Unfortunately, travel is all about planning. And I’m not. So I haven’t been anywhere at all. Not even left London since May. As it happens, I am actually away now, in Cape Town, where, with a bit of luck, I am having a lovely time. But this is no use to you because I didn’t get here in time to write about it, and anyway I booked so late that I’m staying in a grismal motel and eating in McDonald’s because at this time of year all the restaurants have been booked up for months.
But I am away now because now is the sort of time when one wants to be away. Which is why now is when they do the travel issue – so that you can read about nice places and book them. Which is what you did last year, which is why I couldn’t get in anywhere nice at the last minute. To have had somewhere abroad to write about now I would have to have gone away a few weeks ago, which I didn’t, because that was not when I wanted to go away. Journalism – it just doesn’t really work.
So I am going to review three quite nice little restaurants in South London instead, because I flew over them on my way to Cape Town (assuming we didn’t crash on take-off, in which case I hope they have pulled this piece out of respect) and their presence here may, as a result, make the flight tax deductible.
I don’t usually bother much with South London because it is so far away from my home in North London that once I have got there I might as well carry on to France. And if not France, then at the very least I tend to feel that I should carry on into the southern countryside (if there is any left) and quieten the rural contingent. Talk about travel issues. They are the people with travel issues.
"Dear Mr Coren," they write. "Why do you never travel to Grottinghamshire? We now have as many as three restaurants in the county where you can eat hot food off an unchipped plate. And you’ll find none of your London rudeness here, either, and none of the endless chitter-chatter that seems to go on in big-city restaurants. And we have none of these noisy wooden floors or uncomfortable ‘designer’ chairs or this incessant rockular music that always seems to be playing. Nor will you be forced to consume any of this supposed ‘innovative cuisine’ or so-called ‘organic produce’.
And you won’t find any ‘New World’ wines on the list either – New World, indeed. As if there were something wrong with the old world. That Vasco da Gama has a lot to answer for. All it’s led to is plimsolls and littering."
But just recently, as it happens, I have had occasion to spend a bit of time south of the river and have found that such places as Kennington and Clapham are not nearly as comical and pointless as I had long assumed.
In Kennington, for example, which had never been more to me than a crossroads which, if I reached it, meant I was lost and would have to pull an illegal U-ey, I recently witnessed a battered sign for a pub called "The White Hart" re-emerging gradually from beneath a sign for something called "La Finca".
"A pub is reborn!" read a notice draped alongside, and in the window promises were made of "real pub grub" and "Sunday roasts". By the time it opened, the newly excavated original sign had been replaced by a new one (shame) and things were going smoothly-ish. They had a tap marked "Deuchar’s", for example, which I love, but no Deuchar’s was coming out of it yet. The tables in the window were nice to sit in for a late Saturday lunch, but they were a bit sticky from Friday night.
The food was good. Poached haddock on bubble and squeak with a poached egg is a gastropub standard that can be spoilt by squishy fish, mossy bubble or an over-poached egg, and wasn’t. And a fillet of Black Welsh Beef was served nice and rare by friendly staff who were keen to ask every customer for criticisms and suggestions, which bespeaks an attitude that will take them far, locally. If you know what I mean.
And then there’s Clapham. One hears a lot about Clapham. And it turns out all to be true, especially at Eco, where friendly-looking twentysomethings with not much money cram in to a smallish room throbbing with loud early Nineties music to eat huge platefuls of carbohydrate. If you like that sort of thing, then you absolutely will. The pizzas are pretty OK, and the more melted cheese you like to eat, the happier you’ll be. Indeed, it is all pretty Brobdingnaggian – the salad of roasted vegetables was a platter of oven-baked giant green or red things served whole or halved. And the wine list of 20-odd bottles did not climb above £17.95. I had all but forgotten such places existed.
Next door they have a terribly posh delicatessen called Esca serving slightly more delicate things to eat at tables in the back or to take away: legs of free-range chicken and newly roasted hams ready to be sliced, grilled calamari and things in jars from the Sicilian Sole & Natura range. And, at this time of year, the familiar panettones of a million shapes and sizes.
Morel, just across the road, aims a little higher, though not as high as Thyme, which earned rave reviews on this site before its doomed and ultimately fatal move to Covent Garden. Sunday lunch was mostly about roasts – lamb and beef that were fine but a little overdone (so difficult to get them right in a small restaurant), and rolled suckling pig that was a little juicier. The mono-gravy that was served to accompany all three was a scary concept but did its job. The vegetables came, each one with one side blackened, which I have heard some people don’t mind.
Far better, and posher, and more like what one goes to a restaurant for, were starters of roasted parsnip velouté poured on to excellent little chestnut tortellini and a Madeira syrup, and a pile of creamed wild mushrooms and shallots, punctuated with chopped tomato and piled on to toasted brioche. And the puddings – a vanilla crème brûlée with daftly unseasonal raspberries, and a hot chocolate and orange fondant – were good, too.
My experience tended to suggest that a trip to Morel would be better undertaken on a weekday evening – when the à la carte menu is available and the obviously talented chef can do what comes naturally – than on a day when he has to try his hand at a roast to get the punters in. But then, you see, Sunday is really the only day when the traffic is light enough, and my time flexible enough, for me to consider travelling all the way to Clapham to eat. If you’re a local, of course, you won’t have the same Morel dilemma.
The White Hart
185 Kennington Lane, SW11
(020-7735 1061)
Meat/fish: 4
Cooking: 6
Other: 6
Score: 5.33
Price: £20 per head with a couple of pints
Eco
162 Clapham High Street, SW4
(020-7978 1108)
Meat/fish: 4
Cooking: 5
Other: 7
Score: 5.33
Price: £15 per head without booze
Morel
14 Clapham Park Rd, SW4
(020-7627 2468)
Meat/fish: 4
Cooking: 6
Other: 7
Score: 5.67
Price: Three-course Sunday lunch, £19.95
Click here to book a table at this restaurant
E-mail feedme@thetimes.co.uk if you know somewhere nice. I promise I’ll eat with a reader early in the new year. It’s been a while
