James' Reviews

Visiting a new restaurant in the premises of an old favourite is rather like meeting the new partner of a close friend, one whose predecessor you really liked. The Quality Chop House, just round the corner from Exmouth Market, was a great favourite: good, traditional fare done well, and the service was always particularly warm. ‘Meatballs at The Quality Chop House’ is the young pretender and QCH regulars will be pleased to know that the décor remains intact, even down to the amazingly uncomfortable benches (I always favoured the high stools in the right-hand room of the restaurant). And the welcome, too, remains warm.
If the word ‘meatball’ conjures up bad childhood memories (gristly spherical things or, worse, the tinned variety swimming in industrial-strength tomato sauce), fear not. The meatball actually belongs to a distinguished dynasty – think of Greek keftédes, Italian polpette, Swedish köttbullar and, often overlooked, a good English faggot. And drawing on this distinguished lineage is what Meatballs is all about. The premise is simple: choose a meatball (£3.95 for three), add a carb (potato, pearl barley or pasta – shame there's no rice) and accessorise with a veg (peas, carrots, salad and so forth). We spurned the ‘guest meatball’ (Salmon in a parsley sauce, £5.95) and opted for pork and rosemary in a creamy parmesan sauce and Greek lamb in a Tsaziki. To these we added mashed potato and buttered spaghetti (£2.95 each) and opted for peas and carrots (cooked with honey and thyme – a bit weird, it must be said!). The food appeared very quickly and was very tasty. We washed it down with a 50cl carafe of a reasonable Chianti (£13.95) and followed up with a cheesecake (£4.95) and an utterly heavenly baked custard (£3.65): I was very tempted to order a second-helping, it was that good! The whole thing came to about 40 quid.
So, though this new comer may lack the glamour of the QCH (I never went there without someone famous – an actor, writer or opera singer – dining… More

Medcalf, always rammed, became a favourite local with the demise of the Quality Chop House. Occupying a former butcher's shop – long and thin with décor of the shabby-chic variety – it sits halfway along Exmouth Market's much-appreciated restaurant strip, and just a door away from Moro.
The focus is on British cuisine – locally sourced – and it never disappoints. Service is casual but attentive (though a restaurant that advertises a decent aperitif of Carpano bitters, yet CAN'T be bothered to make a Negroni, earns a black-mark in my book).
Starters always include a decent smoked salmon with toasted bread, an excellent terrine and Welsh rarebit. Last time I opted for a brandade of smoked haddock which was a flavoursome opener.
Mains wave the banner of tradition – a perfectly-cooked rolled piece of belly pork with champ and cabbage, a superb bavette (very bloody – fine by me – though no request for cooking was given) with a horseradish cream that delivered a veritable upper-cut, a nice piece of sea-bream done with mussels, or a salad involving British crab. Something for everyone, in short, and offered in decent portions. (A pork chop a few weeks back was the most perfectly cooked example I've ever tasted!)
The wine list is nicely balanced with many decent bottles in the sub-£30 bracket and there's a wide range of beers and ciders too.
In decent weather (though Exmouth Market diners tend to flood outside in all but hurricane conditions) you can eat outside (and there's a tiny walled area at the back). Inside, the atmosphere is friendly and the clientele youngish and fashion-concious.
Prices tend to be £5-7 for starters, mains around £16 and puds about £6 (I long to be still hungry enough to tackle a greengage millefeuille – it sounds divine). If you live in EC1, this is a useful place for all occasions – but don't expect to walk in and get a table every time…

The Brand has landed in Islington, though none of the staff had, at week two, clapped eyes on The Brand himself though they did reveal that Jamie Oliver's muse on all things Italian, Gennaro Cantaldo, had drilled the waiters – and he'd clearly done a splendid job as they're were enthusiastic, knowledgeable and just the right side of over-attentive.
The space, occupying a substantial chunk of the ground floor of the newly opened Angel Centre, is pretty sizeable, and in the hours of daylight is a blend of urban chic with a few nods in the direction of old-style Italy (concrete pillars clad in terracotta tiles), and fairly functional tables and chairs. ‘In the hours of daylight’ is an important caveat because after dark the place is lit by what feels like 40 Watt bulbs – never has the torch facility of an iPhone been more useful, as reading the menu in the crepuscular gloom was a non-starter.
The menu is a good blend of antipasti ‘boards’ (a plank of wood sat on top of a couple of tins of Italian tomatoes), pasta (with a twist) and Italianate mains. The antipasti boards are fine – nicely sourced hams and salamis with a good mix of vegetarian accompaniments (a crunchy salad of root vegetables spiked with mint and chilli), thin slivers of peccorino with a blob of chilli jam on a piece of wafer-thin, unleavened bread, a good ball of mozzarella and various pickled things like caper-berries and some pretty classy olives.
The mains were less appealing – a fiddled around carbonara added leek to the mix and served it on bucatini which – IMHO – moves the pasta rather more centre-stage than is required. The fish in a bag (en papillotte in tinfoil) used coley which (if it doesn't conjure up memories of feeding the cat) is not overly flavourful, though it comes with a reasonable assortment of seafood. A brochette of lamb advertised a veritable symphony of sheepy innards though there seemed to be quite a lot of padding (two cubic lumps of what looked and tasted like bread and polenta – in… More

