In the name of self-effacing self-promotion, I was recently on a couple of episodes of Market Kitchen, a show on the Good Food Channel. I talked about food from Cheshire with studio guests and it was a lot of fun. Unfortunately I have not yet seen the footage since I don't subscribe to the channel and a friend's Sky+ box broke down. Sufficed to say I was fantastic, delivering sharp and pithy comments with a grace belying my relative broadcasting inexperience. Well, I enjoyed it anyway.
The producer of the show asked me a few questions so they could set up a profile about me before I went on the show. One of the questions asked was about the strangest food I'd eaten. Without hesitation I answered "locusts and grasshoppers." Definitely bizarre foods that I wouldn't have expected to eat a few years ago. But I have now. And I ate them at Archipelago in the west end. I even talked to the show's host Penny Smith about this between takes. Another day in the life of a critic…
A friend hosted a dual-birthday meal at Archipelago back in July, so Mike, the other half and I all attended, desperate to see what the relative fuss about this place was, and if they could justify the hype they've managed to generate through serving things like insects and other whacky foreign fare.
I will start with the good things about the place. It's in a lovely area – just south of Warren Street station which is a gorgeous mix of expensive flats, proper pubs and charismatic media offices. It was also a lovely summery evening which is a great time to be out and eating with friends. It's a friendly place – sort of like an outrageously over-the-top nautical shop by the sea feel to it – which makes you feel very relaxed and carefree.
Good things out of the way, I have to say Archipelago let me (and, I get the feeling, not just me) down. It is supremely tacky. That's the problem with the nautical shop: whilst it's relaxing on the one hand, it's also horrendously cheap-looking. I can live with cheap-looking if it's cheap pricing: Archipelago has one but not the other. The food is massively overpriced. They will probably say this is a result of huge importing costs incurred through shipping crocodile, kangaroo and suchlike into their kitchen, which is fine… if it is worth it.
And here is my real beef with Archipelago. I could tolerate the décor, the prices and the frankly inattentive staff if the food on the table was up to the mark. Canapés were fun bits of splodge on dry bread which weren't unnecessary and actually promised much, but things quickly snapped into focus with the starters. Some duck salad was so blandly uninspiring that it didn't deserve to be on any menu, let alone an exotic one. Vine leaf-wrapped crocodile meat was interesting, I'll say that much (left). Not necessarily good or bad, it was a bit fatty and chewy, whilst never delivering the sort of flavoursome punch I would expect of such a meat. Very meaty shellfish is what I got from it.
On to main courses, the marquee dish was clearly the marsupial which they had added a £5 supplement to for some reason or another, none of which I could pick out from the dish itself (right). Half grilled and half slathered in sauce, the complete flavour of the meat itself was reduced to something close to chicken with a fruitier aftertaste. Overall, not really worth it.
The second main course was laughable in having any pretensions to being special, fresh or exotic. Branded as essentially a posh chicken curry with rice, it was essentially an average chicken curry with rice. I don't really understand what this mildly sauced, uninteresting pile of (allegedly) Indonesian food was doing on the menu, on my plate or in this restaurant.
Possibly the most over-priced thing on the menu was the Love-Bug Salad, which is where my grasshoppers and whatnot came from. I suppose you do expect to pay a bit more for such outlandish fare, but when you try it and it tastes of burn corn husks with chilli and garlic, you feel as if you've fallen for a scam and a half.
Not content with copping out for just about the whole of the meal so far, Archipelago decided to let us down with desserts too. The Colombian Fix sounded interesting. It was billed as 'serious therapy for the chocoholic'; also interesting. It was a chocolate fondant which contained nothing special or different, bar the bitter cocoa flavourings they had overdone the (chocolate) sauce with. It seems that Archipelago divide their time between ruining classics, bumbling their way through anything remotely unique and charging whatever they can get away with.
The other two dessert events were a chocolate-covered scorpion, which would have actually looked impressive enough but for their small size (left). Mike ranted for a good while about the size of scorpion he expected for £6.50. A Visit From The Doctor was something we ordered for the birthday boys, and it turned out to be a couple of shots of deathly strong, absurdly flavoured liqueurs. Lots of fun, and even the non-alcoholic that I am could see the point in this one.
Not content with taking us to the cleaners on the final bill (crocodile, kangaroo and scorpion would cost you £40 before service or drinks), Archipelago obviously felt one last squeeze was in order. At the bottom of the menu, they write 'Many items in the restaurant are for sale'. You're not kidding: I can practically feel the careers of everyone at Archipelago aching to be bought up and sold off.
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