Sutherlands
FEW restaurants give the restaurant critic unalloyed pleasure, but Sutherlands is definitely one of them. It is too late to call it a find — it has been going from strength to proverbial strength since November 1987 and has won superlatively worded accolades and a gently growing number of satisfied regulars — but for serious eaters who haven't yet made it to this little outpost on the north-west frontier of Soho, a treat is in store.
Situated at the Broadwick Street end of Lexington Street; it is easy to overlook. With a small, dark exterior, its existence is modestly marked out by a sign which spells out its name in typewriterly lower case. This is the only trendy tricksiness, which though it extends to the lettering on the menu, goes certainly no further. For this is a serious place: no frills, no postmodern playfulness; but a congenial showcase for first-rate cooking. Garry Hollihead left his Position as premier sous-chef at the Savoy (which followed an apprenticeship with the maitre Outhier) to set up shop here with Sian Sutherland-Dodd and Christian Arden who together amiably run the front- of-house. Sutherland-Dodd comes via advertising (though it doesn't show, I promise) and the Escargot, and the effect produced is a happy one: the ambience successfully combines the earnest intent of the Savoy and easy elegance of the Escar- got. This is a gracious, but comfortably friendly place. Keen to Make it New, the proprietors have said a stern no to the current designer dictates: no pink, no grey, not even any eau-de-nil. Instead, the walls are a deep banana yellow, carpet the darkest midnight blue. Around the place hang paint-daubed mirrors and decorative glass by the Russian stained glass artist, Alex Beleschenko. Sutherlands also possesses the most beauti- ful chairs of any restaurant, for which Trevor Williamson is responsible. Difficult to describe, but try to imagine the volup- tuous curves of a guitar as sketched by an artist with faintly cubist leanings. What's more, they're comfortable, and since you'll want to be sitting down for quite some time, that is just as well.
On the white-napped tables sit little aperitif menus on bruised-navy cards: escape from maraschino cherries and cock- tail umbrellas and sip a chilled chambery or a Sutherlands Ramp — champagne cock- tail spiked with marc — as you study the menu proper. Sutherlands used to do a cheap lunchtime prix-fixe, but having fi- gured that few people are spending their own money at lunchtime, have since abo- lished it. At both lunch and dinner now there is the same fortnightly-changing menu at £23.50 for two courses with an appended pudding menu at £5.50. Not cheap, I know, but this is, however awful it seems, what you pay for good food now. But at least there are no extras — veget- ables come with and there is no cover charge.
I went on the end stretch of their last menu, when the five-strong list of starters included ravioli of lobster with cumin and coriander in a brandied shellfish sauce and sautéed escalope of sweetbreads with wild mushrooms and two pepper sauces. The ravioli, which comes in one stuffed to bulging pillow, was filled with meaty hunks of lobster flesh, bound with fish mousse and gloriously scented and flavoured with the two aromatic herbs. Around it lay a sauce of palest terracotta — shellfish stock reduced, thickened with cream and laced with Noilly Prat and marc de champagne. This seemed too good, but better even were the gently sauteed sweetbreads, which came surrounded by pleurottes and two sauces made one from red and one from yellow peppers pureed with chicken stock, cream, chervil and garlic. Delicate in flavour, these two vibrantly coloured sauces make a dazzling display on the `Because ye cannae roll up one leg of your kilt.' plate, the colours exactly of those fake flowers that in the Sixties would adorn flip-flop and bathing cap. To mop up sauces, there is an enormous range of breads (pastry and bread chef, Claire Clark, has just been given an award from the academie culinaire) which includes carraway, chive, parmesan or pine-nut rolls, black olive bread and sultana and walnut loaf.
Main courses present a difficult choice. I wavered between the pastry-wrapped pi- geon and fillet of venison smothered in hazelnut mousse, but chose pigeon, which was topped with chicken mousse and diced goose liver and covered in pastry, with slippery-fresh noodles and a bi-coloured timbale of spinach and carrot, in a conker- coloured hard-hitting madeira sauce. Of the seven main courses, two are always vegetarian; so you can be pure but not puritanical with the pan-fried wild rice cake with carraway seeds in a sorrel sauce with aubergines, turnips and baby carrots.
Puddings are for really determined ea- ters: I was flagging — pleasurably I have to say — so went for the sorbets, so fresh and evocatively flavoured it was like eating the very essence of fruit, and then there was the raisin-studded brioche with creme anglaise. . . . That's finished its run now, but the forthcoming pudding menu will have my, and most people's, favourite, summer pudding, and a nectarine and redcurrant tart with nectarine sorbet among its number. Likewise, what was on offer on the main menu when I went will be off from now, but tasters from the new list include to start with, courgette flower stuffed with a chicken mousseline and wild mushrooms, with baby jersey potatoes in a rosé butter sauce and a pave of wild salmon with a sauternes sauce; and for a main course layers of crab, ginger and lemon sole with diced courgettes, carrots and white radish in a creamy vegetable sauce and roast rack of new lamb and sauteed lambs brains in a tarragon sauce with a millefeuille of potato and turnips and baked new season's garlic.
The wine list is strong and interestingly chosen. If neither rigid economy nor out- and-out extravagance is the aim, you could go for the St Aubin 1985 at £19.75. I stayed with one of the five house wines, an Australian chardonnay at £11.95, which is paler and less dense — and without quite the pungency — than you might expect, but good strong stuff all the same, its relative mildness making it too drinkable. With the suggested 12.5 per cent service, wine, water and coffee and three courses each, our bill came to £83 for two. No snip, but this is, I assure you, the genuine article.
Sutherlands, 45 Lexington Street, WIR 3LG; tel 01-434 3401. Open Mon to Sat (excluding Sat lunch).
Nigella Lawson
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