Le Pont de la Tour
ONCE, when the Thames served much the same function as the M4 does today, Lon- doners were proud of their river. We built our best houses alongside it and those who couldn't live by the Thames could at least eat by it, at the Prospect of Whitby or the Blue Angel or, come to that, at the Savoy. And then the bridges took over from the ferries and the buses and trains from the riverboats, and the docks moved to Tilbury, and we rather forgot about our river. Until, of course, the London Docklands Development Corporation took over that vast building site east of the Tower and started building its new Jerusalem. Sudden- ly the Thames was part of London again, and a rather chic part at that And the one complaint among the Porsche drivers and mobile phone users was that to get a real meal you had to go back into town.
And then the issue became academic. The riverside apartments and Tower-view penthouses were suddenly bankrupting anachronisms, their mortgages unpayable by the City types who no longer had jobs in the City. But at the lowest ebb of the crash, Sir Terence Conran announced the opening of Le Pont de la Tour at Butlers Wharf next to the Tower. It was to be the restaurant that all those Docklands types had been crying out for when a Docklands type was still the thing to be. It should, then, be a complete disaster, a restaurant with more pretensions than reservations. But it isn't. For Conran is more than a colour-supplemented style-guru (though he is that, too). His good eye alone would ensure the place looked good, but it would seem he has the mouth for the job, too. He is one of life's great eaters.
Le Pont de la Tour is perhaps the New Yorkiest of London's restaurants: a pale strip of a room, stamped with a casual ele- gance and decorously littered with still-lifes — a walnut-coloured loaf there, a bowl of Chinese lacquer red chillies here — which buzzes out across a calm, light-drizzled river. The Thameside edifice is, however, no mere restaurant, but in Conran's words a `gastrodrome', comprising a shop, a bar and grill — where you can also buy seafood to take away — and the dining-room. The shop disappoints, it lacks voluptuousness; there is something rather sad about it, as if every purchase were doomed to end up on desperate dinner-tables in pictureless pied- ii-terres. Still, the bread is excellent. When I read the menu in the restaurant, I warmed to the place. I wanted it to be good, and perhaps the desire was bound to bring disappointment: for it is not yet quite as good as I wanted it to be. The food is not bad, but — and I have no evidence for this impression — tastes as if it came out of an unhappy kitchen. The Arbroath smokies au gratin was perhaps our most successful starter, the fish mild but still aromatic, blis- tered gold on top, a buttery cream beneath. The chicken livers, under their conker glossy sauce, had the requisite pungent unctuousness, but the cepes a la Bordelaise had a vinegary astringency rather than winey velvetness and the fish soup lacked the grainy denseness it possesses in its per- fect form.
Main courses hit a more consistent note: the sea bream, dribbled with olive oil and lemon, was spring in this Novemberish air, and the grouse was pinkly plump, soft fleshed and smokily sweet. The vegetables were perfect: champ, mashed potato speck- led with spring onions, which on the menu came with the cod but we were allowed it anyway; and a designer colcannon, the same mash studded with cabbage. For pud- ding, you have to have the tarte fine Le Pont de la Tour, an apple tart which you have to give 20-minutes notice to order, which comes as a crisp sphere lined with tart fruit. While you wait for it to arrive, I strongly urge a slice of Cashel, an odorifer- ously deliquescent Irish cheese, the colour of pumpkin and veined with blue. The wine list, a large dossier, has bottles for the prudent and the extravagant: the Macon Village, at a commendable £5.75, was fresh and neat and the '87 Penfolds Shiraz, at a heady £27, was a rich red soup, gloriously aromatic. You could spend less than £30 a head in the dining-room, but it is tempting not to. The bar & grill menu — which I have only read, not yet eaten from — with such Elizabeth Davidy old-fash- ioned pleasures as egg mayonnaise (for £2.25) 'and jambon de Bayonne (for £7.75) made me wish to return. There are things about the place that could be better, but I feel sure they will be.
Le Pont de la Tour, The Butlers Building, 36d Shad Thames, Butlers London SE1 2YE; tel 071 403 8403 Wharf Wharf
Nigella Lawson
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