Dover Street – Mayfair, Tuesday 4th May, 2010

I popped into Dover Street with a friend I’d not seen in ages some time back. She suggested we tried somewhere “on Taste London”, which sounded good to me, so Dover Street (surprisingly situated on Dover Street in Mayfair) was our choice.

A name as daring as this suggests the place will do exactly what it says on the cover. It is a restaurant called Dover Street, so it must be on Dover Street. It is a restaurant so it must serve food. Sounds kind of robotic, right? Welcome to Dover Street.

Dover Street is quite a big place which is a bar, restaurant, music venue, cabaret room, theatre, members club, game room, opium den… Well maybe not all those things. But it is too big. And confusing. Empty, too. I found the experience a little lacking when it came to any kind of proper restaurant ambience.

Parts of the meal were good, like the beginning: some asparagus risotto served with some seared foie gras. (Not everyone is as greedy as me, and my friend was happy to pick at my starter and dessert.) For the price and the season, the dish was quite acceptable. Relatively fresh, well-combined with some mild cheese sauce and not overdone. Not too heavy either, which can happen with bad risotto.

With main courses, they clearly decided that more = more, which fits right into the clinical precision of the place. Ridiculously over-stuffed plates of rack of lamb (dull) and cod (slightly less dull) were placed before us by our waitress. (Who, by the way, I think was doubling as security, given her attitude, attire and fancy earpiece.) The lamb was dry, tasteless and poorly presented and the cod was swamped by two mounds of mashed potato.

I decided to try an apple tart tatin for dessert which wasn’t bad. Again, Dover Street serving up exactly what is on their charter. It’s hard to say much more than that because the dessert was fairly representative of the meal: unspectacular, functional and a bit bland, if not bad.

My companion remarked that she wanted to go back to Dover Street on one of their jazz nights, indicating the place ought to be more bustling with some live music on a Friday night. That’s almost certainly true, since given the place’s location (on Dover Street, right?), it’ll be full of workers on a Friday night looking to get nicely sloshed.

That might be the problem with this place though: it’s a faceless city bar/club that has been plonked in the middle of Mayfair, and now is trying to maintain the aching surefootedness of the former whilst acquiescing to the upper-class whimsy of the latter.

Maybe I’m looking at it from the wrong way though: it’s been here for thirty years. Given how dead and uncharismatic the place is, that surprises me. Perhaps my friend is on to something: you do need to be there for the music. Either way, I’m interested in the food, and that is not up to snuff at the moment. If they could try a few more dishes like the risotto to start, they might be on to something.

What I think they do need to do is separate the restaurant from the hollow bar area and start taking their food seriously. It’s not great (or even very good) yet, but one day the food at Dover Street might match the reputation and musical stature of the place.

Dover Street

Quo Vadis – Soho, Sunday 25th April, 2010

Sunday night dinner often has the potential to be a grandiose affair. Reminiscent of traditional memories of a late-evening Sunday roast with the family, I often feel like a good splurge on a Sunday night, despite how much more difficult it makes Monday morning as I get older. Quo Vadis were running a half price menu on Sundays, so the other half and I popped along for a spot of dinner.

The first thing that struck me about the place was the menu: it was enormous. Huge choices, wide selections and much to take in. A natural fear I have of big menus is that the food quality isn’t going to be up to much. If somewhere is offering loads of choice, they can’t be doing all the dishes particularly well. From the cross-section of the menu that we sampled, this is not the case at Quo Vadis.

The Dublin Bay prawns we ate to start were almost the size of lobsters (left). The other half being a bit of a seafood connoisseur, I was eager to hear what the verdict was. Given that I still hear about these to the day, I can assume they were up to scratch. (And I liked them too: fresh, firm, sweet and vibrant.)

I went for the decidedly more opulent choice of scallop with black pudding, pancetta and ox cheek. Whilst all the elements seemed in place, I wanted to try this just to see if they could pull off such bold flavours on one plate. They could. A glorious combination they made to look effortless, and in fact almost undersold. Still, very delicate and rich as I’d hoped, and nothing to complain about.

Main courses were fairly thrilling. A piece of pork shoulder that had more minute variations in taste, texture and appearance than I thought possible was smothered in gravy and served with apple sauce. (I told you I like overdoing it on a Sunday.) This, however, was trumped by the outright excellent steak and chips with béarnaise we also tried (right).

We’re talking thick, rare, exceptionally cooked steak. Steak that is moderately chewy outside, but soft as anything inside. A beautiful, dark chocolate brown with a deep red centre. I’m getting carried away, but that was the quality of the meat. The sauce was spot on and the chips were outstanding: fluffy, crisp and chunky.

Once main courses were out of the way and my emotions had stabilised, we ate some dessert. Predictably the other half went for a chocolate fondant which was predictably good. I decided to test the menu a little further with the apple millefeuille and caramel parfait. It was almost as good as it sounds: fatty, syrupy richness and flaky, buttery pastry. You can’t fail when you get an apple dessert right.

Given that we were eating a heavily discounted menu on Sunday night, we did go a bit crazy, but it was well worth the indigestion on Monday morning. I enjoyed all the dishes we tried, and some of them were downright exceptional. Offer or no offer, it’s certainly a restaurant worth going to. After all, where else in the sleazy, glorious Eurotrash of Soho can you find decent English food?

Quo Vadis