THE prix-fixe menu is here to stay. More and more
restaurants now are abandoning any form of a la carte list altogether. A few, like the Cherwell Boathouse in Oxford, Clarke's in Kensington High Street, go as far as a no-choice, like-it-or-lump-it, rigor- ously set menu, though the general vogue seems to be for a fixed price two- or three-course menu with a choice of four or five plats per course.
This is quite a canny move on the part of the restaurateurs. For a start, it incurs far less wastage. The amount of produce needed can be more exactly estimated and thus, in theory at least, prices can be kept down. Furthermore, with a relatively small menu preparation can be cut down on and planning become more careful. And most diners seem to feel that the cooking will be concentratedly better if there's less to choose from.
Apart from anything else, a set menu can be helpful if you're taking people out. At least you can work out how much the bill is going to be. And if you're being taken out, you don't have to go through the bother of choosing the second cheapest thing on the menu every course around.
Friths, small and welcoming (pine- floored), walls a bleached-out Gauloises blue, opened 18 months ago (in Frith Street) and offers just such a set menu. You couldn't call it cheap at £13.50 for two courses and £16 for three, but they cook well and do well. Lunch and dinner menus are the same, which is probably a matter of indifference to the tablefuls of expense- account lunchers, but I'd have thought it better to have a simpler and cheaper menu on offer in the daytime.
The menu itself is modish but not un- bearably inventive. To start with there are fillets of pink trout marinated in a lime and dill dressing, served with pears; breast of pigeon baked in a pastry lattice with a currant and wine glaze; duck liver gateau with basil and Belgian chicory; ravioli stuffed with mushroom and carrot mous- ses; or quenelles of smoked chicken in its own broth flavoured with orange. The pigeon was richly scented and gamy, but once the pastry, a rather unwieldy short- crust, had soaked up the sweet sauce it tasted a bit too much like pudding. The ravioli — two large envelopes of slippery- fresh pasta each with its own moussy filling, with a fines herbes sauce nouvellish- ly poured underneath — were delicious, steamily fragrant; but their best was a plat du jour, fillets of sole poached in a smoky sauce of fish fumet, lumpfish and salmon roes, Beaumes de Venise and cream quite spectacular.
The main courses follow much the same pattern: guinea fowl in plum sauce served with spiced plums; poached fillets of skate on a bed of beet, with a butter sauce; roast crown of lamb with rosemary; calves' liver and honey-glazed button onions; or, for vegetarians or F-planners, a wholemeal vegetable pie. The guinea fowl, roasted and glistening with a sauce of its own stock reduced with vinegar, juniper berries, cloves and blood plums, was aromatic and velvety, probably a better bet than the skate, which was slightly cold and its butter sauce over-zealously salted.
I'd recommend the calves' liver. Italians know how to cook liver, and Friths have an Italian chef, Carla Tomasi, although she won't, she says, cook for Italians (in Italy). Here the liver is cut into strips about half an inch wide and three inches long, and pan-fried with onions and honey and piled onto a plate.
All the main courses come with veget- ables, but with the richly sauced meat or fish the small dishes of over-buttered chips of courgettes and cream-smothered slivers of potatoes were cloying. I'd have prefer- red something green, crunchy and re- freshing or just plain and absorbent.
It would be difficult to imagine wanting a pudding after all this, but the puddings at Friths are good. Temptation exists in two slabs of iced blackberry terrine squidged together with white chocolate, a balloon of hazelnut mousse encased in chocolate and, though perhaps not as strongly, a lime tartlet with creme anglaise. For a supple- ment of £1 there is a small cheese board, which consists in the main of various types of chevre.
Prices include coffee, friandises and VAT as well as the cover charge, though not service. Most wines on their somewhat prissily announced list are around £8. Their Muscadet at £6.50 is on the sharp side, but not bad.
Friths may not be the sort of place you'd go to a lot, but the cooking is a thousand times better than you'd normally get on a similar fashionable menu (it does eat better than it reads) and the service is friendly, but not too friendly.
Nigella Lawson
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