Restaurant reviews

Hix at The Tramshed: chicken, steak and Damien Hirst
You’d think the combination of a great site in Hoxton, an installation by Damien Hirst and a steak- and chicken-based menu devised by one of London’s best known and most successful chefs, Mark Hix, would be something you’d hurtle across London for but somehow his new restaurant The Tramshed just doesn't come off.
I never thought I’d find myself saying this but the menu is simply too short, offering a no-choice slection of starters, roast chicken or steak and some classically English puds which if you’re anything like us you won’t have room for. Oh and a couple of salads though, weirdly, nothing for veggies except the small starter salad of raw asparagus with fennel and Berkswell. And I don’t even know if Berkswell is a vegetarian cheese

The problem is that if you only serve one thing it has to be fantastic and the chicken just wasn’t good enough. A fine specimen but underseasoned and slightly undercooked - not in the sense of being raw but in lacking the deeply savoury, sticky skin of a well-basted bird. (Rowley Leigh at Le Cafe Anglais accomplishes this much better and also offers a choice of breast or leg. Here you have to order the whole bird unless you go for a poussin which is unlikely to have as much flavour. Which makes it difficult for one of you to order steak as we would have been inclined to do.)
Given how fussy people are about eating these days it also seems odd to leave you to carve the very leggy bird a task fraught with difficulty given the tables are so small.
The starters were a mixed bag - Yorkshire pudding with whipped chicken livers (quite livery and too bitter) is a strange concept, admirable though it might be to use up the livers that way. But you can’t really opt out if you don’t fancy it - you pay for all three starters.
The wine list is also a disappointment, given the focus of the restaurant There were next to no light to medium-bodied reds of the kind you’d choose with chicken or which would appeal on a summer’s day. No Beaujolais for example and the cheapest red burgundy, a Nuits St Georges 1er Cru, was £201.
We ended up drinking an excellent bottle of beer, a citrussy pale ale called Hackney Hopster from London Fields Brewery and a medium-dry Burrow Hill Cider - which were great value, matched our chicken perfectly and made us wonder why we were even thinking about ordering wine.

Plus points: the building - a converted Tramshed, as the name suggests - is stunning and that Hirst installation (a stuffed bird on a stuffed cow) a dramatically eye-catching focus. The chips were good and the scrumpy-fried onions even better. The takeaway (food and wine) must be a boon for local residents and office workers (pick up a cheese and chive madeleine if you're passing by). I also like the fact that you get a doggy bag to cart off the remnants of your chicken. Another thrifty touch.
But that's still not enough to make Tramshed worth crossing London for if you’re not in the area - certainly not if you're not in the mood for chicken. If you want to experience the best of Hix I’d go to his Soho restaurant instead.
We ate at The Tramshed at soft opening rates.
Top image ©Damien Hirst 2012

Vinoteca: Soho’s newest wine bar
Even casual restaurants tend to have such good winelists these days that you might wonder whether there’s much of a market for wine bars. But from the heaving crowd at the newly opened branch of Vinoteca in Beak Street this week it looks like they’re on to a winner.
This is the third outlet from Brett Woonton and Charlie Young who bravely set up in St John Street opposite St John’s a few years ago then expanded to Seymour Place near Marble Arch, a welcome presence in an area that’s oddly devoid of good places to eat. A couple of doors up from the perennially popular Polpo, the new Beak Street branch looks another smart location.
The formula is simple and clever. A wine shop and a restaurant/bar. There’s a great list of around 300 less usual and well-priced wines around 25 of which you can buy by the glass at any one time. A few - like the deliciously vibrant Phillippe & Vincent Jaboulet Crozes Hermitage I ordered at Charlie’s suggestion - are available in bag-in-box “about £5 less than it would have been if it had been bottled” he told me proudly.
If you want to get away from the noisy Soho scrum there are bookable - and well-spaced - tables upstairs which is where we ate. The food is simple and robust, designed, I would imagine, to form an accommodating backdrop to as many wines as possible rather than aim for Michelin stars. And - hurray - each has its own wine pairing.

