Fish restaurants
Swimming London
Nigella Lawson
The reason the French are so much better restaurateurs than we is not just that they like to eat better themselves, but also that they distrust that o'ervaulting ambi- tion in the kitchen which goes by the name of imagination, and they revere system. Restaurateurs should realise that the cus- tomer prefers to he reassured rather than alarmed. Pierre Martin has cottoned on to this, and having found his formule has stuck to it.
He has probably done more than any- body to change fish restaurants over here. His three, La Croisette in SW10, Le Suquet in SW3 and Le Quai Saint Pierre in W8, are markedly different from the old- fashioned institution where you would get endless variations on sole drowning in gloppy white sauce. Coming from Cannes, M. Martin has brought with him, among other things, the plateau de fruits de mer a cork plate piled high with oysters, peachy clams, gleaming, yolk-fleshed mussels, fat langoustines and whiskered shrimps, a pyramid of winkles, whelks and crab, wedged into place with seaweed. For me this remains the reason for going to any of M. Martin's restaurants. For those who find the destruction of so much beauty, and the slow, brutal dismemberment too much, there is much besides. Apart from more seafood, cooked au choix or left in the raw, there are sauce-oozing feuilletes, salads, seafood crêpes, fragrant and rosy, steamily evocative fish soup, and a variety of fish, deliciously fresh and simply cooked. Sauces tend to be light (the turbot sauce champagne particularly memorable) but even so, do not attempt too much after the plateau. The wine list is fairly short, and understandably longer on white than red. The £8.70 Muscadet is agreeably sharp, but the fruitier Estandon rosé (£8) goes beauti- fully, in both senses, with the seafood.
A gaily nautical ambience is shared by all three restaurants. Seascapes and ship- fittings hang on the walls and the waiters go about their business in red or blue cords and stripey t-shirts. Service is very French and the bill on the expensive side — about £25 a head and upwards.
The success of these three (and his meat place, L'Olivier) has led Pierre Martin to open a new restaurant in the Old Bromp- ton Road. Lou Pescadou (370 1057) is a welcome addition for those who don't want to fork out so much for their fish: a bistro with no minimum charge, and you can't book, though you have to ring the bell before you are let in — a rather irritating inconsistency. Seafood, again, provides the basis for an appealingly simple menu. The oysters are cheaper than at his other establishments (from £4.20 for six) and you can make a memorable and not too expen- sive meal out of a pizza or a bowl of slippery-fresh pasta — with tomato, basil, clams or seafood — or their own crab-filled ravioli. On the fish front, the skate (gre- nobloise) was excellent and their assiette du pecheur — a dish of red mullet, monkfish, slivers of sole and a few mussels floating in a light fish stock with zeppelin-shaped potatoes and carrots — was exquisite. The wine list is short but to the point, or you can have a pichet of cider. Depending on how much you eat you could spend as little as £15 or as much as £45 for two. M. Martin's restaurants tend to excite gluttony so it can be hard to keep the price down.
South-west London seems unfairly rich in good fish restaurants. A new — and rapturous — discovery of mine, although it has been going for two years, is L'Hippo- campe (736 5588) in otherwise unattractive Munster Road, Fulham. The place is char- mingly run by its young, half French, half English owner whose menu also maintains a nice balance. There are seven starters and seven main courses, all characterised by a light touch and delicately restrained enthusiasm: a saffron flavoured mussel soup, smoked herring, potato and artichoke salad and red mullet mousse with a lobster sauce give an idea of the starters. From the idiosyncratically spelt list of main courses I would choose the salmon lying in a
WINE AND FOOD
mushroomy reduction of veal stock (this sounds odd, perhaps, but the stock seems scented rather than wildly meaty, and anyway, the salmon, though tender, is robust enough to take it), 'sausage' of lobster mousse with a divinely light, tarra- gony sabayon (a real triumph) or egg-rich tagliatelle with mussels and fleshy prawns in a creamy sauce. The sancerre from their sensible wine list was everything it should have been and the bill for two should hover around the £45 mark. The intensively pale blue interior may make one feel if one's sitting in the bottom of a swimming pool (not neccessarily an unpleasant experi- ence) but the place is an undeniable success — and deserves to be.
The old-fashioned school of fish eating seems to be having a bad time of it. Both Sheekeys and Overtons have gone down rather, though (the obviously much youn- ger) La Poissonerie de l'Avenue (589 2457) is still going strong and providing first-class food at, admittedly, top prices. It is with the main courses that this place comes into its own: squeaky-fresh scallops with a beurre blanc; monkfish with a creamy, Pernod-flavoured sauce; a devastating sole Veronique, its yellow sauce slashed brown under the grill, looking like a Blake sun- burst. The plush and wooden interiors, the coloured lights around the panelled bar, make it look more Tunbridge Wells than Sloane Avenue, but it has the smugly comfortable feel of a restaurant that knows it is doing what it does best perfectly. But prices are high, and for around £30 a head 'one should not have to sit almost on one's neighbour's lap.
Excellent fish is to be had from a small dining-room over a pub (or alehouse as it likes to call itself) in Limehouse. Grapes (987 4396) serves 'English' fish and sea- food: eels jellied or hot with a parsley sauce; smoked cod's roe; potted shrimps; and various fish, grilled, meuniere or mornay (unbeatable scallops and bacon). It has a pleasant aspect in summer, though there is a melancholy charm about the view now which I rather prefer -- and it gets less crowded. About £15 plus a head.
If you are one of those people who think fish is 'boring' go to Hoizin (630 5108) in Victoria — a Chinese seafood restaurant where you can make what you will of shredded squid with chilli and pepper- corns, crunchy shredded jellyfish with cucumber (the texture a curious mixture between bamboo and pasta and quite delicious, I thought), red-braised imperial banquet shark's fin and a wonderful array of whole fish. The food is glorious and the service assiduous. You should expect to pay around £25 a head, and this for a great deal.
Fish restaurants are the most dangerous
WINE AND FOOD
to recommend as they seem more sensitive than others to unfortunate fluctuations in standard. A constant in this world is Wheeler's where the food is unfailingly bad, the service rude and the atmosphere unpleasant — and these qualities cost. So, my only exhortation must be; avoid Wheel- er's and too much bad cannot be done.
Previous page
