Brasserie du Marche aux Puces
I ALWAYS feel vaguely guilty reviewing restaurants near me, as if somehow the dis- tance travelled to a place were in direct proportion to the column-worthiness of it. This is the reason why, for some time now, I've avoided writing about the Brasserie du Marche aux Puces (that and the ridiculous- ness of its name) but I have come to the conclusion that apparent laziness is prefer- able to being cowed by disapproving fools who hold that to travel hopefully is better than to arrive at a good restaurant.
I would like to be able to say that the Brasserie du Marche aux Puces derived its name out of a sense of self-mocking irony, but I'm not sure this is the case. The flea market in question is Portobello Road, and the chin-jutting bohemianism of at least this end of the street, the W10 bit, away from olde-worlde antiquesville in tourist- trod W11, is at odds with the franco-phoni- ness of its naming. It's not even as if this were a French restaurant, though some dis- tant memory makes me think it once was and that therefore the title may be an inherited one I came here once, a long time ago, and the food was unspeakable. I remember stringy meat, jammy sauces and disappoint- ment. And I seem to think that the menu was in French. But, as they say in America, that was then; this is now. Since March 1991, Philip McMullen (ex-head chef Launceston Place, ex Maitre d' Kensington Place), who owns the place, together with his chef Noel Ashbourne (late of Escar- got), has been running it as an unpreten- tiously upmarket local on the 192-First Floor axis. Funnily enough, it feels more like a transplanted Parisian brasserie than ever it did when it was trying to be one. The site was obviously once a pub, and the room is still dominated by the sweep of the bar. The walls are heavily painted-over Anaglypta, in café-crème colours which are usually depressing but look right here. The flowers are always terrific — a great explo- sion on the bar and small posies, enough to charm but not so much that they distract, on the wooden tables.
True, the menu can seem redolent of a Masterchef entry — spiced red cabbage with dried apricots and pine nuts, chicken breast with coconut and pineapple with rice and pumpkin — but this is a tendency rather than a trend. The characteristics of Noel Ashbourne's cooking are freshness and reliability rather than late-Eighties tricksiness.
I came here for lunch a couple of weeks ago and had squid snipped thin, thickly wrapped in a grainy, chilli-infused dressing and piled with diced pink tomatoes and pungent green coriander into a bowl- shaped lettuce leaf (the pool of olive oil beneath and around it the only excess) and had a taste of mushroom ravioli with a cop- pery-buff mussel sauce.
When I came back for dinner the day after, I had to force myself to order any- thing else: all I wanted to do was eat those two again.
To want to return so immediately to a restaurant is obviously a good sign, and other choices did not disappoint. The egg Benedict was a model of the dish, a delight; the yolk cooked to perfection, till the mer- est fork-prick had it oozing over the golden sphere — crisp yet yielding — of toasted muffiny bread.
The prawns were sweet and meaty with cool, crunchy celery and sat on the plate, wrapped in pak Choi leaf, as if just unmoulded from their timbale. This was good, but the salmon fishcakes were terrif- ic: light in texture and yet solid in taste. The basil vinaigrette which was poured around them, however, was intrusive; something in the balance of it was wrong. This is not drastic: a remedy should be easy to find, after all.
With the exception of the apple and rhubarb pancake with maple syrup and a dollop of creme fraiche, puddings were not remarkab!e. The wine was: my summer weakness is for crisp rosés, and I chose a Bourgogne Saint Bris, the colour of blood in water, with the mellow tang of raspber- ries and straw.
The menu changes regularly so you may not encounter any of the above dishes should you go to the Brasserie now. And it's difficult to give exact prices here, as you can eat as much or as little as you like, but I think it would be fair to say that a light
lunch for two might come to about £12 a head, a heftier dinner to £25. This is just the sort of restaurant du quartier everyone could do with.
Brasserie du Marche aux Puces, 349 Porto- bello Road, London W10; tel 081 968 5828
Nigella Lawson
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