Telephone: 020-7354 4777
Address: 30 Almeida Street, London N1
Rating: 16.5/20
It was late when Potentilla floated in, but did I care? I did not. She was a vision of loveliness and I was as hungry as a horse.
As it happens, horse is one of the few ingredients not on the fervently traditionalist menu of the Almeida. In every other respect, it is a recital of all those dishes we go to France for, and can never find these days because French bistros and brasseries have gone all fancy and reinterpreted their heritage out of existence. That's my experience, anyway. Over here, we seem to prefer the reek of noshtalgia and getting back to the classics: oeufs en cocotte grandmère, escargots à la bourguignonne, mouclade de moules, trolley of charcuterie, coq au vin, onglet aux échalottes, pied de porc pané, marquise au chocolat, fromage blanc à la crème.
The Almeida is the latest contender from the Conran stable, and it takes Sir Terence back to his first great love, bourgeois French cooking. He has provided a suave, slightly anonymous room in which the sight lines are irritatingly broken up by lights that dangle too low from the ceiling. It all seems a bit on the smooth side for what we hope is going to be some honest, earthy cooking. On the other hand, he's had the good sense to put the team from the Orrery - chef Chris Galvin and front of house maestro Patrick Fischnaller - in overall charge of proceedings, with Ian Wood and Olivier Eynard doing the actual work on site. Currently, there is no finer restaurant in London than the Orrery, and Galvin, while English to his modest bootstraps, is steeped in French culinary culture in a way that few Frenchmen are. So he is a good chap to keep an eye on the products of the kitchen, of which there were a good deal to enjoy.
A rillette and a brace of ptés from the trolley were mouthfuls of beauty (if you like this sort of thing, which I do). The escargots sizzled with a peculiarly French accent, and there was good bread to sop up the hunky bourguignonne juices - shallots, garlic, butter, anchovies, Pernod, parsley and white wine, according to classic texts. High-octane anchovies with shallots and bread and smooth, creamy butter made for another simple, brilliant first course, while among the puddings the marquise au chocolat was the finest version of the dish I have eaten since the days of Nico Ladenis's pomp. It was intense, unctuous and impossibly rich.
These pleasures aside, however, Almeida has a little way to go before it fulfils its potential. That earliest of early birds and arbiter of the London table, Fay Maschler, had had reservations about the oomph of the coq au vin, and the kitchen had taken her words so thoroughly to heart that oomph reigned supreme at the expense of everything else. The au vin part had been so thoroughly reduced that there was no trace of the grape upon the olfactory bulb. This was easy to remedy - Potentilla simply poured a slug of her wine (a tip-top, sleek and powerful Pic St Loup, Domaine de l'Hortus 1998) into the stew, stirred and, hey presto, this was an all-star chicken in red wine.
The problem with my salmis of game, which turned out to be pheasant, was less easy to correct. The trouble with pheasant is that it either tastes of too much or of too little, depending on how precisely it has been hung - and by precise I mean you practically have to sleep with the bloody thing if you want to get it à point , so to speak. This bird definitely erred on the too little side, and so, consequently, did the sauce, which, in classical style, is made with the carcass of said game. The breast had been slightly overcooked, too, and, served whole, was noticeably dry and required heavy chewing.
True, the dinner that Potentilla and I had was only a couple of weeks or so after Almeida had opened. Restaurants rarely leap fully formed into the world, needing anything up to six months to get sorted out. Consequently, the mark reflects my optimism for the future. On the other hand, if they are going to charge full prices, then they must expect full critical attention.
The prices are, understandably, rather higher than you might expect in France, but with first courses between £4.50 (soupe à l'oignon) and £10.50 (generous helpings from the charcuterie trolley), mains from £11 (onglet aux échalottes) to £19.50 (tronçon de turbot, sauce hollandaise) and puddings from £3.50 (ice creams and sorbets) to £5.50 (trolley of tarts), these are in line with general London tariffs.
· Open All week, lunch, 12 noon-2.30pm; dinner, 6-11.30pm. Menus: Lunch ©17.50 for three courses. All major credit cards. Wheelchair access & WC.
