Gymkhana - It's curry Gym, but not as we know it - Oct 2013

Prepare to see a lot written about this place... This latest Mayfair big hitter (from the hand of Trisna founder Karam Sethi) is already a darling of, among others, Time Out, Fay Maschler and big Jay Rayner. The latter having managed to spectacularly annoy the frothing loons below the line in the Guardian by having the temerity to airily suggest that at £70 a head it was superb value for money. While there are very few who would dispute that you can get close to as good for a lot, lot less money, this wasn't deliberately a Guardianista baiting claim. Given the location on the same block as Mahiki, where clueless braying clods regularly compete to spend more of daddy's money than the other yahs on insane champagne and oh so accurately named cock-tails, it's not bad value at all, and it's a world of calm class away from the hoorays and their nightclub tuckshop Roc Lobsta.

There's something quite confidence inspiring about a short menu, though it's rarely seen in an Indian restaurant. You won't be pleased if you were desperately seeking your chicken / beef / lamb in a generic gloop, but then there aren't many places nearby that are so unreconstructed. It's a calmingly brief list that takes you by the hand, leads you to a comforting rattan Raj era chair and fetches you a gin and (matched) tonic before suggesting that you accede all thoughts of ordering and let Karam and his team decide.

We don't quite give them that leeway, but do grab what promises to be a seasonal standout on the gamey menu - the wild Muntjac biryani - as well as a host of smaller plates from the snacks and starters.
  

A minced kid goat and onion Methi Keema deeply steeped in fenugreek, pepper and other spices is sprinkled with shreds of deep fried potato, a flavoursome and texturally lip crinkling delight, genuinely one of the nicest things I've eaten in some time. After nailing the soft buttered rolls it was served with, we resorted to the serving spoon so desperately were we trying to scrape the Crown Derby pattern off the artfully mismatched dining plates.

Other small plates, from a similarly small menu, were more hit and miss. Wild mushroom and sweet potato Shikampuri kebabs were closer in taste and texture to falafel, not unpleasant, and raised from tedium by a thick girolle raita, but I wasn't fighting to claim the third puck. Venison keema naan on the other hand was exceptionally light and sweet.

Served showily with a thin crust dotted with nigella and pumpkin seeds, the pastry lid of the biryani cracked to release fragrant steam and soft, perfectly cooked insides. Morsels of braised deer were scattered throughout a subtle rice, like dark jewels in the sand. The only missed note (for me) was a pomegranate and mint raita too close to a sweet dessert yogurt in taste and texture. I'm in a minority of one here, my dining companion greedily scooped it solo from the bowl. For me a better accompaniment was a dark smokey aubergine Khati Meethi side, its seductive and silky textures inevitably will come back to haunt me in moments of abstinence.

Happy I got in there before the reviews, sad that it's unlikely to become a regular due to the, now inevitable, queues. Gymkhana stands out as one of my meals of the year so far and, if you can get a table, is a divinely decadent treat for an autumn supper. As a critical smash as well as the new favourite takeaway (yes, of course they do) to the Mayfair set, it's clear that they plan to be here for the longhaul. 

 
 

Colbert - Sloane Square's new old guard - Oct 2013

image borrowed from www.theweek.co.uk

Sloane Square manages to be one of the most outwardly pretty yet utterly vacuous London addresses and at 5 to six on a late week workday night, also seems to be home to more arseholes per square foot than a builders bum convention. 

Within seconds of leaving the tube I've been buffeted by a spry fool in a pinstripe oblivious to anything but a night on the 'lesh' with the boys ("on my way down the King's Road now squire, you'll spot me, I'm looking seriously sexy tonight") and watched as some infernal permatanned, pashmina clad princesses did her level best to get knocked over by one of the smug Astons prowling the Square by waltzing straight in front of it assuming that it would (like everything else in life) fit around her.

After that Colbert was a warm buzzing welcome. While a number of the arseholes had inevitably found their way indoors to loudly complain about the paucity of the residents parking in Ken and Chelski, there was enough space for me to slip unobserved onto a stool at the handsome marble bar. It's a classy old fashioned sort of space that, with its comfortable booths and waistcoated French staff feels like it has been there since way before George Devine reopened the Court next door in 1952. 

