Remembering a Classic: Medlar - Chelsea, Saturday October 20th, 2012

Writing about great food is pretty easy. Making such writing interesting is probably the hard part (and I welcome any comments on how bland and uninspiring my script can be), along with explaining why something was so delicious and awe-inspiring. I think, in all honesty, that's the essence of being a good critic. Which is definitely not easy.

I love the feeling of going somewhere you just can't wait to try. Somewhere you've read about for months, somewhere you are dying to sample, somewhere that just deserves time and attention. After a rather hectic early October 2012, we took a bit of time out for a couple of holiday breaks (lovely to get a bit of late summer European sunshine) and came back to a town shrouded in mid-Autumn gloom. To celebrate (or commiserate), we headed to Medlar in Chelsea, somewhere which was about to receive its first Michelin Star and a place I had been itching to try all summer.

The one thing which strikes you about the Medlar menu is how charmingly reasonable everything is. The standard a la carte dinner menu is (still) a wallet-pleasing £45 and the Saturday lunch was a mind-boggling £30 for three courses. That's with a wide variety of choice and few supplementary charges. Anywhere that offers this sort of affordability with so much good press is a no-brainer.

The menu read like a dream, and the wife and I quickly settled on a few choices we would each like and share between us. A pleasant variety of bread & butter came and went and we were ready to get stuck in to starters. Mine was a rather incredible crab raviolo with brown shrimps. (At this point I would usually post a photo but in my haste, I only had time to snap a rather inadequate shot using my now-defunct Blackberry to brag about my lunch on Facebook.) It was a heavenly combination of heady, salty seafood flavours combining to great effect with the leek fondue and bisque which the pasta was sitting in. The pasta was perfect and the filling was an exceptionally cooked, beautifully seasoned, creamy delight.

I helped to inform the wife's choice and it was something I had heard very specific and enticing things about since Medlar had been on the map: duck egg tart (left). This is a dish conceived in the most pure and elegant way, with a fried duck egg on top of a flaky pastry circle, surrounded by bacon, turnip purée, red wine sauce and duck hearts. It was a delicious, meaty and rich plateful, combining English classics with a modern finish and perfectly-sized to cap it all.

Starters had blown me away. Whatever followed, the reputation of the place had been justified based on the first two dishes we tried. Nothing was going to match these but it didn't really matter. The wife ordered steak for her main course (right). It was an under-blade fillet, meaning it was cheap enough as part of what most of us know as 'chuck', but had been carefully cooked so as not to be overdone or chewy. It was served with some perfectly edible triple-cooked chips, salad and Bearnaise sauce. Plus snails. Now I often take issue with snails because they can be slightly chewy and more than often a bit pretentious. Sadly here I don't think they added much to the dish. The wife disagreed and demolished the plate double-quick. As an overall plate it was not bad, but not up to the standard of the starters.

My main course was a surprise to myself in that I went for fish. Seafood followed by fish is one of those rare menu choices I'll make on average about once a year given that my preference is always meat over fish. In this case though, I felt instantly vindicated. A sumptuously-cooked fillet of Cornish Brill was light, buttery and melt-in-the mouth satisfying (left). I would suggest the fish had been gently fried, given the flavour, but it could have been cooked in a water bath, so delicate was the touch. The accompaniments were inspired: Jerusalem artichoke purée for earthiness & rich savoury punch, braised chicken wings for a sweet-salty compliment to the fish, crisp pancetta for textural variation and salsify to remind one where the food came from. As a combination on a plate, I can't remember having had a better piece of fish.

Desserts presented a small issue since most of them contained nuts, alcohol or both which the wife and I are not fans of. However, as any decent restaurant should try to do, they accommodated accordingly. The wife ordered the almond panna cotta which would usually have come with Pedro Ximenez sherry (right). It came with poached pear and Ricciarelli biscuits. The panna cotta was well-set and creamy, the biscuits a much-needed crunch and continuation of almond sweetness and the poached pear just right. It was a perfect dessert after what had been a heavy and rich meal.

My dessert was a fruitier, more complex proposition. Whenever you order the glorious, fork-intimidating thing that is a mille-feuille, it had better deliver in terms of texture and exciting flavour combination. This was a blackberry one, and damned exciting it was too (left). Served with variations on lemon curd (cream on the top and ice cream on the plate), it was a much-needed sour shock of flavour at the end of a meal which threatened to put me in my grave, so deftly comfortable it had been. But the sourness was not unpleasant in the least. It had been well-measured with the rich, fresh blackberries to allow the pastry and typical sweetness in the ice cream to sit alongside. It was perhaps a bit much for the wife but I saw it off with no complaints.

As we contemplated the outrageous quality of the meal we had just finished, four gorgeous, dusted chocolate truffles were placed on the table. We ate them with childish speed, so as we were signing the bill, four more came. These were eaten with about as much ceremony as the first four. Then, as we were about to get our coats, four more came to the table.

Since by this point, everyone knows how amazing Medlar is, I don't need much of a conclusion. Just read what I have written above. I had so much fun writing this because I could recall every taste, every emotion and every single thing that makes Medlar just about the best 'new' restaurant in London. If you haven't been, you absolutely must go. But seriously, if you haven't been... where have you been?

Medlar

London Restaurant Festival Once More: 4th-5th October, 2012

It was many years ago that I discovered and started writing about the London Restauarant Festival. Nowadays I don't have the cash and time at my disposal I used to, so its importance has diminished in the intervening years.

