Recent visits to London classics - Mar 2011

Where: Quaglino's and The Wolseley

With who: Dr Vole, the Northern Mother and Auntie Pat

What is it that defines a restaurant as a classic? And how often do you need to reconsider it's place in the pantheon? A contemplative mood made me head back to two restaurants, both of which have featured among my favourite haunts over the years, with the only possible arbiters of London style and taste, two small middle aged Northern ladies. 

"Quaglino's Fashionably Glamorous restaurant in Mayfair" (their description, and extraneous capitalisation...)
Quaglino's was never just about the food. To call it a basement space may be factually accurate, but like describing QEII as a passenger ferry it doesn't give the full picture. Cavernous, marbled and lit from above like the Crystal Caves. I used to come here on sophisticated dates, back when the trademark Conran 'Q' ashtrays used to vanish into elegant clutchbags and jacket pockets so often they started flogging them at reception.

The crowd tonight feel a little unlike other West End restaurant audiences. There's a real whiff of bridge and tunnel on a Friday night, glammed and gussied up without the kids to have A Good Time. It used to be quite a masculine, relatively powerful Mayfair/St James crowd of bankers, creatives and art dealers, fans of Conran's "let it be simple, let it be seasonal, let it be good" mantra, though the solo party of young bucks braying through champagne in their suits seem more trainee accountants than masters of the universe in waiting.

The food is acceptable rather than exceptional. Like the trainee accountants, we go for the Champagne set menu. £25 for three courses and a glass of fizz, and after some really quite excellent cocktails at the raised bar, share a slightly too sweet bottle of Spanish Gewürztraminer. Starters followed, a ham hock terrine came with overly mustardy piccalilli, that other 80's fave of sliced beetroot, walnut and blue cheese was perfectly fine, but nothing you wouldn't expect from a suburban dinner party. There was a elderly mottled gent in a pinched Jermyn Street suit on the table one over eating a prawn cocktail too. Retro, but just about chic. Mains weren't setting hearts or stomachs a flutter either, but "let it be simple. Let it be good"... I'll grant you, fish and chips isn't an exciting choice, but as I've forgotten most of the other options on the menu already, I could hardly describe it as a great advert for innovation. There was a goodish sea bass, randomly served with baked beans, liver and a chicken thing. Desserts followed the same slight staid path. It's a great spot for a small Northern mother, especially if they're not keen on the new, but it's not somewhere you'd go to have your senses wowed.
Brunch at The Wolseley
At 8 years young, the dark art deco doors of The Wolseley are as difficult to breach as they ever where. Owners Corbin and King came up trumps with reboots of Le Caprice, The Ivy and others, though failed in the hinterland of Haymarket with the neither one thing nor the other of St Albans. I always loved that jewelbox of a dining room a little more than its monochrome older sibling The Wolseley, but it wasn't really close enough to anywhere or quite popular enough to be a destination.

We head to The Wolseley for brunch, one of the highlights of a fine menu that runs through from 8 till (very) late every day. Like Quaglino's the space imposes itself as you enter. Built as an old luxury car showroom in Piccadilly, it then spent years as a bank and they've kept much of the original space, along with the fixtures and fittings from both periods, intact. Architecturally, it's worth popping in for a coffee alone.

we go for a mixed basket of pastries to start (the small Northern Mother and Auntie Pat are annoying daffodils in Kew Gardens later on and need the sustenance). For £7.50, I've certainly had better. The 6 bite sized samples are buttery enough, but overcooked and too crispy in the main. The exception is a dark custardy French piece called a cannelé bordelais which tasted infinitely better than it looked (and sounded). My 'main' was a thick disc of deep brown haggis. Roughly crumbled meat, studded with grains; oaty, salty and meaty in equal measures, served on a Melba toast with a brace of sun golden duck eggs and lashings of (slightly too strong) gravy. It's not an everyday brekkie, even my well conditioned gut would struggle to cope with that level of salty swine regularly, but it's a satisfying one off treat.

With so many places keen and able to define themselves London classics in one shape or another, I'd struggle to place either of these at the top of the list, but for out of town guests, you won't go wrong with The Wolseley.