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Snows on the Green
MOST restaurateurs have taken the Nor- man Lamont line on the recession. That is to say, however much they may moan amongst themselves, they try and act, for the public, as if nothing had changed. Bet- ter an empty restaurant, you can only assume many of them think, than an afford- able menu. And although you and I might reasonably presume that obstinately stick- ing to the £60-plus-per-head formula. is surely asking for trouble, few restaurants seem willing to make any concessions to a less affluent restaurant-going public. Cer- tainly it has been a good time for the grand gesture, for shows of bravado rather than caution, with the past few months seeing both the relaunching of the Mirabelle and the opening of the multi-million-pound project, the Lanesborough.
But not everyone can afford to take the 'crisis — what crisis?' approach. Or per- haps, at last, it is actually dawning on restaurateurs that there's money to be made out of parsimony. Both Steven Bull and Marco Pierre White, for example, are planning to open cheaper outfits this year, one in Smithfield, the other in Chelsea Harbour. Still, for less established chefs, it must be pretty frightening to open a restau- rant now, even if it is a cheap restaurant. So it's good to see the risk taken and reward- ed. Snows on the Green opened about five weeks ago and is now packed. Sebastian Snow, who was the head chef at 190 Queensgate, is in the kitchen, and his wife, Melissa, is front of house. The menu is very 190-ish, as one might expect: good, gutsy,
Mediterranean stall; olive oil on the table, polenta on the plate. This type of menu might have become something of the culi- nary cliché of the last year, but it's a formu- la that works, a good hybrid.
Snows is on the site of a former Chinese restaurant near Brook Green. It is a small place, with just-mottled amber walls, which manage to stay well this side of late-80s artistic daubery, and functional wooden tables. It is noisy, but not headachingly so. The clientele seemed to be mostly locals, with a few tables of Americans, for some reason, the night I went. Although it is pre- eminently a restaurant du guarder, there is enough interest from further afield to make booking necessary.
Starters begin at £3 — a gratifying fact. Have a disc of soft white pizza bread spiked with rosemary and spread with sweet, braised onion and soft, pink Parma ham or the potato fritters, which turned out to be grated potatoes welded into two crisp discs with, in between them, a filling of garlicky snails and wild mushrooms, prinked with gremolata, a breadcrumb-fine sprinkling of parsley and lemon. I expected the crostini of salt cod to be small slices of toasted bread topped with just-seared flaked fish, but in fact it was a dish of grill-crisped bread with a creamy, potatoey, garlicky puree, in short a brandade, for dipping into.
I am not sure if my mild unease with the dish was simply due to my surprise at how it turned out. Perhaps it was simply the amount that overcame me: the helping was huge and, I must admit, I'd ordered it to have before my starter, thinking it would he a little picky thing. Perhaps chicory instead of the accompanying bread would make it less appetite-defyingly stodgy.
I normally hanker after far too many of the starters and find it difficult to find a main course I like as much, but here I think it was the main courses that I really fell for: fat, hot and red chorizo cooked with toma- toey beans; partridge with savoy cabbage and a slice of aromatic zampone, the god- dess in Italian-sausage heaven; ox cheeks stewed to grainy sweetness with red wine, bacon and mashed potato. And talking of potato, I think that was my only serious concern: the mash is a Magimixed kind of purée, the texture nearer that of soup too runny for me. I like a good mound of the solid stuff.
I can't really give a fair account of the puddings since I was far too full before I got to them. The caramelised rice pudding was really too much, too sweet, too heavy for me, though the clementine tarte tatin — more, really, of a feuillete — succeeded admirably. House wine, the red especially, is excellent at £7.95 a bottle, and there is otherwise a fine, short list to choose from. There is a set lunch, astonishingly good value at £12 for three courses and £10.50. for two, but even without the prix fixe the bill is unfamiliarly reasonable: my enor- mous dinner for two came to about £55.
While we're on bargains, L'Altro in Kensington Park Road, which has not alto- gether fairly — given the quality of the cooking and the gargantuan size of the por- tions — got a reputation for expensiveness, has started doing a set lunch, £17.95 for three courses, £14 for two. And until the end of February L'Hippocampe in Frith Street will be selling Cancale oysters, my absolute favourite, the first ones I ever had, for £6 a dozen.
Snows on the Green, 166 Shepherds Bush Road, W6; tel 071 603 2142. Closed on Mon- days
Nigella Lawson
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