My favourite dish was a nicely seared fillet of mackerel on a rhubarb purée spiked with lovage - an inspired touch with added a welcome note of bitterness to what can sometimes feel like a cloying combination. And which worked really well with its accompanying glass of 2011 Arca Nova Vinho Verde. The baked garlic and Childwickbury goats curd bruschetta which my daughter tucked into with relish was also good - and perfect with a glass of Camel Valley Bacchus.
Mains were slightly less controlled. My roast rose veal, snails and salsa verde was tasty but suffered from an excess of celeriac which was piled in rather unlovely brown slabs around the dish. And my daughter’s bavette was rare even by her blood-curdling standards. It came with some excellent hand-cut chips though which she demolished with enthusiasm and glossy fresh watercress (which she didn’t).
The dessert she chose - an ultra-chocolatey brownie and ice cream - totally hit the spot though must prove a challenge for most dessert wines.
If you just want a light meal there’s a guy slicing charcuterie to order on an old fashioned slicer. I suspect, as in most wine bars, that would be a good option as would just having a couple of starters.
So - a great addition to the Soho drinking circuit, a good place for a reasonably priced meal and an excellent one to buy wine to take home if you work around there. Usefully it’s also open on a Sunday.
Vinoteca is at 53-55 Beak Street, London W1F 9SH. You can also buy wine from their website www.vinoteca.co.uk
PS London’s other high-profile wine bar 28-50 is opening a new branch next month in Marylebone Lane. Check out their website for details.
I ate at Vinoteca as a guest of the restaurant

10 Greek Street: another hot spot in Soho’s food revolution
Anyone who doubts that London is one of the world’s most exciting cities to eat in should take a trip round Soho, once noted for its sleazy bars and strip joints. Now it’s become the epicentre of Britain’s food revolution - not with the smartest restaurants in town, admittedly, but some of the hippest.
To your must-do list add 10 Greek Street which I checked out yesterday. I’d been reading glowing reviews of it for a couple of weeks, so went with dangerously high expectations which were not disappointed.
It’s a small restaurant with a short menu. Always good. I was pressed for time so stuck to a couple of starters - a nicely seared fillet of super-fresh mackerel with romesco sauce and pickled broad beans (possibly better unpickled - small quibble) and a heavenly plate of featherlight, pillowy little gnocchi in a creamy Gorgonzola sauce with pinenuts and crisp-fried sage.
Two courses, not much to go on, eh? Well yes but, as I say, there are other good reports (see Jay Rayner’s review if you don’t believe me) and the two things to stress are the ridiculously reasonable prices (£6 for each of my starters) and the wine list which is one of the best in London. Not because of the number of imposing and expensive bottles (come, this is Soho) but the fact that practically everything is available by the glass, very well priced and they offer you a taste before they pour to check if you like it.
I ordered a glass of wonderfully obscure Johanneshof Reinisch, Rotgipfler from Austria’s Thermenregion for just £3.75, a minerally, slightly smokey white that held its own with the punchy mackerel and sailed through the gnocchi. The most expensive wine by the glass is a £5.25 Pieropan Soave, the priciest bottle £40 (for a magnum of 2001 Marques de la Concordia Rioja Reserva)
Even better, they have a well-priced fine wine list which they will bring you on request. Well I say ‘list’ but in fact it’s scrawled in a notebook indicating the number of bottles they have left as well as the ones that have been drunk up. On the day I was there it included Pichon Lalande ’76 for £75 which would cost as much in a shop - if you could find it.
Personally I’d stick to the main list which keeps the meal down to a very reasonable cost. Can they keep the prices that low? I don’t know but enjoy it while they last.
Incidentally the restaurant only takes bookings at lunchtime. Tel: 020 7734 4677. www.10greekstreet.com.