Last year, however, saw a return (in a small way at least) to a week which is a great idea, in all honesty. Anyone who knows London has their own favourite places but the festival week is always a great way to introduce people to new venues at fairly reasonable prices. In my case, it's an excuse to try somewhere I couldn't usually justify a regular spend.

Having eaten at the Opera Tavern on Tuesday, Thursday of the same week saw us head to somewhere I'd long coveted: L'Anima. Francesco Mazzei might be doing plenty of television work these days but his restaurant in the City is still a well-visited and widely-praised one. There's something about a flashy Italian restaurant in the city which annoys me somewhat since I tend to think of classic Italian places as genteel and old-fashioned and quite usually West London-orientated.

The place itself is a shiny, hard-edged EC1 hangout all the way. Which I really dislike. The volume has been turned up way too high which is only encouraging the City heroes to try and out-shout each other. There was one table near us which really put my back up but since I'm such a middle-class coward I satisfied myself with a few mutterings under my breath.

Aside from the location and atmosphere it was actually alright. The menu we were on was a classic London Restaurant Festival job with three courses available at £30, no choices. The menu itself read as an interesting sampling of classic Italian foods. Pasta, slow-cooked meat and pastry to finish was a menu I certainly could not wait to get stuck into.

The starter was one of such simplicity it belied the frenzied, hard-edged atmosphere of the place. At first I did a double-take at the menu which read 'Stracciatella tortelli' - I was sure this meant white, creamy vanilla ice cream I tend to order whenever I eat gelato. However, the restaurant had helpfully placed a key at the bottom of the menu explaining any terms diners may not have been familiar with. Whilst I appreciated this (it saved me having to search the words on my phone to save face), it gave the menu the same perfunctory professional outlook as the décor did.

To the food itself, and the pasta was delightful. The creamy, light-as-air mozzarella was nothing to sniff at, with a delectable sage butter sauce lending a punchy herbaceous compliment to the main event (left). The hazelnuts which had been added to contrast the texture were not as necessary but they were always likely to be nothing more than an inconvenience as I wolfed down three perfect pillows of pasta.

The main course was an exercise in old-fashioned rustic Italian meat. Oxtail 'alla vaccinara' was a perfectly braised lump of rich beef with a rustic tomato sauce, pumpkin purée, celery and cocoa beans (right). It was enjoyably comforting, along with being a decent balance of simple flavours and ideas. The meat was proper, the dressing suitable and the dish rather pleasant.

Dessert was something called 'zeppola', which I had never heard of. It turned out to be deep-fried choux pastry with orange (left). Basically one large profiterole, it was elegantly served with the fruit and orange sauce to contrast the moderately thick pastry. The flavours were sound and evenly distributed throughout the dessert, which fit into the rest of the meal well: something basic and simple but elevated to a higher level with some very fine cooking.

This was most certainly an enjoyable dinner, fairly priced at £30 for three courses. Everything caught the balance between home-styled comfort and high end grub in the right way, meaning that at the end of the evening, I could overlook the volume and some of the clientele in favour of what was on the plates: really enjoyable, genuinely Italian food.

L'Anima

The very next night, we met up with the same two friends to try somewhere which resonated in the memory from a few years ago: Quilon of St. James. As somewhere with a Michelin Star but which is often left behind in the top end Indian food debates behind Tamarind and Benares, I'm always interested in a trip there.

Their menu for the event was very similar to that which they had offered some years back for London Restaurant Week: an assortment of dishes for the table, roughly amounting to two courses with sides for £25 each. Nothing to sniff at indeed when you consider the form and status of the place.

A special word on this place first, which I mentioned last time: mango lassi. The yoghurt drinks they turn out here are nothing short of sensational. The wife and I ordered one to share but I had more or less drunk it by the time our starters showed up. In my limited experience, this is the ultimate in lassi. Deliciously thick, sweet, refreshing and moreish, you can't ask for more.

Starters themselves combined seafood with vegetable in the form of pepper shrimps cooked in a spicy masala sauce and a piece of lotus stem with mango sauce (right). The shrimps were delicate enough but for the blast of heat from the sauce which was a bit much for me. The lotus chop was most closely comparable to bamboo. The contrast between the two was pleasant though, meaning it set things up quite nicely for the meal to come.

One thing I have often lamented about promotional events and set menus in general is how easily restaurants can phone it in and serve up something rather generic and unimaginative. At Quilon, they took a fairly impressive road and reeled off a selection of dishes which were subsequently delivered to the table as a genuinely Indian meal: sharing aplenty with lots of variation on show (left).

The menu comprised two main course items: herb-crusted tilapia with mustard sauce, and manglorean chicken. The first was some succulent, moist white fish with a pleasant surround and a lively sauce. The second was too spicy by half for me. They did mention it on the menu but even so, it packed a punch which I could not quite handle. The rest of the table enjoyed it but I needed a fair amount of yoghurt to get it down.

The additions were some cauliflower and potato, cooked with spices, cashew nuts, onion & tomato, which made for a very enjoyable and well-balanced side dish. It had a soft feel which sat very nicely next to the paratha (thin, simple, buttery bread) and the lemon rice. Adding moisture and texture to the table, it combined to form a five-dish main course which was plenty of food for four of us.

Quilon didn't serve up dessert but that was probably a good thing given how much lassi I had glugged down by that point. Again, it had served us a thoroughly enjoyable tasting of dishes in the form of a set menu which we all agreed was a good evening's work.

Quilon

Both meals offered us a way into restaurants that might have otherwise priced us out on their usual rate. With that in mind, it was a successful week - even though we only ate at two places - which I am sure will be worth investigating in the future again.