An Enjoyable Freebie - Incognico: Covent Garden, Tuesday May 31st, 2011

My involvement with Toptable, a wonderful service which has done as much as anywhere to expose me to good restaurants, began with a meal at Incognico, situated just off the Charing Cross Road. A perfect venue for a decent restaurant, with the pre- post-theatre goers sure to stop in, plus all the after-work traffic. It was a lovely evening, but one that I was a little daunted by. It was, after all, one of my earliest experiences of above average eating out.

Times have changed since then, clearly. Incognico is still there but it seems to be flagging. Like Quaglino's, it would appear that the place's best days are gone and one sadly wonders how much longer it will be there for. Toptable might introduce a myriad of new customers to restaurants, but when your place is one of those which offers a free meal for points, all is not going as well as could be.

Even though signing up to the Toptable freebie scheme might be seen as a sign of decline, it's still a damn good way to be rewarded for eating out and as such, I never like to see any reward points go to waste. Two courses for nothing is nothing to sniff at, so we did our best to sample all that we could from the set menu.

We started with grilled mackerel and potato salad. An appetising, simple and classic combination and one that lived up to its billing (left). It was well-coked mackerel - they avoided the pitfall of drying out the fish when grilling - and it was served atop a moist and comforting potato salad cake. A very good start.

Main courses were another triumph. Some asparagus and parmesan risotto was well-flavoured and balanced, creamy and rich in equal measure (right). Despite some risotto disasters over the last couple of years, this one helped restore my faith in rice. We also had some suckling pig porchetta, which loosely translates as a rolled, roasted and sliced fillet of pig in layers including fat, meat and stuffing (left). It was thoroughly enjoyable, the meat contrasting with the crisp fat and spongy stuffing to make a decent dish.

Pudding was a simple lemon tart with raspberry coulis, which once again was on the money (right). Nothing fancy here, just another classic flavour combination carried off to a satisfactory standard. And that was a pretty good summary of the entire meal. Classic combinations done well with a minimum of fuss. As with a half-price meal, one good measure of a freebie is whether or not you'd have paid money for it. I would happily have paid a reasonable amount for this.

I don't think Incognico is at the level it could - or even should - be, and it seems as if business is on the slide. There is not enough in the way of prestige or promotion surrounding the place, which might be down to the fact that it is straddling an awkward line between openly accessible chain restaurant cuisine and the fine dining end of the high street. If customers aren't comfortable with a concept, they won't come in.

I would recommend Incognico to most people, since there is enough choice and variation in the place to make it accessible whilst not being pretentious or grossly overpriced. They have a load of pre-theatre deals in place for the clientèle they are likely to attract given the nearby area and the location remains perfect. Hopefully they can hoist themselves back on the map in a big way in the coming months.

Incognico