11 i f 111 1 1 1 1 1 al 1 1, 11 ' WE ' VE had lentils,
we've had brill, we've had just about everything. So what,' asked Loyd Grossman of guest-star-chef Alastair Little on the first of the new series of Masterchef last Sunday, 'is going to be the next thing, the fashion-food of the Nine- ties?' Little said that he didn't know but he suspected it was going to be some diet- conscious fad or other. He himself, he added, was pretty anti-health: 'People ordering a bottle of Perrier rather than three bottles of wine with their lunch isn't good for business.'
You can see his point. But in fact, he needn't worry. For the food that every self-respecting fashion plate will be wear- ing next season, while diet-conscious, is not essentially antagonistic to the style of cooking which makes his own, eponymous establishment such a lure for serious ea- ters. Welcome, or prepare to welcome, what you could call Coyote Cuisine. Its provenance is Mexico-Californian, with flashes of Mediterranean: a lean, sunny, robustly flavoured style of cooking which conjures up, in dim, confined spaces, the vibrancy of the American Southwest and the Matisse colours of the Midi.
In fact, it's been here for some time, in one of its forms, under the aegis of Clarke's, where Sally Clarke cooks, at the Notting Hill Gate end of Kensington Church Street. Look, I know we've done California and Tex-Mex doesn't bear thinking about, but this is different: hotter, sharper, simpler and quite the thing across the water which means it's only a matter of time before salsamania takes over here.
Before it does, and London is full of mediocre joints peddling lovelessly diced tomatillos, go to Clarke's (which is as stunningly good as ever) or to The Wilds, newly opened in the Fulham Road, where you can find another talented female chef, Angela Dwyer. I don't know if it means anything that this particular style of cook- ing has been so much dominated by women (Alice Waters and Deborah Madison in America, Clarke and Dwyer over here) or whether it's purely coincidental. But it doesn't seem so very unlikely to me that women, who are generally more used to unglamorous, quotidian forms of kitchen drudgery, would opt for something sim- pler, less reliant on hours of preparation and not dependent on the show-offy appeal of the classic masterpieces. In fact, The Wilds is an all-female establishment as far as I could see; owners, chef and waiting staff are all women. And I rather liked that. It's a small place: white walls, bleached wood floor, Sixties-lipstick pale. Harlequin-bright fabric provides col- our at ground level, where there are a few tables; a few steps down, in the larger, conservatory-ish dining-area, and the walls become a gold-speckled, adobe-pink.
Food is light but vivid: roasted corn soup, its husky smokiness preventing the sweetness from cloying; a dish of soft- fleshed red peppers with anchovies, sur- rounded by little rounds of toast spread with olive-dark tapenade; breast of chicken grilled and still juicy, with a relish of spikily-fresh coriander and a mound of delicate-grained rice, infused with saffron; brill and bream sautéed, the flesh almost sweet inside its olive-oil crisped covering, with a salad of asparagus (cut in shards, Chinese-way) and sun-dried tomatoes. (A quick word on sun-dried tomatoes: I have little enthusiasm for them usually, when they are not so much dried as desiccated, and wholly indigestible — like gobbets of chewing-gum the colour of dried blood. Here, they've been allowed to plump up again — gloriously red and intensely tomato-ish.) All was perfectly judged, perfectly balanced: resounding flavours, simply put together.
Puddings take their inspiration from nearer home. The sticky toffee pudding with toffee sauce made my lunch compan- ion's cheeks glow with pleasure, though it was the lemon and almond tart with crème fraiche that won me over. The wine list is impressively reasonably priced, though it is as yet in embryonic form. A number of wines from the New World are to be added as soon as possible.
A month in, this restaurant is on spec- tacular form. If I worked anywhere in the South-Kensington Fulham-Chelsea axis here is definitely where I'd want to lunch, though they'd be wise to add a prix-fixe lunch menu before long. Menus change daily, if not twice daily, and my lunch for two last Saturday (three courses each and three glasses of wine between us) came to just under £60 including coffee and tip.
The Wilds: 356 Fulham Road, London SW10; tel: 071-376 5553 Closed Sundays
Nigella Lawson
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