45 Jermyn Street, Fortnum and Mason

It’s hard to stand out amidst the flood of new restaurant openings that greet each week in London at the moment but the magical words ‘caviar trolley’ give you as good a chance as any.

The trolley - which is made in New Cross of all unlikely places - is the centrepiece of 45 Jermyn Street, department store Fortnum & Mason’s glitzy new in-house restaurant which has taken over from the somewhat staid Fountain. It’s entirely typical of the company’s flamboyant CEO Ewan Venters, a Willy Wonka-style impresario who has brought a touch of indulgent playfulness to this venerable London institution (and apparently taken profits from £300k to £3.8m a year in the process.)

If you succumb to the trolley you can choose from oscietra or beluga caviar at £3.20 or £6.70 a gram respectively - which also buys you some mini baked potatoes, sour cream, toast, chive blinis (a little rubbery) and a soft mass of scrambled eggs which are expertly stirred at the table by the maitre’d. (I asked him if he called himself the caviar sommelier but apparently not. I’m not sure he’d quite bargained for his scrambling duties.) I’d say you need rather more than the minimum 10g of caviar you're required to order to balance the extras - more like 20g which would make it expensive unless you go for the Siberian sturgeon at £2 a gram but Fortnum's has never been about belt-tightening. Add a glass of champagne at £12 and service and you’re looking at around £70 a head.

There are cheaper options - and despite the presence of main courses such as Dover sole and the rather delicious rich, buttery spaetzle (German-style pasta) with lobster I had after the caviar I think this is the kind of place to pop in for a drink and a dish - a late breakfast, a high tea or an after-theatre supper rather than a three course meal. I was going to say it’s the kind of place to take 10 year olds for a half term or holiday treat but discovered the coupes and floats I thought were tailormade for tinies contain a fair amount of booze. This is a place is for grown-up kids.

What you’re paying for at 45 Jermyn Street is good old fashioned glamour. It’s all smooth squishy orange banquettes and subdued flattering table lights*. If you're not on a caviar budget you could drop in for breakfast for about a tenner to eat what I’m sure would be a pukka bacon sandwich or an egg-topped marmite crumpet and a pot of tea. I might well do just that.

*which aren’t quite brightly lit enough, note powers that be at 45, to illuminate the menus for those of us who are short-sighted. Bigger print or a bolder font please.

I ate at 45 Jermyn Street as a guest of the restuarant. You can book on 0207 205 4545 or reserve on the website. Usefully it's open all day 7 days a week.

La Chassagnette: so pretty but more misses than hits

Given that I plastered photographs of La Chassagnette all over my instagram feed the other day you might think a review was superfluous but the truth is that pretty plates do not necessarily a great restaurant make.

A bit of history. We first went to La Chassagnette 10 years ago when we started visiting nearby Arles for the annual photographic exhibition. (Quick parental plug: Our youngest son is a photographer.) We were absolutely dazzled by it - the location in a wild garden in the middle of the Camargue, the crazily inventive food from chef Jean Luc Rabanel, now at L’Atelier du Jean-Luc Rabanel in the city centre. I remember exquisitely pretty salads, a lit grill being brought to the table with tiny sardines on it. It was, as the French, say ludique (playful) - fresh, original and charming. We went once or twice more before Rabanel moved on.

Although his replacement Armand Amal has a Michein star we never got round to going back - until the other day and i must say I couldn’t wait.

The meal started well enough. In good weather you sit outside overlooking the garden in the beautiful dappled light of a vine-covered terrace. A plate arrived covered with a crisp socca (chickpea pancake). Underneath were some slivers of very good ham and a spicy chickpea purée. We winced slightly at the 90€ cost of the menu découverte - the only fixed price option on offer but given the starters were 19€ and the main courses 38-43€ it seemed the only way to go.

Beautiful colourful dishes started arriving. A brilliant flamingo-coloured red pepper gazpacho … but what’s this? Rocket purée and grapes? That doesn’t really work. Nor does red mullet, a strong-tasting fish that needs robust spicing, paired with blackberries. Or a plate of pickled carrots topped with a raw ‘gravlax’ of ‘taureau’. I know bull is a local ingredient but that’s definitely not the best way to serve it. We couldn’t taste much of the presumably home-grown carrots either.

