Odin's and Langan's Bistro IT COULD be argued that the
modern British restaurant, and with it our current loodie' culture, were born in Devonshire Street in Marylebone nearly 30 years ago. A young couple opened a slightly up-market caff there, called Odin's, and proceeded to dispense light repasts to the locals. Amongst the early regulars was a jovial young Irish oil company trainee, Peter Langan, who lived nearby. One day he arrived in Devonshire Street to find Odin's closed and the female half of the partnership forlorn in the street. She told him her husband had died suddenly and that she had closed for want of a chef. Langan, never previously known to have cooked, but who reckoned he could rustle up an omelette as well as the next man, prompt- ly offered his services, and the rest is history.
Langan became the lady's partner, Odin's' reputation burgeoned and the restaurant began to attract a fashionable late-1960s clientele, which included the young artists Patrick Procktor and David Hockney, whose paintings were hung on the walls, having been 'eaten down' in lieu of payment. The ever more expansive Peter Langan became a legend in his own lunchtime (literally), while his widowed partner left to become Mrs Procktor. Langan then acquired the larger premises next door to recreate Odin's as the finest restaurant in London, retaining the original as a lower-priced bistro. In the early 1970s he picked up the old Coq d'Or premis- es in Mayfair's Stratton Street, hired Richard Shepherd as chef and made Langan's Brasserie the trendiest place in town. Langan himself descended into a trough of alcoholic despair from which he seldom managed to emerge, and died a few years ago after a blaze at his home in Essex.
Shepherd and his partner, Michael Caine, have kept all three restaurants going, and the two in Devonshire Street are still agreeable restaurants du quartier. Shortly before Christ- mas, I visited both Odin's and Langan's Bistro to assess current form. Both offer a Prix fixe' menu for lunch and dinner — a rare, but welcome phenomenon. Odin's is conspicuously the grander of the two, a spa- cious double room with white-clothed tables set well apart, and a mass of rather good, largely 20th-century, paintings on the walls, including several of those early Hockneys and Procktors. The room was full, service smooth and attentive, if slightly cool. I dined with two friends from Brighton, and from the three-course menu at £23.95, including filter coffee (£21.95 for two cours- es), we each selected different dishes from a choice of a dozen per course. The happy result had not a dud among them, with the starters leading the field. My smoked had- dock and quail egg kedgeree, with a light curry sauce sensibly served separately, was exemplary, and the friends enjoyed a gener- ous selection of forest mushrooms served in a brioche, and a pleasing assembly of quail eggs and artichoke hearts in hollandaise sauce. My roast rack of lamb had a rather unappetising mess of pottage beside it, described as green split peas on the menu, but the meat was fine. My friends took a well-executed dish of grilled salmon with roast peppers and olives, and a sound, if slightly dull, seasonal combination of ast goose, turkey and pheasant. Subsequent s bets and tropical fruit salad were sound, and my fruits, macerated in liquor and served in a brandy-snap basket, a treat. With a decent 1990 Cotes de Blaye at £14.75, our bill, including 15 per cent service, came to £99 for an enjoyable meal in a busy, cheer- ful neighbourhood restaurant.
Langan's Bistro was a less happy experi- ence. On my visit, after a concert at the Wig- more Hall, the place was crowded, though emptying, and the young, slightly inept staff distrait. The same fixed-price formula applies, with the Bistro charging £16.95 and £18.95 respectively for two and three cours- es, with coffee. But the difference from Odin's of just £5 per head is more than offset by both choice and cooking: only eight dishes per course, plus a main course plat du jour, and little that excites. Worse still, we were told the dish of the day was roast pork with apple sauce; my companion ordered it and was served a hefty, char-grilled pork chop rather disagreeable, especially when not expected. My navarin of lamb was an ade- quate, if uninspiring stew, and starters of modest-sized grilled prawns in a nondescript tomato sauce, dubbed `provencale', and smoked trout with pleasant dill mustard sauce hardly tickled the taste buds. The meal's highlight was undoubtedly Mrs Lan- gan's Chocolate Pudding, Peter's mum's glo- riously rich confection of warm chocolate sponge encircling clotted cream. Along with the upside-down umbrellas suspended from the ceiling and the varied pictures crammed onto the walls, it was thus the original Lan- gan touches, rather than subsequent devel- opments, that gave pleasure. With a bottle of Georges Duboeuf red vin de table at a rea- sonable £9, and including service, the bill came to a not specially modest £54.73.
Odin's: 27 Devonshire Street, London W1; tel 0171 935 7296. Langan's Bistro: 26 Devon- shire Street, London W1; tel:• 0171 935 4531.
David Fingleton
Nigella Lawson is away.
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