In actual fact, it's been there for less than 2 years, when uber-restaurateurs Jeremy King and Chris Corbin took advantage of a famous tiff between the landlord and previous tenants Oriel in which the latter were booted out following a terrible meal experienced by the Earl of Cadogan and his family. Most people would have just refused to leave a tip.

Service is friendly, prompt and efficient (perhaps mindful of the fate of their predecessors) and it'd be hard not to recommend the location at least as a great spot for dinner before a show at nearby Cadogan Hall or the Court. The food was fine brasserie fare, though maybe just without quite the oomph I'd been hoping for. 

Mini house baguettes were toasty warm spears of delight, built for scooping up thick butter, ideally the garlicky sort I'd been hoping for along with my starter of l'escarcots. The snails were plump, mild and inoffensive little fellows, like schoolboys from a minor public school. Their buttery bed was pleasant enough, though not a patch on the earthily vulgar bunch I got mugged by at Zedels. Admittedly though, these ones didn't make you feel that you'd be growling parsley and garlic at people during interval drinks. 

A Salad Nicoise was fine, but much less than the sum of its parts. Most of those parts were excellent, with the exception of a lump of slightly dry tuna, but it was difficult to ignore the keen £17.50 price point for a handful of haricots vert and an, admittedly perfectly cooked, egg.

The rest of the menu is textbook grand brasserie, with moules, confits and a section for crustacia. Plus plats du jour, all day dejeuner and some rather exciting looking patisserie to finish and you can breakfast all day or lunch from noon until night. If I'm in the area I just well might do either, or both. And it'd be the ideal place for your slightly risqué maiden aunt, just make sure she's paying.

Gilgamesh - Gilga-meah in Camden - Oct 2013

It's been a while since Gilgamesh opened. The 800 seat 'super restaurant' landed in pre-gentrified Camden Lock market in 2006 like a blinged-up supertanker gatecrashing a Levellers gig.

Visually, it's stunning. The diner-to-be ascends a narrow escalator, which opens out into an atrium space, a cavernous daylight-filled dome, stuffed with ornately carved dark woods and squadrons of hushed staff. It's definitely one of the more extravagant spaces in the city, as distinctive as the tall tower dining of the Shard and its ilk.

Sadly, it didn't take long to go downhill on a recent lunch visit. Paper towels, scuffed and peeling menus and cheap, unwrapped disposable chopsticks clash with the opulent surroundings. We were the first people in at 12.30 on a weekend lunchtime, and indeed the only diners for a while, so maybe they only bring out the good stuff (and staff) for the beautiful people later on in the evening.

It's a surprise that it's so quiet, given the vast hordes chowing down on hideously stodgy, reheated muck from the noodle merchants below. Despite the prices being more Chelsea that Camden, Gilgamesh have a set lunch menu at £12, so are not so far from competing in price and are surely a step above a styrofoam tray of MSG. I think there's more they could be doing to create a welcoming entrance - either that or they need to actively compete with the serried ranks loudly peddling their deep-fried chicken drowned in gloopy sauce, and offer people a taster.

Given the pricing on the main menu, the disparity between the pricing of the set dim sum menu and the a la carte causes some confusion. The latter offers a pan-Asian mix with most main dishes hovering in the £17 to £25 level, the former offers 3 'types' of dim sum for £12. With no idea how much that might deliver us we go a la carte.
  

Mushroom dumplings were green, glutinous and somewhat grim. They filled a steamer basket like claggy shopping bags filled with a lukewarm mushroom vol au vent mix. Similarly, an £8 dish of three unremarkable chicken gyoza arrived flabby and too cold again, their skin lacking any crisp or crunch. Mottled, soft and wrinkled like swimmers who've spent too long in a municipal pool. Overall, the mixed temperature of the food became a lunchtime theme, with most dishes just not hot enough. Admittedly, it's an enormous restaurant, but it didn't take so long to get from the kitchen to justify the tepid temperature of so many dishes.