“Who’s having the sole?” demanded our charmless waitress. Well you tell us. It’s supposed to be a surprise menu and we were told we had to order the same thing. It arrived in an heavily-saffroned broth perched on some fibrous yellow courgettes. Some ‘eau de tomate’ was poured over to little effect - again you couldn’t taste the sole. My very rare tuna, partnered with aubergines was much better as was a dish of lovely fresh coco beans and squid with a haricot bean purée. And a simply gorgeous dessert of sheeps milk yoghurt blancmange (more like a cheesecake) with figs and tonka bean ice-cream. Hurrah for the pastry chef!

We had problems with the drinks order too. I thought I ordered a sake flight - clever idea to offer rice wine in the Camargue - but got to dish 4 before I realised I hadn’t been given the next pairing so said I’d have a glass of wine instead. Could we have the list back? The sommelier arrived with two glasses he’d picked for us ‘to go with the food’ - a 1985 Roussillon white and a heavily oaked red both from Domaine Vaquer. We tried them. They didn’t. The red was too oaky for the tuna and the white was oxidised. The sommelier said it wasn’t. Finally we got a bit stroppy and they replaced them with wines of our choice (a decent if slightly bland Provence rosé and a Kreydenweiss Costières de Nîmes). Much irritation all round. (And no, it wasn’t a language problem. My husband speaks fluent French)

Maybe the chef - and the maitre’D - were on holiday but it all seemed a bit lacking in focus with neither the sure-footed cooking or the smoothly purring service you’d expect from a Michelin-starred restaurant. And, even given the glorious setting, expensive. If we hadn’t drunk relatively modestly we could have easily been looking at a bill of 300€ (£221) instead of the 211€ (£155) they charged us. Which seems pricey for a mainly vegetable-based menu put together from ingredients that are on the restaurant’s doorstep.

Although La Chassagnette is in the Camargue it seems to have more than a touch of Provencitis - in other words it’s succumbed to the temptation to play to a wealthy international clientele (there was only one party of French on the day we were there). As my husband said “They’re not as good as they were and they’re not as good as they think they are.” Sadly - despite the pretty pictures - I agree.

La Chassagnette, Route du Sambuc, 13200 Arles. Tel: 04 90 97 26 96

Lurra - the latest London restaurant you need to know about

With so much of what’s going on on the London dining scene happening east of the City it’s good to find a hip new restaurant opening slap in the middle of the West End

Actually Seymour Place (just off Edgware Road) is becoming quite the hotspot. Not only does it have Lurra (which means ‘land’ in Basque) but its elder sibling Donostia, Lockhart and a branch of the excellent wine bar and bottle shop Vinoteca. All within five minutes walk of Marble Arch tube.

Lurra ticks all the boxes for 2015 eating out: wood-fired grill, open plan kitchen, obscure seafood, Galician beef which, it turns out, the owners import and supply to other top restaurants and butchers including Kitty Fisher's and Turner and George. Smart cookies.

Only the bright, naturally lit, almost Scandi decor, a welcome change from the now standardised bare brick and reclaimed tables, is not au courant - maybe even sparking off its own trend.

I can’t claim my meal there was typical as I was invited for a press event which meant I got to eat both the turbot and the 14 (yes FOURTEEN) year old beef, an indulgence I would definitely have baulked at had I been paying the bill. Both are designed for sharing but still ... At £65 a kilo, they’re clearly priced more for the locals from nearby Connaught Village than cash-strapped twenty-somethings from the other side of town.

The turbot doesn’t look much but is delicious with its Txacoli (sharply flavoured Basque white wine) dressing. (Dressing? It used to be called a sauce in my day.)

The beef is great too though I’m not sure its 5000-odd day life makes it that much more flavourful than a well hung animal of a third its age. It certainly adds a lot of fat which the clean eating brigade may not appreciate. The accompanying fries and aioli though are stellar - as are the grilled veg which is probably what the clean eaters will stick to.

Before that we kicked off with some excellent prawn croquetas, ‘blistered Gernika peppers’ and some curiously unseasoned marrowbone (more fat) which could have done with a good sprinkling of salt - maybe it was just omitted on the pass. And I know they’re regarded as a delicacy and someone has to eat them if they’re not to be thrown away but hake kokotxas (aka hake throats) just don't do it for me. The grilled squid stuffed with prawns and chorizo with squid ink sauce is another matter. I could happily repeat that on any future visit as I could the scoop of walnut ice cream - all I could squeeze in after such a blowout.

