11 Abingdon Road 8½/10
Telephone 020-7937 0120. Address: 11 Abingdon Road, London W8. Open All week, lunch, noon-3pm, dinner, 6-10.30pm. Price Around £30 a head inclusive. Set menu, £12.50 for two courses, Mon-Fri, noon-3pm, 6-7pm. Wheelchair access and disabled WC.
In the spirit of the January sales, this week we are pleased to bring you two reviews for the price of one. In fact, given the brevity of the first, the more apt comparison might be the Domino's "buy one, get the second half price" midweek offer so familiar to professional food critics and their more pernickety readers.
Whatever the precise nature of the bargain, thanks for it goes to the owners of 11 Abingdon Road, for so naming their restaurant presumably in the full knowledge that two minutes down the street stands a gastropub called The Abingdon. In my day, the latter would have sued the former for passing off and that would have been an end of it. However - and I think we can safely point the finger at the PC brigade here - no such action has been undertaken, so the two coexist in a road best known culinarily until now for once hosting a restaurant called Goolies. While you can see that naming a place after something other than its address can be problematic (Goolies has, or have, vanished; not a single orb remains), so can naming it after the address when there's a near namesake 200 yards up the street.
Of The Abingdon, in which, of course, we mistakenly started our evening, I can't speak highly enough. The back bit of the eating area is appealingly done out like the first-class dining car of an American train, circa 1955, while an exceptionally charming waitress refused payment for our drinks once she'd sussed out the confusion and sent us on our way.
For 11 Abingdon Road, where the evening ended, I am also full of praise. Apart from the name, indeed, we found it difficult to fault, perhaps unsurprisingly given that the owner is a talented restaurateur with a more sensibly titled place, Sonny's, in the suburb of Barnes, that is also warmly recommended.
This one follows the same formula pretty rigidly, from the eau de nil colour scheme, gentle spotlighting, decent line drawings on the walls and a pleasing, uncluttered look to the room; all the way to a thoughtful and fairly priced wine list and a modern European menu that neatly blends imagination with simplicity.
My guest for the evening, an eight-year-old boy, struggled at first to find a starter he fancied, before settling on a bowl of tagliatelle with pied de mouton mushrooms, parsley and Parmesan (£6, or £12 as a main course). In the past, this person has tended to dismiss all inquiries about his food either with a brusque, "This is off the record", or a brusquer, "No comment". So I think it a testament to this rather brilliant dish that he was happy to be quoted as follows: "This is great. It tastes a bit like spaghetti vongole" (he was quite right: the garlic-parsley ratio was similar), "which is my favourite. But this is just as good. These mushrooms are excellent." My potted shrimps (£7.50), a delightful surprise to find in so unfuddy, and unduddy, a place were immaculately fresh and delicious in their lemony, peppery, buttery way, albeit, as usual, too little toast was bought with them.
The very friendly waitress's offer of crayons having been politely rejected (I suppose it's yet another sign of middle age, but these days I much prefer felt tips), we were in the midst of a Dr Who quiz covering much of time-space when the main courses arrived. My guest broke off from asking a question regarding Tom Baker's clash with the Osiran god Sutekh to praise his huge fillet of halibut (£17.50), which emitted the glorious, ethereal flavour that distinguishes wild fish from their farmed brethren. "This is the best halibut I've ever had," was the judgment (I suppose I ought to point out that it was also the first), while the chips he ordered in place of the advertised butternut squash were "brilliant". My slow-cooked belly of pork (£13.50), with crushed potato and roasted apple, could have done with some decent crackling, but the meat was top-quality and suffused with melty sweetness.
"This is now my third and fourth favourite restaurant in the world," was the verdict from across the table. Without going quite so far quite so soon, I'd say that like its stablemate in Barnes, 11 Abingdon Road is pretty much the perfect neighbourhood joint - warm and unstuffy, delighted to see children, and serving first-class, unpretentious cooking at decent prices. And for those of you who fall into the trap, I'm sure the pub's a delight, too.
