Primrose Hill is probably my favourite place in London. The view across the city is second to none, perfectly encapsulating London's special disparate charm. The hill itself is simply picturesque, with green rolling verges punctuated by lush trees, and it feels as if the sumptuous beauty of the park rubs off on the surrounding area. The side roads which you walk down to get to the hill from Camden are stunning: old industrial conversions along the side of the canal, resplendent detached houses and picturesque suburban-urban peacefulness.
North London (particularly surrounding Camden) is not known for good eating, but there is food to be found if you look hard enough. One place I'd hoped to try for some time was Odette's. A star dish in two consecutive
London Restaurant Festival visits, their lamb had ensured the name stayed etched in my memory and it was always on my 'to visit' list.
One Saturday earlier in the year, we took the plunge and went for the set lunch menu and then followed it with a walk and some tea-time food which made for a typically indulgent and memorable day out. Lunch was the main event naturally, and even though we were on a set menu deal, we were still expecting to be impressed.
Bryn Williams is the main man at Odette's. He's something of a quintessentially modern British chef without the eye-rolling. He's done his time, training under Marco Pierre White and Michel Roux jr. He worked in France for a while. He's excelled on The Great British Menu. And he's a native Welsh speaker. There's not a lot to dislike about Bryn Williams.
When you go inside Odette's there's even less to dislike about him. Having taken over the place in 2008 as chef patron and owner, the theme of the restaurant is simple and current: comfortable, old-fashioned, Great British eating. It's not too pricey (the weekend lunch deal was three courses for £25) and the setting entirely welcoming and unpretentious.
Good bread and butter came in a basket and said basket was sent back to the kitchen minutes later with nothing left in it. Our first starter was something altogether unexpected from a very British institution: cured salmon, or as we might know it: sashimi (left). It was exquisitely fresh and tender, something we practically squabbled over sharing. Fish this good doesn't need much with it. The radish, avocado and ginger was a nod to the already pronounced Japanese leanings of the dish but the salmon was so good none of the rest really registered.
Along with this, we sampled one of those dishes that was so exceptionally conceived you wish you'd opened a restaurant just so you could've thought of it. Or at least claimed the creative rights. However I want to eulogise this won't do it justice: it was a bloody good serving of quail (right). Roast on the side of a toasted goats cheese sandwich with broccoli, I was in heaven through every bite. The entire premise was gloriously simple but incredibly satisfying. Naturally, we ended up fighting over this one too so we wanted to eat both starters exclusively by ourselves.
We were told that unfortunately the kitchen had run out of the braised pork shoulder as a main course. I was a little disheartened but since we were (I believe) the last table to be seated for lunch, I could understand. Instead, they were replacing the pork with rabbit. So that was braised rabbit with Alsace bacon, white bean and apple. Now, I did not really see rabbit combining with these, but rabbit in general is not something I usually turn down. I don't know how good the pork would've been with this dish, but the rabbit tasted like it was meant to be on that plate all along (left). Beans cooked to perfection, bacon crispy and rich and apple smoothing over the meat which was falling off the bone.
Our second main course was not one you'd usually see us ordering. The other half and I are a couple of fairly pronounced meat eaters but the look of a butternut squash risotto with parmesan and pine nuts was too much to resist. Fortunately we had chosen well. The rice was light, unimposing and fairly sang with the sweet, subtle notes of the root vegetables (right). The dish looked a picture and delivered on all counts.
Desserts were not to be sniffed at and we were right to indulge. We decided to pay £20 for our two courses and go for a la carte desserts. Two in particular looked too good to miss out on. Some apple tart was exactly as we'd hoped: crisp on the bottom and sweet on the top. It wasn't quite what I'd eaten at
Ramsay or
Launceston Place but nice nonetheless.
The stand-out from the dessert menu was the chocolate mousse (left). Served around passion fruit & banana sorbet which sat atop some small cubed biscuits, the mousse was quite wonderful: moderately aerated, slightly swirly, a little creamy and winningly rich. Four warm madelines on the side and the place had gone from great to tapping the spirit of
St. John. A truly special dessert.
That was lunch. Lunch was terrific. We were ready for a leisurely walk from the base of Primrose Hill through the side streets down the canal to Camden Lock. The walk along the Regents Canal to Camden is a special walk. It's riddled with tiny elements of historical spice, from the still-operational freight mainline bridge over the canal to the narrow boats constantly moored in the lock.
Despite the slow and steady soul extraction of Camden, developers have yet to remove all its whimsical charm. The stables market proper may be gone, but the myriad of shops and small home-made sellers still operating on the banks of the lock retain their own special vibrancy. Camden is a town for all seasons, all comers and, relevant to this February Saturday, all cuisines.
We came across Wang-Fu-Don, an apparently rather above-average restaurant. But it's not really called that. You and I would know it as Yum Cha Silks & Spice. I certainly think the former is better than the latter so I will continue to refer to it as such. Dim sum was the order of the day and despite that fact that we didn't altogether need it, we wandered in and were sat at a wipe-clean, no-nonsense, utterly typical Chinese restaurant table.
This was not the best dim sum I've eaten. Nor was it even the best Asian food I ate that day (that cured salmon was still sashimi to my mind), but it was pretty nice. I will say immediately the plate of duck tongues the other half devoured were pretty vile: chewy, bone-lined and pointless. I must have missed their point immediately but she loved them.
On the plus side, egg tarts were crumbly, sweet and had just enough of a greasy hint to leave an impression. I love these things so much
as I have mentioned before, so if they're even half good they're worth it. Alongside these we ate some barbecued pork puffs which had the correct buttery and flaky pastry to be contradictory and so brilliantly Asian (both right). They might be terrible at desserts but that seems to be because they've used their effort in putting strands of dessert into main courses.
Pork and prawn
cheung fun (thin, white, pasta-like dumplings) were the highlight. Tender, salty and delicate meat fillings with silky smooth outer cases were exactly as we hoped (left). We also made it our business to try one of the yardsticks by which any dim sum meal can be measured: barbecued pork buns. I vividly remember eating these for the first time many years ago. My first taste of dim sum, I recall thinking "where have you been all my life?" These were not necessarily that good (maybe it's metaphysically impossible any others ever will be) but they were delicious enough: fluffy, moist, warm and comforting.
I really do like the part of London that sits proudly at the top of the tube map. It's fun, genuine and a place that really does appeal to a vast and diverse crowd. Lunch and tea time were both great fun. The latter was an unnecessary indulgence which revealed a decent neighbourhood Chinese restaurant: something which deserves noting in anyone's book. The former was a delight which I won't soon forget. I'll be back to both of these places I'm sure; just Odette's will be a more special occasion.
Odette's
Yum Cha Silks & Spice
