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The Butler's Wharf Chop House
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RESTAURATEURS HAVE been spin- ning the line about rediscovering the glory of British cuisine for as long as I have been filling these pages. A decade on, I have learnt to be sceptical about such claims, so perhaps I should apologise for choosing to go to a restaurant this week which declares itself — via its press office — to be 'cele- brating a food heritage that is truly British'. The truth is that my digestion is shame- malcingly delicate of late, and the idea of not having to suffer sauce-induced heart- burn in the line of duty appealed. That's the reason, but I do have a better, and no less genuine, excuse. The restaurant in question is the newest number from • Sir Terence Conran. That alone justifies atten- tion.
Now, I do feel rather bad about Conran. Every time I write about one of his restau- rants (and it's often: he never seems not to be opening one) I always seem to start by saying how much I admire him and then proceed to say why I am disappointed. Worse: I always write too much and end up having to cut the bit about my admiration and leave in only the record of my disap- pointment. I shall rush so that the same thing doesn't happen here. But the thing is I do admire him. He is a materialist in the best sense of the word — he understands perfectly the importance of, the pleasure afforded by, the surface, feel, touch, whole essence of things — in other words, a sen- sualist. I get more pleasure, even if it is tinged with avaricious envy, from walking round the Conran shop than I do from a good many galleries. He is a dedicated restaurateur, believing, as he does, that eat- ing well is the delight of civilised people.
But I can't help feeling, too, that he is like the talented but too prolific writer who churns out a novel yearly. He's never not going to be good, but he doesn't have the patience or the revisionary spirit — what is it? — to allow himself to be great. (Though perhaps I should exclude from this his mas- terpiece, Bibendum.) I couldn't say The Chop House gets things exactly wrong, but I did leave feeling that I'd gone away with Ira less than I'd hoped for. Everything, of course, is tasteful. Walls: dark green. Wood: pale. Clutter: artful. The food read better than it ate. Chicken, cabbage and pearl barley soup was unimpressive: a much stronger stock should have formed the basis for it. On the other hand, the cockle and mussel soup, creamy, Indian yellow and tinged with curly, was amplY, richly flavoursome. Mushrooms on toast — which is really more of a savoury than a starter — was simply botched in specifics rather than as a general proposition. The toast was burnt and saturated in butter. The grilled goat's-cheese salad with wal- nuts was pronounced excellent but the claim was supported by the fact that I was given no chance of testing the dish or the accuracy of the report. Had I been eating in real life, rather than professionally, rd anyway not have bothered with starters. This sort of food is too bulky to eat three courses of it, and main course and pudding are always better bets. Starters are just too restauranty for proper food. Steak and kidney pudding, a wonderful suety, steam-exuding mound, topped with a fatly voluptuous, gravy-drizzled oyster led on the main courses; a blackboard-chalked- up 'daily special', it deserves a place on the regular menu. Roast beef and Yorkshire pudding was fine, though the medium-rare the beef came in was a bit too much medi- um and not enough rare. Rabbit pie was meltingly good, the gravy rich and deep and clean-tasting. The fish pie, on the other hand, was dreary to the point of inad- missibility. I had a slight crisis at the pud- ding course. On the menu I'd been sent, the rightly-named Queen of Puddings fea- tured. That alone convinced me to make the journey. So, gentle reader, imagine rnY horror when the menu I'm given at the table makes no mention of what has been the reason for my reservation. The rest of the evening passed for me in a slump of despair. The other puddings could never have made up for the lack of the queen of them. Not that any of them seemed to be trying to. Dinner for four of us came to 156.
The Butler's Wharf Chop House, Thames Wharf Building, 36e Shad Thames, London SE1; tel 071-403 3403.
Nigella Lawson
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