Smiths is a cool concept, one that caters for everyone in a kind of culinary version of Dante’s Circles of Hell. I’ve long grown out of the 200 decibel ground-floor bar and diner: I adore the calm and civility of the top floor with its attentive and understated service, and memories of the most perfect (and most expensive) sirloin steak I’ve ever eaten.
Meeting friends from Hong Kong recently I decided to check out the limbo that was neither ground-floor nor top-floor: it styles itself the Dining Room. It’s still pretty noisy (there’s a hole in the centre of the room that lets the sound float upwards), but it’s got a nice, lofty vibe and, as the sun sets, the light (especially now that London Transport have razed the surrounding buildings to the ground) is wonderfully atmospheric.
Our friends were hideously late so a couple of gin martinis kept us going. When we finally ordered, the menu offered something for everyone: a nicely international influence with an emphasis on meat and fish. I had a flavoursome Thai Beef Salad (£7.25) which had a nice kick and some suitably zingy notes. Also consumed were a beautifully smooth chicken liver and foie gras parfait (£6.50) and a nicely textured risotto of summer vegetables.
For a main I had a simply grilled whole bream (£16.50) – nicely cooked with a crisp skin – though the accompanying salad of fennel, endive and radish was a bit drab and non-descript. Elsewhere salt beef seemed to please, and a slow roast piece of belly pork looked terrific. We washed it down with a perky Bordeaux pink that went under the deliciously camp name of Marilyn. The bill came in at £186, fair enough but the experience wasn’t particularly special. Definitely worth considering paying for an upgrade!

We entered Bistrot Bruno Loubet behind a woman in spectacularly high Christian Loubetins, and the sight of her teetering to her table was almost enough to distract us from appreciating the under-stated style of the room. It curves round the ground floor of the Zetter hotel, overlooking one of Clerkenwell’s loveliest squares, history closing in on it from every side. Bruno Loubet’s return to London after a spell in Oz (lucky Brisbanians) is to be welcomed by all who remember his cooking from the previous Bistrot Bruno in Soho (where Arbutus now is, if I remember rightly) and from L’Odéon on Regent Street.

Loubet is a true artist in the kitchen: reinventing, re-invigorating, re-imagining and coaxing stunning marriages of French tradition with British produce at its best. One of our main courses perfectly encapsulated the Loubet Style. It was announced on the menu simply as ‘Roast Rabbit with “forgotten” root vegetables’ but in reality was a fabulous celebration of rabbit in a seasonally-derived and perfectly harmonious clothing. The rabbit was de-boned and wrapped in pancetta and then in a light almond crust – it looked slightly like a fishcake – and the taste was amazing, the sweetness of the bunny set off by the salty complexity of the cured pork. Rustic and sophisticated at the same time – divine! And I won’t quickly forget the forgotten roots (Jerusalem artichoke, salsify, beetroot and carrot). My partner had a fillet of sea bream sitting on a purée of cauliflower (with a touch of fennel?) surrounded by a sea of squid ink stew and an intensely flavoured purée of parsley sitting on top, providing a powerful, comforting top note.

