London Restaurants by category
When I was a young West Ender, a posh night out ended up in the familiar confines of Joe Allen. Slightly dirtier ones usually found you gurning round a four top in Balans or playing pinball up the rickety staircase of Bar Italia. You'd gone very wrong if you wound up in Shuttleworths... I was a little young for the Atlantic, that louche, debauched bacchanal under the old Regent Palace Hotel. It's to that space that we head tonight, now home to the newly launched Brasserie Zedel.
It's not an expensive joint. And that's an understatement. Three courses for three people, coffee, wine and service clocked in at £90, phenomenal value given the quality. If this was a vanity project by new restaurateurs, you'd laugh at the prices and imaginging the rows with accountants, vowing to get as much grub down your neck as you could before they whacked the prices up. It's not though, it's the latest venture by two of the biggest restaurant thoroughbreds this country has produced, Chris Corbin and Jeremy King. If the brains behind The Wolesley and The Ivy think that this is the way the industry should price, prepare for the cutting of some prices or the sharpening of some knives...
Bright, airy, tall and gilded. Even though you're in a basement, the whole experience is like being thrust into an Art Deco inspired cruise ship for the night. You could dress up to match if you want to but if you don't really want I can't see that anyone would mind.
The menu reads like a 'Best of France - Bourgouis edition' cookbook from the 70's, in a really good way. Hefty, non sharing, mains are generally under a tenner, soups are less than three quid and other starters swirl the heady heights of a fiver. Substantial plated salads and big slabs of pâté are consumed with gusto while I chow down on escargot as garlically exotic as you remember from that first school trip to France as a 12 year old.
Steak hache is made on site, a triumphantly large patty of the trimmings from proper cuts of beef, a tartare burger if you will. It was a little too solid in the construction but really well flavoured, coming with an inclusive metal cone of proper French fries (another pet hate of expensive places, the sides that should go with the dish should NOT be added chargable extras) and lashings of pepercorn sauce for £8.75.
If the profiteroles were a tad over baked, it only served to highlight that these weren't perfectly pre-prepared, plumped generic pap but homemade and fresh from the subterranean bakery that had been responsible for an excellent (free) bread basket earlier.
Arriving in London today, you couldn't ask for a better catch all recommendation than Zedel, it's there for groups of friends, good for serious foodies glomming at the novelty value, perfect for a classy date and suitable for clients and parents without any of them thinking you're skimping.
I hate to end the review by keeping coming back to it, but i still can't understand why they're charging so little for this food. Sure it's what you'd expect to pay in a provincial French brasserie but this is a newly and expensively renovated spot on Picadilly Circus. They must really hate their accountant, or the rest of the industry...
Where: Zucca, Bermondsey Street
With who: Northern Mother and The Vole
How much: £75 for three courses and a bottle of wine
Zucca opened earlier in the year to rave reviews from bloggers and critics alike. Many had no idea how they could create their homely yet modern Italian cuisine at the prices they were charging, many of the same people also raved about the quality of the simple ingredients and this man, reading the bundles of food porn produced, licked his lips and vowed to get there, and soon. Well time moved on, and other places opened, and this man didn't get down there (though close) so it was with pleasure while sculling round for somewhere to take Northern Mother, that this man was reminded of the little (still fairly new) cozy, modern and cheap Italian on Bermondsey Street.
Slightly uncomfortable sub-Habitat chairs aside, the space is a welcoming one. Light walls and exposed brick link the floor to ceiling windows that mirror the open kitchen across the rear. The tables are small and close together, but the high ceilings don't allow the volume to get too loud or your neighbours conversations too intrusive.
And the food? Well I've already booked my return. It's a rare place that makes you feel like that, but Zucca is the restaurant equivalent of a huge hug from an old family friend. And I want another hug. We started, encouraged by the friendly, observant and on the ball waitress, to go for a selection of shared starters. Prosciutto di Parma with a perfectly ripe fig was good, two excellent ingredients in harmonious marriage. Cardoons, celery like sticks of artichoke thistle a rare sight on a menu, came slathered in a thick and slightly boozy fondue cheese which proved perfect for being mopped up by the real star of the starters, the Zucca Fritti. Sticks of pumpkin, squash and carrot with the odd leaf of zingy basil came cooked in a tempura light batter and piled high. The healthiest fried food I've ever had and for a jaw dropping £3 a plate. This would be my lunch, daily, if I lived in the neighbourhood.
Zuni Cafe is one of those Californian institutions, along with Alice Water's Chez Panisse (the original) and Greens, that has been around in broadly the same form since the 70's and along with showier latecomers such as the French Laundry has put the region on the culinary map. The key to Californian cuisine is quality sourced ingredients cooked simply and well and Zuni has developed a short and stylish Cal-Italian menu based around the brick oven proudly occupying the centre of the room, birthplace of their classic roast chicken.
A few casual bar tables fit into the tight but light and airy block corner space and the gradual growth into the mezzanine and an adjacent room has given them a more classic dining room with linen cloths to match. It's a wonderfully Californian space. The crowd were well heeled and Cali casual. Hipsters in havaianas mixed with dressed down grey hairs. There were so many things I could have eaten on this menu. The burgers at the next table looked stunning, as did a nearby pizza, and the Tuscan roast chicken will have to be saved for my next visit ($42 for the chicken, but it shares with at least 3 or 4 judging by other reviews, allow an hour or pre-order if you get there before me).
I opened with Serrano ham served with pimentos de padron, goats cheese and orange zest gremolata. The crunchy zing of the gremolata and the salty spice of the pimentos came in perfectly with the goats cheese. The ham was pretty good, but I've had better, and much closer to home. The main was revelatory. One of the thickest pork chops I've ever had the pleasure of eating. The knowledgable enthusiast serving me gave me the run down of its history. From a farm called Becker Lane, a small Iowa producer apparently, it was an Iowan pork chop as you'd imagine. Like their men, grown on corn, open space and sunshine. Free range to the point of being semi-wild, it had dark open flesh and was meatily juicy to the n'th degree. If I were a pig, I'd want to be this pig (assuming there's no opening for the one in Babe). It came with a semi-raw salad of fresh green beans and thin sliced courgette with the pick me up of purple basil. The two elements were brought together with a Sungold heritage tomato salad in a light dressing, the sweet snap of the tomatoes cutting through the glistening unctuous fat of the heaven sent chop.
