Telephone: 020 7287 8488
Address: La Trouvaille, 12A Newburgh Street, London W1.
Dinner for two, including service, £90.
Simon Majumdar is a man who deserves our respect. I'm not exactly sure what he does for a living - I think he may be something to do with publishing - but I know exactly what he does with that living once he's earned it. He spends it in restaurants. He seems to eat in every new British restaurant within days of its opening and then returns three or four times within the following month. And, of course, he keeps up with all the old places, too. Private health insurers would probably stump up for a few weeks in the Priory for Simon if ever he decided he wanted therapy to help him lose his eating-out habit, but my guess is he's in no hurry to be cured.
I know about Simon's pleasures because he posts extensive and acutely observed accounts of them on the international section of an internet bulletin board called www.chowhound.com, where dedicated lovers of restaurants compare notes. Simon and his friends will probably be surprised to see me writing about Chowhound, because I flounced out of there quite noisily a week or so back. I hadn't posted much, but when I did I was showered with abuse by a handful of the London members (who seem to number no more than a dozen), not because of what I said, but because of what I do for a living.
There appears to be a view among some of them (Simon excluded) that restaurant critics are in league with the restaurant business to hype undeserving chefs and their establishments. Why else would restaurant critics review the same places at the same time?
Personally, I'm too busy with my duties on the Zionist Conspiracy Committee (south London branch) and the General Purpose Media Distortions Committee (bleeding-heart-liberal newspaper branch) to have time for a restaurant conspiracy as well. The truth is, we hear about places worth visiting from a variety of sources, and sometimes the buzz around a new restaurant is so loud and so continuous that we all hear about it at roughly the same time. I wouldn't be at all surprised, for example, if a lot of restaurant critics are soon writing about a relatively new French place on London's Newburgh Street called La Trouvaille. I don't know where they will have heard about it; it has mounted no great public-relations effort to get our attention. As for me, I heard about it from Simon Majumdar writing on Chowhound. He has, of course, already been there at least three times.
It is a small place, tucked away down a pedestrianised lane parallel to the increasingly tawdry Carnaby Street. The walls are a warm shade of umber, and there are dark-stained stripped floorboards into which are laid a few uplighters that lift the room away from gloominess. On a hot summer's night, tables had been set up in the street outside, but they were already full by the time Pat and I got there. Happily, the windows open completely on to the street so that, on steamy evenings like ours, there is little distinction between inside and out.
The two enterprising chaps behind it, Thierry Bouteloup and Jean-Charles Adam, are, respectively, from Brittany and the Loire, but the food is essentially of the French south - both the south west and Provence. It can be uneven, but its good points far outnumber the bad, and the good are really very good indeed. For example - to begin on a down note - Pat's starter of a seared scallop and rocket salad was a deeply insipid affair lacking in texture and flavour and, at £9.25, it was over-priced. My starter, however, was terrific: snails, out of the shell, in a rich cream sauce made with softened shallots and a touch of morel, served with toast. At the risk of using an overly technical term, it was yummy.
For her main course, Pat had a perfectly pink fillet of lamb - sourced, like many of the ingredients, from Borough Market - in a lavender jus. It was a new one on me, but boy, does it work. It really did taste of lavender, which had an (unsurprisingly) floral end in the style of - but distinct from - rosemary. And we know how well that works with lamb. I had roast belly pork with pickled plums, cabbage and an unnecessary dollop of sour cream.
The cream aside, this is the kind of stunning dish I would cross oceans for. The crackling was perfect, fracturing on the slightest tooth pressure. Equally, the meat broke up on the tongue. The sharpness of the plums saved the lush pork from being overwhelming.
We had space for just one pudding between us, so we shared a gorgeously light and aromatic lemon and thyme crème brlée. There is a short but very intelligent wine list, entirely French, with some eccentric notes - one of them was chosen, apparently, because the region it came from is particularly good at rugby - and nothing is priced above £25. We had a dense, petrolly bottle of Cahors at £23.50, which tasted thickly of southern France.
On a crowded, busy night, the service, by a small number of impeccably Gallic chaps in T-shirts and short haircuts, was efficient without being hurried, which is what you need with sometimes dense food like this. Our bill of £90, including service, was not small, but it was depressingly average by London standards, and it delivered far more than that sort of money usually buys in the capital. There's no doubt about it: Simon Majumdar's recommendation was spot on.
Contact Jay Rayner on jay.rayner@observer.co.uk