And the starters were a joy too: a plate of antipasti, beautifully arranged on the plate, offering a constellation of individual flavours – roasted cherry tomatoes, aubergine, black olives, blood orange, fig, chicory and the softest fromage frais, lightly infused with onion or garlic. It was a perfect way to kick-start the taste buds. My partner… More

If a food-loving Martian with the habit of eating mid-evening landed in London today, he’d be hard-pressed to realise that we are supposedly in the midst of a period of economic austerity: trying to book a table in a reasonably high-end restaurant for 8.30pm is virtually impossible (no problem if you fancy dining at 6pm or 9.30pm…). Hence the fall back on Arbutus after a failure to secure a table at its newly opened sister restaurant, Les Deux Salons. It was by no means a consolation prize – this was the Real Thing. Apart from an annoying wait during which the barman seemed incapable of whipping up a Negroni and a Martini in less than a quarter of an hour, this was close to perfection. The room’s minimal but warm with some good modern art on the walls. The atmosphere’s buzzy and the staff attentive – if in that slightly cool/friendly way that Harry Enfield nailed so perfectly.
The food, though, was faultless. A starter of a ‘squid and mackerel “burger”’ – a fishcake to you and me – ‘parsley, razor clams and sea purslane’ was fabulous, even if no one had owned up to the lemon grass and its, therefore, Thai progeny. Spongy and flavoursome it was heaven, and the razor clams – diced with the leaves – providing an ideal bass-note (£9.95). A salad of smoked eel (deliciously oily in a good way!) with a warm potato salad and merguez sausage was a gorgeously comforting creation (£9.95).
The mains were all deeply alluring but we both plumped for the “Saddle of rabbit, caramelized endive and shoulder cottage pie” – and so, it appeared, did most tables. It was a divine ensemble: little cylinders of succulent rabbit saddle, wrapped in parma ham and sealed with a wonderfully rich paté with a sweet little pot of rabbit shoulder cottage pie – comforting, unctuous and delicious (£17.95). I could have eaten it all again had I not stuffed myself on the fabulous bread to start.
The puddings were also terrific: one a cold chocolate fondant with salted caramel ice cream – OK, it ticks a few… More

Stroll along some of Islington’s loveliest streets on a warm summer’s evening to The Albion and you’ll discover quite how popular it is. People spill out on to the pavement at the front and the huge courtyard at the back in just seething with life: the atmosphere is palpable and the place’s lure is obvious. Drinkers sit alongside diners and the whole place has the feel of a huge party – though not a party you can crash: do book! The menu is short and focused on seasonal fare (asparagus, summer salads and so forth). There’s a charcoal-grilled offering and I had a lovely Barnsley lamb chop with a mouth-watering crispy crust and a succulent pink inside – and a handful of decent Jersey Royals lubricated with chive-butter set it off perfectly. My guest had a braised duck led on summer vegetables – and lovely balance of wintery comfort food and summery bounty. A lemon cheesecake with Scottish raspberries (four of them, no less!) made a suitable close to the meal. A NZ pinot noir (£30) helped it all down nicely. Service is friendly if a little stretched by the hordes, be patient! The bill (shared starter, two mains, shared pud, one side and wine, including a couple of glasses of sticky) came to just over £100.

There was a worrying time – heralded by the departure of The Guardian and seemingly personified by the closure of Brindisa – that Exmouth Market's stature as a foodie heaven was waning. But that wasn't the case – a Japanese café, a better-then-average Indian and (around the corner) a carnivore's dream Argentinian joint have confirmed Clerkenwell's gastronomic credentials. And now Caravan adds considerable lustre to an already impressive crown. In some ways it throws down a gauntlet to the diva of Exmouth Market, Moro, offering a Peter Gordon-esque approach to fusion cuisine. The position is good (replacing a never-quite-made-it series of bars), the atmosphere lively, the decor minimalist but warm and the service charming, relaxed and friendly. The tasting plate of humous, falafel, baba ganoosh, cheese, some intriguingly orange-flavoured carrots and flat-bread is a nod Moro-wards, though the mains as yet are fairly fusion-less (an excellent stew of pork belly and beans, topped off with some jaw-shattering crackling or a succulent veal schnitzel – a far cry, thank goodness, from the Austrian original's resemblance to deep-fried chamois leather). But it's the puds that betray the Providores/Sugar Club heritage – a quite stunning orange flower-water flavoured blanc mange with a dreamy guava sorbet and lifted with a sprinkling of crunchy toasted nuts: pure heaven. The equally imaginative trio of coconut rice, caramel bananas and tamarind ice-cream would have benefitted from a different presentation – the very sweet, gorgeously banana-y bottom layer (the whole thing comes in a Duralit water tumbler) is too far down easily to combine with the richly textured rice and the deliciously sour, though pungent tamarind. Ideally they need to be tasted together for maximum effect. Maybe served side by side on a plate would allow for more blending of flavours. A short wine list climbs quite quickly into the £30+ league but is well chosen. Two cocktails, two courses, a bottle of Rioja and… More