A FEW years ago, when I was the restaurant critic
of the Daily Express, I was taken by a PR man called Jack Soames to L'Ortolan, John Burton-Race's restaurant near Reading. I made it clear that I would not review it on an announced visit, but that if I liked it I might return incognito. I was lavishly entertained, quite liked it, and planned to do so, but resigned from the Express before I had the chance (because they wanted me, in a foretaste of a genre we now know was to become all the rage, to review garage forecourts and hot-dog stalls instead of restaurants).
There is something of the underdog about Burton-Race: he has always been derided for being 'provincial' and suchlike; he is rarely seen on the telly. I've always felt bad about never returning to write that review. And yet reactions to his eponymous new restaurant at the Landmark Hotel have been so lukewarm that I was reluctant to seize this new opportunity, in case I had to give him a stinker, which would hardly help to assuage my slight sense of guilt. According to the current Harden's: 'Decor that would be dull in a Brighton hotel betrays the provincial origins of this Marylebone dining-room's new incumbent; J.B.-R. has long been a chef of note, but his cooking is not the best in town, and at these prices nothing less will suffice.' Harden 's remains by far the best and most reliable guide to London restaurants, so this was particularly discouraging.
Nevertheless, duty called, and we went. On a Saturday night it was three-fifths full, which does not bode very well either, though it may be busier with business diners during the week. Critics were equally rude about the dull decor at L'Ortolan as they have been about the Landmark. But I think their patronising metropolitan smugness misses the point even more in the case of the new room than of its precursor. As I recall from its opening half a dozen years or so ago, the Landmark is a conversion of the old British Railways Board building, directly in front of Marylebone station. The hotel is unremarkable, but Burton-Race's dining-room is, unlike that at Shinfield, grandly and elegantly proportioned. It is not as ornate as the Ritz, as minimalist as the Halkin. or as kitsch as the SchragerStarck hotels, but it is a perfectly pleasant place in which to dine. There is plenty of space, with nice pools of light, and noise is
deadened by furniture and carpet. It is a squashy-comfortable, plutocratic diningroom in the American or haut-bourgeois style.
It does not pretend to be cheap. There is a very short menu du jour at £45 per head, which seems to be aimed at the businesshotel guest who does not want to bother with haute cuisine. The degustation is £160 for two, and the a la carte £70 per person. We ate from the latter, and I thought that, by the standards of the market for this kind of cooking and this level of service, it was a reasonable price. Charging £11 for a glass of champagne serves only to irritate the customer, it's true, but the other wines were only marked up by a not untypical London restaurant multiple of 3.5ish. We had a half (from a good selection thereof) of 1996 Zind Humbrecht Riesling Gtiberschwihr (served slightly too cold, and a bit closed and over-crisp for my taste, at £20) and a bottle of 1998 Alain Graillot St Joseph (£39, fabulous nose, but strangely lacking fruit in the mouth, and too tannic; perhaps a bit too young to drink really well so soon after opening).
The Harden brothers are right that Burton-Race is not the best chef in town. That is Gordon Ramsay, as whom he costs about the same. But J.B.-R. is better than most others (indeed, he's better than I remember him at L'Ortolan), and in style he reminds me of Ramsay. I wrote in this column some 15 months ago about what a very French cook Ramsay is, how little it surprises that he trained under Robuchon at Jamin. Of the top English chefs of the day, Burton-Race is the other who strikes one most strongly as French.
It's more than just a question of classical technique or aspiration. It's got something to do with having the confidence to present technically complex things in simple ways, relying on the consumer to distinguish depth, purity and authenticity of flavour from flashier, more whizz-bang tastes and combinations. My main course was a perfect example: it was presented as pied de cochon ought to be, but often isn't —the large trotter of a pig, stuffed but externally unadorned, hunching proudly in the centre of a pool of sauce. The stuffing in this case was a ham and 'offal' mousseline, while the sauce was of caramelised cider and apple. It requires a sure touch — given the unctuous richness and the familiarity of the flavours involved — to make such a dish sufficiently light and subtle that it retains its `eatability' for longer than the first three mouthfuls. J.B.-R. succeeded admirably. As he did with my starter, in which a softboiled egg and some spinach were cooked inside a beautifully al dente raviolo, dressed with creamed celery and brownly sauced with truffle; stylish yet intense, still delicate while being quite rustic.
My wife's first course was an 'assiette du terroir et de la mer', of which her favourite bouchee was buttered cauliflower cream with pink shrimps, while mine was a chunk of hot smoked salmon in which it was difficult to decide whether the texture of the flakes or the lightness of the smoke was the more ephemerally beautiful. Mrs S.'s main course was in the same faux-grand-mere idiom as the rest, and equally assured: squab pigeon breast with foie gras, wrapped in cabbage and served with (unadvertised but delectable) barely cooked morels.
Puddings were the usual clevernesses in chocolate, pistachio and gratin de poire. They were easily up to standard, as was the profusion of petits fours and chocolates which followed, and as had been the canapes which had preceded.
On this showing, metropolitan critics have been unfair to J.B.-R. I suspect snobbery. If you are accustomed to spending £125 per head on dinner at London's grandest dining-rooms, you have doubtless been seeking a change, as such places are relatively few. In which case, I can recommend Burton-Race as one of the better ones, and much the least precious and stressfully pleased with itself. Call me provincial, but! liked it.
John Burton-Race at The Landmark 222 Matylebone Road, London NW1; tel. 020 7723 7800.
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