SOME MONTHS ago you may remember (and there's no penalty
if you don't) I men- tioned one Richard Corrigan. He, at that time, was slaving away in Bentley's in Swal- low Street, a beached genius. Bentley's is certainly no longer what the Americans call a restaurant of destination, but, tucked away out of sight as it is, it does not appeal even to a passing trade. Writers are still writers, even if no one is reading what they write, but for a chef to cook with no one to eat what he creates is truly a desperate state of affairs. Or it is if he cooks like Richard Corrigan. I said at the time he deserved better, and he's got it, in the form of Fulham Road, a shimmeringly elegant, but still accueillant restaurant, owned by Stephen Bull, a chef of distinction, if less noisily celebrated than some of our others, whose evident successes at his eponymous restaurant in Blandford Street and bistro in Farringdon have led to his proprietorship here.
The connection is not a new one. Corrig- an worked for him before moving to Mulli- gans, the Irish restaurant in Cork Street, and thence to Bentley's. Although there are Bullish elements, the menu is fully Corrig- anised. Flavours are strong, the touch deli- cate, and the chef's Irish origins are, occa- sionally, liltingly referred to by dish or ingredient on his menu. Here one could introduce the notion of an Irish connection, in that David Collins who designed the place (as he did the Square in St James's, and Tante Claire, and the Canteen in Chelsea) is a fellow Irishman. His room is a beautiful one: squares of paint in shades of buff and cream form a pale chequer-board across the walls. On them are hung monochrome photographs of doorways, porches, architectural features caught close up looking like fossils or objects of archae- ological interest in unembellished frames. Light issues from gold-lined shades tas- selled with pearly baubles. Lines are squat but undumpy; there is something in it remi- niscent of that Milanese institution, Peck.
When I went the first time, five minutes after it had opened, the food was, I have to say, less than I had hoped for; this time, two months on, it was much, much more. Patience has never been so gratifyingly rewarded. I meant to have the set lunch (f 14.50 for two courses, £17.50 for three), 'My cross is heavier than yours.' but was seduced by the a la carte menu, and in particular by the starters on it. Lobster salad with grilled bacon and clams was juicily sweet, providing the gentle pleasure afforded by the best ingredients simply assembled; the crab and pea risotto, the other starter I chose to follow it, was like a breath of spring on the plate. The uncom- fortably, archly titled 'Mr Bull's cheddar soufflé' had none of the coyness of its nam- ing, the lightness of its feathery texture conveying gloriously a deeply flavoured robustness on the tongue. I almost never like oysters hot (for Richard Corrigan, as for Marco Pierre White, I am now pre- pared to make an exception), but the hot buttered oysters, barely sauce-swathed on their shells, peppered with sevruga, beg to be tried. The pallidness of the veal tartars is perhaps not immediately appealing; it somehow looks more raw than the usual flesh, almost human in fact. Don't be put off, it is delicately beguiling.
The morel-infused grilled tuna came not rare as advertised, the rump steak burger could, too, have done with a little less cook- ing, but in neither case was the dish botched on that account. The burger was a particular success: too often jokes that amuse in the kitchen or at the menu con- ference fall flat on the plate; this one didn't. A herb-speckled brioche sat in for the usual bun, a foie gras butter for the rel- ish, chips were nothing short of stunning. Roast rump of young lamb was pink and sweet, the colcannon sensational, but gen- erally, because of the sudden good weather on the day of our visit, much of the menu suddenly seemed unfittingly wintry.
Corrigan can't, of course, be blamed for that. We ate too much to make much head- way into the puddings. Chocolate soufflé was fine enough, though I'd have preferred it darker. But what I really would have liked was to have room for the cheese- board, wonderfully Irish, with Cashel blue, Gubbeen, Milleens and so forth.
Service, under Marian Scrutton (she shares front of house with Peter Molesworth), couldn't have been more charming. We went (at Saturday lunch- time) with two babies, and the eight- month-old was provided with a plate of whizzed-up peas, while my little baba was given an impressively grizzle-preventing waltz around the restaurant. Corrigan is apparently happy to cook food not on the menu — grilled chicken and chips, that sort of thing for children — but then the Irish are agreeably rather like the Italians in this respect.
An enormous lunch for four of us, including a glass each of spiky champagne before, a couple of bottles of sunny white from the Loire with and coffee afterwards, came to £150.
Fulham Road: 257 -259 Fulham Road, Lon- don SW3; tel 071 351 7823
Nigella Lawson
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