Other plusses: the mainly Spanish winelist is particularly strong and I loved the theatre of our server pouring the crisp Basque wine Txacoli at table from a considerable height. And there’s a lovely room upstairs that would be great for a celebration dinner party.

So will you like Lurra? Depends. If you’re a fussy eater - or like your food prettified - my guess is not. There’s a challenging element to the food you wouldn’t find at say, Barrafina or José Pizarro, two of London’s other top Spanish restaurants. Basque food is rustic and this is authentic Basque.

But if your habitual haunt is Hackney I reckon you will. You may wince at the prices but you don’t have to go for the big set-piece dishes. In theory. I suspect few of you will be able to resist 'that' steak though for me it's squid'n'chips that'll be the lure. I'll be back.

Lurra is at 9, Seymour Place, London W1H 5BA. Tel: 0207 724 4545.

Islington lucks out with Oldroyd

We got two important things right on our first visit to Oldroyd. We went before most of the reviews came out and there were four of us which gave us an excuse to try practically everything on the menu.

I don’t know why, in this age of small plates, one doesn’t always do that. Probably because it’s difficult to find three similarly food-obsessed dining companions who are free on the same night but it’s one of the advantages of being around in high summer when there’s not much else on.

Oldroyd, in case you haven’t been feverishly scanning the food press, is the eagerly awaited solo venture from chef Tom Oldroyd who used to head up the kitchens at Polpo. It’s hard on the face of it to see why he would want to abandon the comforts of executive chefdom with someone else worrying about the money and most evenings off for a tiny 28 seater in Islington where he’ll have to be there all the time but I guess he has more freedom to cook the sort of food he wants. Which is basically Polpo plus. Big flavours, delivered with real flair.

Everything we ate - and as I pointed out we ate practically EVERYTHING bar the Cornish seaweed and cider salami and peach and cow curd panzanella which didn't sound entirely convincing - was good, the sort of dishes that make you feel you immediately need to go back to eat them again or recreate them at home. (Inspired by the paella which came topped with chargrilled squid, rabbit confit and a generous dollop of aioli I have a pile of Spanish cookbooks next to me as I write.)

There were some great meatballs - unusually lamb rather than pork or veal made with almonds and served with a creamy, gently spiced romesco, a steaming pot of clams with chilli chorizo and thyme (and butter I would guess from the richness of the sauce), a cured rather than raw veal tonnato which added a deliciously smoky dimension to this Italian classic, a special of red prawns and a gorgeous plate of spicy crab tagliarini ‘provençal’ (not sure why?) in a pool of brown crab rouille that makes you wonder why restaurants don't serve pasta with a sauce on the side more often. The most expensive of those dishes - the paella - was only £11 and definitely a racion rather than a tapa size portion

Oh, and we kicked off with a few summery radishes, imaginately served with smoked cods roe (aka tarama) and some perfectly fried smoked pork belly and pea croquetas with truffle mayonnaise (Oldroyd clearly loves mayo in all its forms). Unsurprisingly we were defeated by the time we got to pud but there was chocolate mousse with salted pistachio praline and raspberries and stone fruit and brioche pain perdu on offer in case you’re wondering.

The only slight disappointment was the very short wine list but I guess there’s no room in this shoebox-sized restaurant for wine. That said, both the bottles we chose - a Chateau d’Astros rosé and a Bodegas Ponce Bobal were fine though on a warm evening the Bobal could have done with being chilled. And decanted. (Which to do first? We went for decanting then shamelessly ordered ice-cubes to drop in the wine*. Our very sweet waiter didn’t turn a hair.) Cocktails - including an on-trend Oldroyd vermouth - look rather more interesting.

The quality of ingredients and cooking were so good and our bill at £40 a head (including service) so reasonable that it’s hard to see how Oldroyd is going to make enough money out of his venture. Maybe it’s a prototype for a bigger restaurant to come. Let’s hope so. Get your booking in quick, anyway. With three friends, of course ...

Oldroyd is at 344 Upper Street, Islington London N1 0PD. Tel: 020 8617 9010 (Nearest tube, Angel)

*Quick way to cool wine if you've already decanted it. Drop in 2-3 ice cubes into your glass, stir then remove them.