Restaurants
Alistair Little's
Nigella Lawson
Frith Street has been well represented in this column, and Alistair Little's arrival at no. 49, just over three weeks ago, provided, fruitfully, another opportunity to head back to this once again increasingly fashionable quartier.
Alistair Little's restaurant is without name or designation. This may be due to hip, dress-down stylishness, modesty or because he's still waiting for the sign to be put up, but it hasn't mattered since his progress has been well documented and approved by the great and the good and the glossy everywhere.
The restaurant's decor is a bit too minimalist for my taste. Once through the electric-blue shuttered door, the only glow of colour comes from ceiling and pepper- pots (matching cardinal red). Indeed, the ceiling is a, if not the, feature: row upon row of foot-long bars of light, like minia- ture, lit-up trapezes, are suspended, cosily reflected in the Chinese-lacquer paint- work. The walls are a merciless chalk white, as yet unrelieved by hangings.
The tables and chairs score maximum points for fashionableness: smooth- surfaced, clean-limbed matt black. (Matt black — why, Deyan Sudjic devotes a whole chapter to the subject in his new fashionmongering Cult Objects!) The general look is redolent of Japan — stu- diedly so, for Alistair Little is himself very interested in the Japanese way of preparing food and (when required) cooking it. He was thrilled to see a Japanese woman eating his version of sashimi — rounds of rice and salmon caviar wrapped in sea- weed, which was indeed excellent. His raw tuna with soya, cucumber and mustard is another dish in which the Japanese influ- ence is obvious, but all his cooking, even something as un-Japanese as roast lamb with thyme, shows his indebtedness to Japanese methods, where freshness and simplicity are more important than clutter. Notwithstanding all this, his cooking style is eclectic. His seafood broth with sliced squid, spring onion, ginger, corian- der and chillis, fabulously hot and odorous. is not unlike something you'd eat next door in the Thai Chiang Mai (Spectator, 13 April 1985), and his fish soup heavily French. I could quite happily eat from the first-course menu alone. The autumn salad with barbecued chicken wings is enormous — and delicious as well. If the leek terrine with truffle vinaigrette is on the menu Or changes twice daily) go for that too: ifs light, fresh and well-flavoured. Despite Little's nouvelle touch, meat is not served in the now habitual fans, but in respectably robust slices and he has a fine sense of what goes with what. The saute of sea-bream with rosemary was rich butori t cloying — indeed, I think fish a better choice than meat in this restaurant. Parti- cularly rewarding are his sea-bass in 3 mussel and saffron sauce and salmon in salmon caviar butter, a beautifully studded circle of it. But the carnivorous will not be disappointed: his breast of duck with sher' ry vinegar was both succulent and delicate. Puddings are a strong point. The real success story is the tarte tatin, which Little modestly calls `foolproof — a thin lining of, puff pastry with its caramelised curves 11 apple, without the homely stodge which usually accompanies it in bourgeois France. He offers 25 wines, all well-chosen and reasonably priced: a white ates de Duras, at £6.50 and a vigorous and fragrant 198.1 Julienas at £11 are both good choices. Prices are about what you expect at a new restaurant of this calibre, and not expen- sive for it. Expect to pay around £30 for two, though not less. Another restaurant which has lust opened, though with less to commend it, is Peter Ilic's Around the Corner in Finchley Road. (When I say Finchley Road, it's more or less on the Ml.) The whole point of Around the Corner is that the menu comes without prices. You eat what yo, want of the six courses on offer — when went, crudités, goulash soup, assiette of seafood, beef dijonnais or duck in a fines herbes sauce, cheese and patisseries — and pay what you think they deserve. If I A been braver I'd have hardly paid at all, but I slunk out at £10 a head. It's a terrible idea. The whole point of going out is to relax and if you're having to spend all the time worrying about what you're going to do when the 'bill' appears' you're hardly going to have a good rime. Anyway, if the food's good you don't mind paying what's asked (within reason) and, if it isn't, anything seems outrageous. This heavily timbered, vaulted res- taurant makes you feel as if you're eating inside a barrel and the sinister, gap- toothed Yugoslav charm of the waiting staff was entirely lost on me.
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