AS I write this, the thermometer is hover - ing around
the 90ish mark and I'm subsist- ing on a diet of watermelon and iced tea. Who wants to go to a restaurant in this weather? Who really wants to read about them? Except that this is Britain, and, global warming notwithstanding, that was probably summer. By the time you read this our tropical interlude will have ended, we'll be back to the grizzled Sixties, and you will be ready to try Hilaire which, in any event, should we still be cursed by this dreadful heat, has one of the coolest dining-rooms in town.
It's true that I wrote about Hilaire in 1985 and it is not my usual custom to write about the same restaurant twice. But then Hilaire was not so much a restaurant as a dining room attached to Simon Hopkin- son's kitchen. When Simon Hopkinson, chef, celebrity and the bluest of our blue- eyed boys, went to Bibendum three years ago, Bryan Webb took over Hilaire's kitchen and has since been doomed to languish in Hopkinson's shadow. A few months ago he and his wife bought out Hilaire's from Trust House Forte and so it seems time to measure the mark he has made. It's not an inconsiderable one.
To look at, the place is much the same: a low-slung propellor fan lends a touch of the Raj to a room which resembles nothing so much as a pistachio-coloured cricket pavil- lion in miniature. Despite its smallness, it's an airy room, and I should try and make sure of a table upstairs unless you require the padded intimacy of one of its down- stairs booths.
Bryan Webb started his working life with Sonia and Neville Blech (now of Mijanou) when they ran their place in Wales and their influence is agreeably detectable. Classical cuisine — strong on cream, nos- talgically buttery — is tempered by the less frilly nouvelle innovations and spiky sea- sonings of the orient. Despite the weather I
started with the broad bean and parma ham soup, hot and thick, the grainy star- chiness of the bean purée elegantly spruced up by the salt sweetness of the delicately shredded ham.
The steamed cod with saffron and capers which followed served to rid me of one of my most deep-lying prejudices, which is that tomatoes with fish is always a mistake. The plain, white flesh of the cod is marvel- lously offset by the tequila-sunrise colours of a sauce made from a fish stock flavoured with Noilly Prat and saffron and tomatoes reduced and puréed, to which cream, capers, more chopped tomatoes and chives are added. Usually there is something about the reedy metallic taste of tomato which ruins the fragrant featheriness of subtler flavoured fish. Even in more robust dishes, such as salade nicoise or spaghetti alle vongole, I feel it is always the tomato which lets the side down — just try a proper spaghetti alle vongole in bianco and see what I mean. But here Webb lets the fruitiness of the tomato kick the poor. plain cod into something more interesting.
His breast of chicken with tarragon and girolles goes back to the classic French repertoire: the skin of the fowl crisped to gold, odoriferously swathed in a thick creamy sauce, golden also, piled with fleshy mushrooms fried in butter till they take on the gleam of varnished wood.
End with a chocolate marquise,a thick slab of palate-cloaking chocolate drizzled with an unctuous coffee-caramel sauce or, better still, a mound of tiny wild strawber- ries on a slick of jersey cream, thick and yellowed with artery-clogging richness.
And this is just for lunch: dinners are a more elaborate affair. Being a Welshman, Webb always has oysters with laverbread on the menu to start with, but having tried laverbread once it would take more than a sense of restaurant-writerly duty to try it a second time. Those who share my distaste can be grateful, anyway, for the asparagus with balsamic vinegar and parmesan, lobs- ter and carrot salad with coriander and chilli or sweetbread-stuffed ravioli with
lentils. Main courses on this changing menu might include fillet of turbot with mustard and dill sauce, veal with chicory or an incredible rabbit with wild rice and celeriac chips.
An assiduously compiled wine list makes for good reading and even better drinking. If it's still as hot on your visit, I would dive into a cold bottle of rosé de Marsannay.
Both lunch and dinner are set meals, £14 and £25 for two courses, £18 and £30 for three respectively and the ratio of pleasure to pound is gratifyingly high.
Hilaire: 68 Old Brompton Road, London SW7; tel 071 584 899317601.
Nigella Lawson
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