If, on the other hand, I just go out for a scoff with friends, I go in much the same way as you would: looking forward to a night out, ordering whatever I fancy eating rather than whatever will best show off the chef’s talents, tending to look on the positive side of everything so as not to spoil an evening, and forgetting all about it as soon as I have left. All that malarkey that goes on when one is eating for fun.
And that’s why I have never reviewed the Notting Hill Brasserie, an excellent little restaurant that I have been to a few times since Mark Jankel took over in the kitchen, but always for fun, always without premeditation, always leaving drunk and thinking, “I must write this place up one of these days.” But I never do, because I can never find an angle. And then I go to a place with a definable shtick and write about that instead. And that’s not fair on Mr Jankel.
For he is a top fellow, properly educated in important things (degree in environmental studies), but more or less self-taught in cookery, who honed childhood talents at the Butler’s Wharf Chef School, and then under Philip Howard at the Square, and then at QC as chef de partie under Jun Tanaka (not to be confused with Juan Tanamera).
The restaurant into which he has come for the first time as head chef was, for 36 years, owned by Prue Leith, which, frankly, means nothing to me at all, as I came to the restaurant game only relatively recently, and back when it was last called Leith’s, I still thought I was going to be a train driver (and perhaps I am).
It’s a chi-chi little spot, with high ceilings and fat linen and rococo gestures all over the place, surly-looking old French waiters, occasional jazz nights in the bar, and prices you could fry an egg on. It has always felt to me rather more Chelsea than Notting Hill, but Notting Hill has changed. The Ledbury has a Michelin star, the churches have all been turned into gyms and the last indigenous family moved out in January. NHB’s time has surely come.
I have never been here in the evening, I am afraid, which is when Mr Jankel really turns it on, not because I fear complex cooking, but because by nightfall I prefer to be safely back in North London. I do not know what happens to people in W11 after dark, but I am by no means absolutely certain that they do not turn into bats and drink the blood of visitors.
Eating at lunch time, then, you will encounter the sort of things I have enjoyed, such as a really proper old châteaubriand, salt crusted and roasted rare with a béarnaise on the side for dipping your excellent chips in. Confit belly of Gloucester Old Spot (Jankel’s good on named breeds) with cassoulet and parsnip purée, or roast rump of lamb with white onion purée and rosemary. Not too many thoughts (or flavours) on a plate, generous seasoning, thick mouthfuls. He does fish, too. I know this because the girls always have it, but I don’t know what it’s like because I never ask, because I’m not working.
Starters are things like Jerusalem artichoke soup with a nudge of truffle and an egg beignet (so nicely done: poached for a minute, one assumes, and then breaded or battered, I forget which, and whopped in the deep fryer) and also, um, don’t know. I’ve only had the soup.
For pudding the other day we had a hot chocolate fondant with lavender ice-cream which was quite perfect, and a white truffle honey cheesecake which was, I thought, grim. Mark’s response, when I mentioned it (as politely as I could, which was by asking if the “faint pooiness” was deliberate), was to produce a replacement in the shape of a truffle risotto ice cream. This was a ballsy move, quite a middle finger to flip at a critic. To his credit, it was better than the cheesecake.
Notting Hill Brasserie is a really good, plush, expensive local restaurant, which I have felt bad for 18 months about not reviewing, and about which I don’t feel bad any more. As long as you can take the sting of a grown-up bill and enjoy the old trying-to-get-a-smile-out-of-the-scary-waiter game, then I would urge you to hustle on down there and give it a try. Mark Jankel will go places.
And so will Rapscallion, a tiny restaurant and bar in Clapham dead opposite the Clapham Picture House (which is why I was in there), which is another local joint I went to just because I was hungry, and came out of thinking I ought to tell you about.
It’s a bar, really, with half a dozen small tables running along the facing wall and a few more at the back. The menu, which I do not have in front of me, was modern Australian cum Pacific-rim stuff, which I don’t normally like, because it’s usually a feature of some awful over PR-ed West End wankorium opened by bored hedge-fund managers in the hope of getting laid. But here the cooking was spot-on, reminiscent of the best I ate last time I was in Australia.
I had sea bream fillets with sweet chilli jam and pickled ginger and, I think, some sheets of Nori, with green beans and coriander; and also tried some quite spicy monkfish, marinated in olive oil and lemon grass, on sweet potato cubes with a lentil dhal, tzatziki and a tomato salsa; and a mouthful of the lamb cutlets with maple syrup roasted butternut squash.
It’s boisterous, friendly, relaxed, a little cramped, with efficient service and really tight control on the plate. Good brunches too, apparently. Give it a blast, go on.
But feel free to give up on the Lots Road Pub and Dining Room in Chelsea. Since opening to wide acclaim three or four years ago (I praised it in 2003), on the evidence of this visit it appears to have gone utterly to the dogs.
I went for lunch last Saturday, and the horrors (I use the term relatively and with some self-awareness) were as follows: the barman brought warm fino and said “I thought it was served at room temperature, like port” (fino should be chilled, and port is better anyway at cellar temperature than chambré); the prawns had been bought frozen and then overcooked to provide rank, soggy, truly revolting little fried corpses; duck spring rolls were all pastry and almost certainly bought in frozen, too; two out of three bottles of tempranillo were bad (not necessarily their fault); a burger ordered “very rare, honestly, barely cook it at all”, came cooked through to the hardness of a hockey puck; the manager didn’t know what grappa was; the double espresso was just a single with extra water. My visit was a complete waste of a Saturday afternoon.
Notting Hill Brasserie
92 Kensington Park Road, W11 (020-7229 4481)
Meat/fish: 8
Cooking: 8
Other: 7
Score: 7.67
Price: high. Easy to do £150 for two.
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Rapscallion
75 Venn Street, SW4 (020-7787 6555)
Meat/fish: 6
Cooking: 7
Other: 7
Score: 6.67
Price: fair. £75 for two.
Lots Road Pub and Dining Room
114 Lots Road, SW10 (020-7352 6645)
Meat/fish: 5
Cooking: 3
Other: 3
Score: 3.67
Price: irrelevant.
E-mail feedme@thetimes.co.uk and maybe we’ll go out for lunch
