J Sheekey
During lunch at J Sheekey with Chris Hughes, the effervescent character behind the Taste food events, we discussed having a bit of a shindig during Taste to tell people more about LRF. Taste is a partner of the London Restaurant Festival and will also have an event during the inaugural LRF in October. I never tire of J. Sheekey. It’s refined without being stuffy and the recently designed oyster bar is one of the most delightful places to sit and eat in London’s West End at the moment. It’s redolent of the oyster bar in Grand Central Station in New York but more intimate and better food. We sat in the main restaurant which is no less agreeable and I had some sound oysters and an excellent bream, simply pan-fried.
Address: 28-32 St Martin’s Court, London, WC2N 4AL. Tel: 020 7240 2565
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Sukho Thai
Dinner with friends at this Thai restaurant that remains, to my mind, one of the best in London. The service is sweetly deferential and the food is presented with delicate modesty. The tom kha soup and the soft shell crab are particularly good as is the fresh tuna in spicy lemongrass and mint and the corn fed chicken with cloud ear mushrooms.
Address: 855 Fulham Road, London, SW6 5HJ. Tel: 020 7371 7600
The Pantechnicon Rooms
You can get one of the best set lunches in town at this elegant neighbourhood bolt-hole on the rapidly emerging hot spot of Motcomb St. It’s owned and run by a savvy young team whose first project was The Thomas Cubitt Pub on Elizabeth Street, just down the road towards Victoria. Theirs is a canny operation. They take ordinary pubs on the Grosvenor Estate and transform them into extremely well designed, and finished, pubs and dining rooms. The Estate loves them for it and so do the locals if the packed house when I visited was anything to go by. I had an excellent burger with a beaker of piping hot fries and a beer for £12. I’m going to head back soon as I gather they’re about to start serving muntjac deer – very pioneering and delicious too. I gather they’ve just bought The Orange Brewery on Pimlico Road for their third venture. Good luck to them.
Address: 10 Motcomb Street, London, SW1X 8LA. Tel: 020 7730 6074
Ba Shan
In keeping with the current vogue for small plates of food this new place in Soho specializes in the more unusual dishes from Northeast China. It’s Sichuan tapas in a way and known as ‘Xiao chi” (small eats). The restaurant itself is intimate and dressed as if to resemble a cross between a marketplace and an authentic, simple Sichuan restaurant with small wooden benches. The effect nibbles at edge of naffness but manages to avoid a full-blown feast of foibles. I was a guest of Richard Vines, the restaurant critic for Bloomberg and a supporter of The London Restaurant Festival. The smiling staff, many having just arrived in the UK, was engaging and helpful despite some language difficulties. I loved the lotus leaf buns, five-spiced beef and jia mo with cumin-spiced beef. For a full review you should read Fay Maschler’s in The Evening Standard. Read Richard Vines’ review here.
Address: 24 Romilly Street, London, W1D 5AH. Tel: 020 7287 3266
The View
Not in London but this unprepossessing little place above Whitsand Bay is well worth mentioning and a real find. It’s far superior – and far less expensive – that Rick Stein’s places in Padstow on the north coast. I had sardines that had been simply grilled and not fiddled around with followed by an exceptional piece of turbot. All local suppliers and the head chef/owner Matt Corner is notably talented. He runs it with his wife Rachel. Also, the name of the restaurant is no shallow claim as the view across the sea to Rame Head is breathtaking.
Address: Treninnow Cliff Road, Whitsand Bay, Cornwall. Tel: 01752 822345
