Telephone: 020-7224 6279
Address: 63-69 Canonbury Road, London N1
Rating: 16/20
How many times have I heard the words, "There's a very nice gastro-pub just opened up around the corner. It used to be a really horrible pub, but that's all changed, thank heavens"? It's got to the point where there hardly seems to be a decent, old-fashioned boozer left, where the air is fragrant with cigarette smoke, the table tops are sticky with old beer, the pattern on the carpet resembles the state of your mind when you've had about six pints too many, men prop their saggy bottoms on bar stools, hoist their beer guts on to their knees and their breasts on to their beer guts, and the only food on offer is six varieties of chips, with pork scratchings by way of variety. Ah me, those dear, dead days.
The House, in snazzy Islington, was just such a place until a few months back and then, hey presto, the lost was found, a soul was reclaimed, a sinner repented, a make-over was made, and a modest, charming, clean and decent neighbourhood eatery moved shyly but confidently into mainstream dining. I know all this because Ted and Toni told me so.
It was a Thursday evening, and I'll warrant that The House had more customers chomping and chewing than it had sipping and supping in its previous incarnation. They were a smoother class of customer, too: youthful, bright and breezy. The low buzz of conversation could be heard, just, over a rather insistent sound system. Not that they, les jeunesses dorées of N1, seemed to notice, but when you get to the age of Ted, Toni and myself, you don't really want to eat in a place where you need an ear trumpet to communicate.
Still, there was enough about the menu to suggest that there might be compensations from the kitchen -"Traditional 'jambon' persillé, warm potato salad, gherkins and Dijon mustard" among them. Those are my inverted commas at either end of the menu entry, and The House's around "jambon". I'm not quite sure what their inverted commas signify. That it wasn't really jambon at all? That it was jambon-effect? Or even that it was a special kind of jambon - jambon from Jambon, perhaps? Come to think of it, I was flummoxed by that "traditional", too.
What turned up was a perfectly decent, old-fashioned - traditional, if you like - ham in jelly with parsley; fine chunks of juicy meat, just-set jelly and a sprinkling of parsley. It could have done with more parsley, in point of fact, but it all added up to a dish of proper food. Toni's deep-fried courgette and aubergine fritter with balsamic and tomato vinaigrette was more in the modern mould, and was a really good vegetable dish. The batter was light, the vegetables within tender, the vinaigrette lively but not assertive. The same could be said of the Stilton, red onion and rocket salad with peppered beef fillet and blue cheese dressing. It was an up-front and boisterous kind of dish.
Toni and I then set about a chargrilled rib of Buccleuch beef, with a shallot crust, gratin dauphinoise, green beans and something called jus gras. It was a mega bit of meat, cooked as instructed, to be rare in the middle, well fatted around the edges, sliced thick, robustly flavoured and decently textured. It proved more than Tina and I could quite manage, and so the dog, Biaggio, who is about the size of a Buccleuch beast, was the beneficiary. Meanwhile, Ted was putting a plate of braised beef with ceps, bacon and mash to the sword. Well, not quite to the sword, for he is not a big eater, but he set about it with quiet pleasure, and finished rather more of the deep, dark, handsome dish than I had expected.
He passed on pudding, but Toni and I did not, with a perfectly acceptable hot chocolate pudding with coffee ice cream for her and a perfectly acceptable rice pudding with mango compote for me.
All in all, this was a fine dinner. The food had character, and had been made by a very well-trained hand. It had not been cloned from a thousand other menus, nor simply assembled from a shopping list of fashionable ingredients. Someone had thought about it, and brought serious experience to bear. The bill was £122.20, which is a bit more than you might expect from a run-of-the-mill gastro-pub, or from a neighbourhood restaurant of any description, for that matter. A bottle of terrific Maranges, a little back alley of Burgundy, at £33 boosted it a bit, but that was the only wine item. There was water and coffee, so the food came to £81.50, or £27 a head, an average London price these days, but for above-average food. Oh, and it is still a pub, where you can just drink, should you want to.
PS: I want to make a plea for Lola's on Upper Street, London N1 (020-7359 1932) - for a while it played host to Hywel Jones, who moved on shortly after I had given it a pretty cheery review; and then to the immensely talented Robert Reid, who moved on before I could get round to inspecting his work. However, on the evidence of a lunch the other week, Elisha Carter, the new king of the Lola's kitchen, is a very fine performer in his own right. Let's hope he stays. The set-price lunch (£15 for two courses, £18.25 for three) is a fabulous bargain.
· Open Lunch, Tues-Sun, 12 noon-3pm; dinner, all week, 6-10pm. Menus: Lunch, £10 for two courses; £12.95 for three. Wheelchair access & WC.
