook for Michael Winner and Shakira Caine.
And now he has, in league with fellow chef Jeff (Chef Jeff, I like that), on the site of something on Baker Street that used to be owned by Alan Yau, so he is once again within sight of Marylebone Road, and tantalisingly close to these wide, green spaces above the congestion zone.
The exterior is cool and restrained – the only thing on this faded whore of a thoroughfare that still is – with the cheeky legend “bistrot de luxe” etched on the awning. Inside, it looks like Racine on Brompton Road, the best ersatz Parisian bistro in London. Except that, my visit falling on only the second day of full service, Galvin still had that lovely smell of rental car. Executive class, mind. Leather upholstery, dark wood, white linen and all that.
Another encouraging visual element is the staff. They are middle-aged men. Like in a proper French restaurant. I can’t tell you how refreshing it is not to be served by 9ft South African morons with meringue haircuts and beautiful Estonian 19-year-olds who are here to learn English but haven’t got as far as “bread” yet. A vintage geezer in an apron makes all the difference.
And then there’s the menu. Again, very reminiscent of Racine. How marvellous to be Parisian or Lyonnais and have one of these in every neighbourhood instead of having to compare to the only similar venture in an entire city (OK, not the only similar venture, but there are not many – six?).
Last week at Sam’s in Chiswick I mentioned the supermarkety pinkness of the charcuterie plate offerings – here the meats were a little browner and more artisanal looking. Is “artisanal” a thing in English? They’re always banging on about it in France to distinguish handmade food from the “industrielle”, but I’m not sure the word means anything here – unless separated into a three-word sentence and read as an anarchic cultural aperçu. Anyway, the meat was good and there was enough of it, at £7.50, for four people to pick at with an £8 glass of the brilliant house champagne (Jean-Paul Deville Carte d’Or – never heard of it before) while reading the menu.
The prices are stunning. Leaving aside the £15.50 three-course lunch (£17.50 at dinner) with its two choices per course, there was a very cute pumpkin and girolle soup for £4.50 and, for £7.50, a lovely sweet, dark wood pigeon pithivier with spanking glazed chestnuts. Ahhh, autumn. When the poet said “season of mists and mellow fruitfulness”, I think glazed chestnuts was just exactly what he meant.
A salad of roquefort, pear and walnut used nice ripe cheese and was only £6.50, but best of all was the lasagne of Dorset crab with a velouté of girolles, in which the firm, collagenous pasta complemented the crab flesh so well that the lasagne might itself have been some newly discovered shellfish served entire. And the velouté made a wonderfully fragrant frame for the clean central flavours. Then there were six fines de Claire for a smart £10.50, a six-quid pork and foie gras terrine and some smoked salmon, but I can’t eat everything.
For my main course I had an exemplary confit duck leg on lentils with a deep, regal sauce Rouennais – the juices of the duck thickened with the livers. Duck confit has become such a workhorse of the second-rate suburban brasserie and high-street café chain that one almost hesitates to order it these days. So often it is dry and elderly and scraggy, at its best like a bad Peking duck and at its worst like chewing bedsores. Before refrigeration, the packing of roasted meats in earthenware pots, sealed in their own rendered fat, was a way of keeping them as moist and fresh as possible long after the kill – it was not a way of making them desiccated and scrawny. A confit leg should be embarrassingly sweet and moist and lively and even more comfortable in its own skin (and fat) than a fresh leg, so that it crisps and softens and develops in the heat into something altogether more hefty and exciting. Here it is exactly that, and at £11.50, no pricier than poor imitations (at Café Rouge in Hampstead, for example, you will pay £11.45 for the same dish – the five pence you save but a pyrrhic economy that should haunt you all your life).
Parmentier of oxtail and black pudding was a wide pat of silky mashed potato covered with a slightly smaller pat of dark, sticky meats, and was a brilliant dish. Gentle and hefty at the same time, sweet and savoury, light and dark. It was £9.75. Less than a tenner, I tell you, less than a tenner! Are you still sitting there? Fool! Go! By the end of this piece you won’t be able to get in for a fortnight.
Poulet des landes rôtie forestier was a winner, too, and there were two fish dishes and a risotto for the ladies. The wine list is two sides of an A4 sheet with no room for showing off, and seems very intelligently chosen. I drank about nine bottles of the 2001 Château La Croix Chantecaille, a very correct 40-quid claret that went beautifully with everything. There are plenty for under £20 though, and you don’t have to drink at all if you don’t want to – perhaps your life looks perfectly OK sober. Lucky you.
What can I tell you? Galvin is the best restaurant I have lit upon this year. I liked it so much I didn’t even bother to write a funny bit about nothing at the top of my article, did you notice? I just piled straight into the review. Was that ok? Was it a bit boring? Sorry. Don’t give me grief. I’m not myself just now. Can’t seem to summon the old levity. But you’ll live. People who read other newspapers have to put up with this sort of thing every week. I’ll be fine soon, I promise. I know I will, because I’m going back to Galvin to sort myself out.
Meat/fish: 7
Cooking: 8
Other: 9
Score: 8
Price: As above, duhh…
Racine
239 Brompton Road, SW3
(020-7584 4477)
God, how this crisp brown bistro opposite Brompton Oratory excited me when it opened in 2002. And it still does: Bayonne ham with celeriac remoulade, marmite Dieppoise, sweetbreads fried in butter with capers, tête de veau, whole veal kidney on Emmenthal mash, andouillette and chips… Set lunch £15.50. Madness.
Thackeray’s
85 London Road, Tunbridge Wells, Kent
(01892 511921)
This place cheered me up no end last time I was properly down in the dumps a couple of years ago. I fondly recall a beautiful dining room, pheasant ravioli, pork three ways and the confit of Kentish lamb.
E-mail feedme@thetimes.co.uk if you know somewhere good and maybe we’ll go there together
