LET me begin by reassuring those readers worried that in
the execution of my duty I have been endangering my health. While I admit that illness prevented my filling this space a fortnight ago, I have to confess that the description of this illness as food poisoning owed more to playful exaggera- tion than to the absolute facts of the case. Well, it seemed funny at the time, and I think I was right to presume Spectator readers would get the joke. Unfortunately, the Daily Mail, with touching naïveté, failed to, and sensing scandal ran an alarmist and, singularly, un-newsworthy piece about my modest malaise, advising readers that on my return to these pages I would be pointing a finger at the restaurant which, in its quaint phrase, 'dared to serve the vexatious victuals'.
If this is the expectation, I'm afraid what follows can only disappoint, for I have no such recriminations to make. And to be certain to dispel any suspicions that may linger, I feel I must state that Chez Liline is a restaurant of impeccable reputation, innocent of any crime against my digestive tract.
Chez Liline is a fish restaurant. More, it is a Mauritian fish restaurant. And the fish it serves is gloriously fresh: pearly-pink snappers and other less familiar species from the Indian Ocean lie decorously in an ice-chip-strewn counter as you go in; the specialist fishmonger next door houses a yet more lavish display. About a year ago I wrote about another of London's Mauri- tian fish restaurants, Beau Rivage, in Belsize Road, and, in appearance at least, this one couldn't be more different. Where Beau Rivage was all ornamental drapes and pink-lit, small-scale sumptuousness, Chez Liline is a model of robust but cheerful austerity in the northern wastes of the Stroud Green Road. The ceiling shows patches of disrepair, the walls are a Sand- texed white, hung with glass-covered post- ers, courtesy of the Mauritian Tourist Board, and the odd Bayswater Road-ish swirling landscape. A small bar, against which the waiting staff lean between swoops, nestles at one corner of the room; the rest is a maze of tightly crammed, pink-clothed tables.
But the menu, under its chef &Emu' f, Silvain Howing-Cheong, is every bit as lavish as Beau Rivage's: fish comes sauce- swathed and in enormous portions. We started with the king prawn chow-chow, three fatly curling, unexpectedly meaty prawns, split in half and swimming in several ladlefuls of pale, lemon-scented cream. You need to empty the entire contents of the bread basket to mop up about half of this subtly flavoured, unleave-alone-able gloop. Our other star- ter, calamari sautéed with garlic and herbs, was similarly soupy though more pungently perfumed. The squid, which tasted stewed rather than sautéed, was not quite as delicate of texture as might be hoped, but the grainy, deep-toned, coriander-sprigged liquid that covered it amply made the case for the fiery robustness offered in its stead. But portions are large, and if you're worried about how you'll have room for a main course, you could start instead with the achard de legumes, a still large dishful of pickled vegetables, cut in juliennes and spiked with a hot mustard dressing. Several reasonably priced but constituent-cluttered plateaux, offer them- selves for a main course: a variety of seafood with garlic and herbs, a bourride scented with saffron, a vast selection of grilled fish. We went for the fricassee des 'Iles, three hunks of densely fleshed white fish — bourgeois, vacqa and varra-varra, for the record — cooked in their own juices with ginger and chilli and the same fish again in a sauce creole, which turned out to be a surprisingly unspicy amalgam of toma- toes and pimentos.
Puddings, if you're up to them, are simple: a spectacular arrangement of tro- pical fruits or a capacious bowlful of evocatively fragrant coconut ice-cream should be manageable. The wine list is inviting and cheap — Quincy for £11.75, muscadet. or a Provence rosé (which I like best with this sort of food), both for £8.95. With three of those, along with a couple of mixers to start with, and three courses each, plus an extra, shared, starter, the bill for two came to £45 with tip, but you could eat about half and still be full up, which is not bad for the price. A warning: such is the popularity of Chez Liline, it operates two sittings on Friday and Saturday nights, so you have to book for either seven o'clock and be out by 9.15, or for 9.30.
Chez Liline: 101 Stroud Green Road, London N4. Tel. 01-263 6550.
Nigella Lawson
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