Dabbous - already one of the hottest restaurant openings of 2012
I have to say my heart sinks these days when I read about a new restaurant with small plates and Nordic influences but the feedback about Dabbous was so glowing (5 stars in Time Out and from the notoriously hard to please Fay Maschler of the Evening Standard) it was clearly Not To Be Missed.
It’s a mixed blessing to go somewhere with high expectations but for once the hype is justified. The food is clever, delicious, the cocktails equally imaginative, the room New-York-industrial-chic cool and the service charmingly unsnotty (the main difference from the otherwise apt comparison Maschler has made with new-style Parisien restaurants such as Le Regalade and Le Chateaubriand)
Ollie Dabbous (pronounced dabu) has an impeccable pedigree, mind you. He started his career working for Raymond Blanc for 4 years at Le Manoir aux Quat’ Saisons and was most recently head chef at the Michelin-starred Texture. Along the way he’s worked at Hibiscus and Mugaritz and put in stints at The Fat Duck, Pierre Gagnaire, L’Astrance and Noma.
It’s one of those places where everything sounds so tempting it’s hard to choose what to eat so we kicked off with the much admired salad of fennel, lemon balm and pickled rose petals to see if it went with their signature Dillusion cocktail of gin, cucumber, elderflower and dill (it did) and a sensational beef tartar with cigar oil, whiskey and rye. Not obviously boozy but an intense explosion of meaty, smokey flavours.
The next two dishes came in odd juxtaposition, confit salmon, a dish I normally wouldn’t order but which was cooked to perfection and a sublime, umami-rich dish of buttery mash with ‘roasting juices’ and truffles (below, right) that would have made a pretty good meal on its own. Odd, maybe to have it at this early stage in the meal - it would have made a better side to a main.
The only dish I was than less grabbed by was barbecued Iberico pork with acorn praline which was a bit dense and chewy and tasted like a deconstructed satay. I suspect Dabbous is a better fish and vegetable cook judging by a sublimely sweet, delicate dish of roast king crab, with buttermilk and hispi cabbage.
Desserts were admittedly a little eccentric. Cucumber and borage flower in a chilled lemon verbena infusion (lovely as a palate cleanser but it wouldn’t satisfy hard core pudding lovers) and an intensely chocolatey .... I don’t know what ... rubble? .... ‘clay’ apparently ... with a basil squiggle that probably would. We were too full, I’m sure, to fully appreciate it. The cheese plate about which I’ve written on my cheese blog was perfection though
Portions were more generous than I expected but I’d still be inclined to order four dishes. The set lunch is amazingly well priced at 21 for 3 courses, or 24 or 4 - IF - and it’s a big if - you can get in. It’s already a ridiculously hot ticket.
The wine list is extensive but could be a little more adventurous given the statement about organic and natural wines. And in view of the light, airy style of the food it would be good to see some more aromatic whites. But these are early days. You can order matching wines by the glass or half glass from 35 per person.
All in all, though, an outstanding opening at a period when terrific restaurants seem to be popping up all over London. Book before the rest of the reviews come out.
Dabbous is at 39 Whitfield Street, parallel to Tottenham Court Road, more or less opposite Heal’s.
I ate at Dabbous as a guest of the restaurant.

Jeremy Lee at Quo Vadis, Soho
If you want to understand what British cooking is about - not the magpie character of of modern British but the genteel English country house tradition - head for Soho where Jeremy Lee has taken up residence behind the stoves at Quo Vadis.
This is fantastically good news for those of us who previously had to schlep down to the Blueprint Café at the Design Museum at Tower Bridge to enjoy his cooking. I had one of the best meals of my life there when I was ‘researching’ a feature on what to drink for the millenium when he cooked against the backdrop of some of the finest wines on the planet. His simple, beautifully judged food couldn’t have been better suited to them. Lee, I’m sure, would be more than happy to be referred to as a cook rather than a chef.
So what did we eat? A lot, I’m afraid to say. Pieces of lightly cooked salsify wrapped in filo, baked and dusted in parmesan which surely rivals Rowley Leigh’s parmesan custard as one of the sexiest small dishes in London. (Order two rounds.) A ridiculously good warm eel and horseradish sandwich. A light fluffy bloater paté which turned up unannounced borne by Lee himself who knows my host and me well. You’ll need to take account of this in the review though we did pay for the rest of our meal.
And a riot of a beetroot and egg salad with three different colours of beets and a wild scattering of herbs which I wish I’d ordered instead of a rather austere pork terrine which, despite its faultless spicing and well-judged dab of mustard, was possibly the least interesting dish of the evening. And that was just the starters.
Hare pie was a triumph and at £14 significantly cheaper than the pie I whinged about a while ago at St John’s. In fact Lee’s Quo Vadis is rather like a flirtatious more feminine St John’s. Less challenging, more playful and certainly less expensive.
The pie also gave rise to the best match of the evening - a glass of peppery St Joseph which held its own without adding to the richness. The wine list is very decent overall with some well priced options by the glass and bottle.
I was so absorbed I didn’t even bother with my companion's skate with black butter and capers. It was fresh. It was fine.
Puddings (not desserts, note) were a slight disappointment by comparison but we were probably too full to appreciate them anyway. A slightly heavy lemon posset with rhubarb - a nice combination of flavours, not the best posset I’ve ever tasted and a not quite almondy enough almond cake with a not quite orangey enough St Clements curd and Jersey cream. Maybe the pastry chef comes from the previous regime.
Service could also do with sharpening and speeding up. The unexpected success of Lee's arrival has meant a rather langorous emergence of dishes from the kitchen. But these are early days. This is already one of the most charming places to eat in Soho. And that’s saying something.
Quo Vadis is at 26-27 Dean Street, London W1D 3LL. Tel: 0207 437 9585. Although it's a members' club the restaurant is open to the public with a pre- and post-theatre supper for £17.50 for two courses and £20 for three.
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