The Quality Chop House
I HAD always planned to go to The Quality Chop House in the old days, when, driving to work, I would see this old- fashioned little place in the Farringdon Road. It looked like a cross between a working-man's caff and one of those Brown bars in Amsterdam, and in the later years of its original incarnation, had a smokily nostalgic appeal. The brown paint- work was chipped, the windows were steamed up, and behind them lay the promise of fatty steak and apple crumble, pies, beans and fried slice.
A few weeks ago the place was re- opened by Charles Fontaine, lately chef at the Caprice, and his new venue looks set for as much success as his last. Already tables are booked well in advance for lunch and dinner and people are starting to make reservations for breakfast. He has kept much of the Chop House's original appeal.
Certainly, the place has been spruced up, but Fontaine's renovations show as admir- able a lack of whimsy as does his menu. This is the sort of place in which you could imagine some of Graham Greene's earlier characters meeting for a drink: slim, white- clothed tables are sandwiched between highly polished wooden benches, yet slim- mer still; the walls are a heavy white anaglypta, with large, gleaming mirrors set in the alcove made by each bench-set; and the period feel is complemented, by the gasoliers, transformed into glass balls of soupy electric light, bracketed up towards the high ceiling.
Although Fontaine has retained the legend, printed on entrance and menu, 'Progressive working-class caterers', his cooking is of the sophisticated-simple style associated mote familiarly with the Caprice than with the average works canteen. Charles Fontaine may not be included in fashionable lists of our more talked-about celebrity chefs, but he is a chef of genius. This genius lies in his simple touch. There is no fashionable frippery here: he just gives you the stuff and gives it to you straight.
The menu he so successfully created at the Caprice is, with only the slightest of modification, reproduced here: the famous eggs Benedict, fishcakes, corn-beef hash, veal sausage and mash, steak frite. Food like this has to be perfect; and Fontaine knows no other way. The eggs are perfectly poached, the bacon smOkily sweet on its sauce-absorbent muffin, and the sauce itself lemony, eggy, buttery and lethally delicious. The only difficult choice is whether to have it as a starter (one egg, £2.50) or a Main course (two, £5). I went for the first alternative: for nothing, I decided, should keep me from one of M. Fontaine's steak and chips. He has a way with steak and chips that even Michel Roux (who once said if he could choose one last meal before he died it would be that) would envy: a bulging, bloody chunk of rib-eye steak, sealed and poker-striped, hot from the pan, with searingly hot, crisply golden chips of the deft French rather than hefty English variety.'
The fishcakes are made with salmon, whipped up almost to a mousseline but with enough of the rough texture retained to give them a satisfying solidity, moulded into hamburger-sized cakes and covered with a sorrel sauce: instant comfort, instant gratification.
Puddings are less exotic than they are at the Caprice — lemon meringue or liecari pies, fresh berries, pear charlotte — and the wine list (one each of red, white, rosé and champagne available by the glass or bottle, plus some sturdy beers) is similarly modest.
Come for breakfast (7-9.30 a.m.) and have porridge (75p), scrambled eggs with mushrooms (£2.25 or £4.50 depending on size) or smoked salmon (£4.75 or £6.75, ditto), grilled kippers (£1.25) or a full English breakfast (remember those?) for £3.
This is a small place, and booths have to be shared, which is not too much of a hardship, although it can get a bit compli- cated at the plate-clearing stage. The ben- ches are too narrow for comfort, but with M. Fontaine's cooking he will have no trouble filling them. It might not be saying much to call this the best new restaurant to have opened this year, since we're only two months into it but ask me in ten months' time and I'm pretty sure I won't have changed my mind.
The Quality Chop House: 94 Farringdon Road (near junction with Rosebery Ave- nue), London Ed. Tel: 01-837 5093. Booking imperative.
Nigella Lawson
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