What is it about Blythe Road that is so attractive to restaurateurs of every hue? I know that this may cause offence, but I wouldn't call Blythe Road romantic, dramatic or beautiful, or anything other than really ordinary. Tucked away in the backwoods of Hammersmith, it wiggles and it waggles all the way from Shepherd's Bush Road to just behind Olympia, where it peters out in a baffling sequence of twists and turns.
Yet every few metres along its length are notable places of refreshment - Popeseye for the unreconstructed steak-and-claret lover, Wilson's for new-wave Scottish, Chez Marcelle for Lebanese delights, and now Cotto for... for what, exactly? Well, for a damned good version of that much-abused style, concept, precept, metaphor, approach, movement, call it what you will: modern British cooking. In effect, modern British is no more than old British with a bit of a contemporary spin in terms of presentation, and ingredients such as wild mushrooms from Africa, artichokes from Brittany, risottos from Italy, truffles from... come to think of it, where do truffles come from in mid-summer?
These, and various other ingredients, run freely through the menu of James Kirby, chef/prop of Cotto. Cotto has been open only a couple of months. It's a very bright place, on a corner, and there's lots of glass about, so that the light gets in from two sides. And then it's quite white and clean and modern-looking, though not in any way clinical or chilly. In fact, it seems rather the reverse: cheerful and open.
The name of the place might lead one to expect that everything will be treated in a very Italian fashion - "cotto" being the Italian for "cooked" - which would have been typically modern British. But what with the pavés and pot roasts, the poaching and confiting, I'd say that Kirby's primary technical influences are French, while the broad-based construction of the dishes is British.
In the end, however, satisfaction comes not from labels, conceits, concepts, precepts, metaphors approaches and movements, but from what the assembly tastes like, and here Kirby scores heavily. To be truthful, he scored a little too heavily with the salt in Iphigenia's wild mushrooms and broad beans with Parma ham, or so she said. The ham would have been salty enough on its own, but someone in the kitchen had added a considerable dash to the mushrooms, too, thus spoiling what would have been, in Iphi's view, an absolutely A-1 dish, rich, earthy and full of floppy textures.
I had no criticisms of the pavé of lamb sweetbreads with asparagus and artichoke that graced my plate. It was an elegant construction, the flavours delicate but distinct, the density firm but not compacted. It showed a classical training in the attention to detail and in the very precise standard of the cooking.
This was even more in evidence with the pan-fried brill with crushed potatoes, peas and meat juices. The slab of brill must have come off a truly massive fish, and it had been fried to the exact point where the individual strata of flesh slide from each other with the slightest resistance. Ooooh, very nice. Using meat stock to beef up the flavour quotient of fish dishes is a French idea, and one that works brilliantly when used with intelligence and discretion, as it was here. The juices, I would guess, were possibly veal, probably chicken. The potato anchored the dish in stern reality, and the very good sweet peas added a touch of seasonal fantasy.
Iphigenia took a very long call on her mobile halfway through her steady consumption of poached loin of new-season's lamb with ceps and roast shallots, so in revenge I helped myself to about half her dish while she wandered up and down the street outside in search of a clearer signal. Again, classic techniques had been applied with perceptive intelligence to bring out the specific qualities of the ingredients. The lamb was impeccably elegant, tender and tasty, the ceps and shallots hitting sweeter, more primitive notes. It was a big dish in terms of thought and flavour.
My companion rather faded at the thought of pudding, but there was no stopping me from strawberry shortbread with fromage-frais ice cream and basil. I'm not sure what the basil was doing, but the rest promised seasonal delights and delivered them with something to spare.
The bill was for the food was a pretty standard £43.75, which, for cooking that is really pretty serious, seems pretty fair as well. We also drank well (but not too deeply) of something of which I have lost the details (and memory).
It obviously hasn't taken the locals that long to decide that Cotto is a good thing. The place was hugger-mugger on the warm weekday evening that Iphigenia and I settled down at table 12, while all around us a lot of white wine went the way of all white wine, along with vibrant conversation and the like. I would say the locals were quite right.