Ribs were of decent enough quality meat, but had been cruelly treated. Cooked in (or at least covered in) a glossy oilslick of black bean sauce, tasting like a sweet soy that had been punched in the face by a rogue gang of star anise pods and not much more. A rare high came with great tempura prawns. Scattered with a sprinkle of crushed something, jade green methamphetamine maybe, they were as moreish as they were fresh, though four of them for £17.50 is definitely on the steep side. 

Conversely, the T'n'T 'sashimi' pizza (I'm not entirely sure that's where best to place the quotation marks, but they need to go somewhere in a half-baked concept like this) wasn't the best idea of the day. There's a T for the tuna, wafer-thin slices of very good sashimi, thrown away on an over-salted flat biscuit base and violently assaulted with truffle oil (that other T) and acerbic micro greens.

The Chef's sashimi selection was thickly sliced, lumpen and way too cold for the flavours of the fish to have opened up. I wasn't expecting Dinings or Umu standards, but I was hoping for better than M&S. We've moved on with Japanese and Asian dining in the capital, it just doesn't feel like the team at Gilgamesh has noticed. Two pieces each of salmon, tuna, prawn and (I think..) mackerel were plonked down unceremoniously by the server unannounced and unexplained.

At £40 a head for an a la carte lunch with no drinks it's difficult to see me being back to try their evening atmosphere, though I'm sure that for some, the idea of a roped-off luxe lounge in the heart of newly wealthy Camden is de trop. It's a world away from the Hawley Arms that's for sure. But come here for food? I'm not sure I could do it (and I'm not sure anyone else does). It's a gigantic bar and club that also serves food. Overpriced mediocrity I know your name. And it is Gilgamesh.

DISCLAIMER: We were invited to dine here (anonymously) by the restaurant. We walked in unannounced, paid in full and then were refunded by the restaurant PR after we'd left the restaurant. 

 


 

Mildred's - a review finally - Oct 2013

Another recent step back down Memory Lane. Gearing up for a trip to the Edinburgh Festival recently, I needed nothing more than vegetables and pulses. If you're that determined to give your flabby middleaged stomach and liver a kicking, at least have the decency to treat it healthily first.

I've always been a fan of Mildred's, ever since I was lucky enough to score an office opposite the place over ten years ago. It was never a place you'd waste on a dinner with suits. The unreservable tables are too close together, the service is amiable if too erratic for client entertaining and the menu a flustered mix of clichéd vegetarian comfort food and esoteric rabbit droppings. I'm delighted to report that nothing has changed in the intervening years.

Although it sounds like I'm gearing up for a slagging I'm really, really not. One of the reasons Mildred's has been there for so long is that it hasn't changed. And the regulars who crowd the front galley bar, flirting with the staff and each other while waiting for their table wouldn't have it any other way.

That cramped bar belies the gorgeously lit conservatory roofed space you walk out into. Light, bright and loud, it's packed every lunchtime and full from 5.30 every night.

Those veggie clichés are hard to get past. It's been a long time since I've been able to get past their doorstep thick mushroom and ale pie, thick chewy pastry scattered with seeds, stuffed with a glossy dark chunky filling you'd swear only a dead (and happy) cow could supply... If I sidestep that, then I get tackled by one of the tastiest bean burgers imaginable or tonight's punishing two footed tackle, a piping hot, bean and chilli feast of a burrito.

Taking up the space of a small child (or approximately an eigth of the size of Michael Gove's self regard) it squats ominously on the plate alongside some ill-judged and entirely erroneous greenery. Blistered white cheese (no one including the server is quite sure what sort) is baked into the carapace and the inside opens to a rich bean melange. It's inauthentic as hell but tasty and filling. The coconut curry with sweet potato was fine, verging on microwave hot, but instantly forgettable. There are a number of salads, various specials and a number of ways with quinoa. The wine list is

Sure it's not a place for a business meeting, and I'd think strongly about the impression you were going for before taking a first date there. But it's a wonderful place for a healthy, filling feed with your very closest friends, and that's why it's one of my favourite places in London.