Sometimes, at this peculiar point in British culinary history, the task at hand feels less like writing a review than composing a haiku. Every few weeks, I find myself having such identical thoughts, often tinged with psychotic impulses, that the critical variations are infinitesimally subtle. Or, to put it less fancifully, I keep writing the same article with the odd minuscule twist.
Those thoughts, as presented in this easy-to-follow, five-question guide, are these: 1) Who gives a stuff about the provenance of ingredients?; 2) Could anyone but a method actor researching the role of Dr Niles Crane for a biopic actively enjoy one of those pre-starter freebies topped by the frothing cat sick more tastefully referred to as "foam of..."?; 3) Why is this chef compromising his or her talent by embracing such ridiculous ponciness?; 4) Can there be any explanation other than the chase for those sodding Michelin stars?; and 5) The Lord have mercy, will it never cease?
The latest place to invoke the quintuple sequence, in succession to Elephant of Torquay, is one with a name (following Dinings near Baker Street) designed to scare off anyone unlikely to use the word "jejune" without irony. Yet whereas Dinings, a warmly recommended Japanese, proved contra-intuitively unpretentious, today's restaurant certainly did not.
Its name is Texture, and it stands a few dozen metres from the HQ of the in-bred halfwits' collective called the Jockey Club. The last time I ate in this high-ceilinged, heavily corniced former banking hall, when it was an atrocious posh Indian called Deya, was the day Kieron Fallon was arrested on suspicion of race-fixing. The day my friend and I had lunch at Texture was the first day of Mr Fallon's trial. Whether it will still be Texture when the next racing scandal erupts is an even money shot, because this is not somewhere to revisit for any reason unconnected with a huge bet.
At the front is a swanky champagne bar featuring a glass showcase full of twigs. At the rear is a dining area of sterile elegance with swirly-patterned, creamy walls, conical lampshades and an array of violently colourful modern daubs by an Icelandic painter, which we agreed tended towards the jejune.
The chef, formerly Raymond Blanc's main man at Le Manoir aux Quat' Saisons, also comes from that Nordic land, and there are strong Icelandic influences on a tapas-y lunch menu featuring 11 dishes priced at £8.50. The first to greet the eye, however, was the Anglo-French combo of "Alsace bacon and Hoads Farm Hen Egg". "Thank goodness," snorted my friend. "Imagine if they got their eggs from Hoads's neighbour, Farmer Giles. We'd have to walk out." The egg, served in its own bowl, was fine, and the rashers of ultra-thin, hyper-crispy bacon, on their own wooden block, delicious. But so much extra washing-up for so little reason.
"It's like toy food, isn't it?" said my friend, a legendarily fussy eater who had already forced me to play pit canary by tasting the pre-starter "textures of celeriac" before he went in. "This isn't grown-up food at all." Pickled artichokes involved the pouring, from a teapot into a specimen tube, of a liquid hinting at something of her own creation Sarah Miles would drink were she, God forbid, in the latter stages of renal failure.
An Icelandic cod brandade was salty and dull, and as for "Iron Bark Pumpkin"... well, for all the pleasing texture, what would you do with a collation involving a carpaccio of pumpkin, pumpkin seeds, stilton and mixed salad leaves other than put it up against a wall and fill it with bullets? Delicately smoked tuna was joined by soy sauce ("Asian flavours") delivered from an ointment tube of a kind I haven't seen since my last spell of martyrdom to piles.
There then arrived a dish of such majesty that all previous irritations momentarily evaporated. "Icelandic lamb (from Skagafjör...ur)" was its name, and you'll never meet more beautifully tender, flavoursome meat or a richer and more lustrous soup than the thimbleful of barley broth that came with it. Why in the name of sanity would a guy who can produce such a wonderfully simple, gutsy, warming dish, in which the main ingredients taste so potently of themselves, waste his talent elsewhere by denuding the natural flavours with so many silly accompaniments?
The answer, of course, is the familiar one of the quest for Michelin approval and market distinction that inveigles so many potentially great cooks into compromising their gifts. While there are inspectors, and even perhaps critics, who appreciate such nonsense, I've never met a human being whose appetite wouldn't be ruined by the sight, on a menu, of "French Jerusalem artichokes: pickled, roasted, raw, tea", and I hope I never will.
"It's all amazingly clever, isn't it?" observed my friend as we awaited the bill, "and you have to admire the technical mastery. The only problem is, you don't really want to eat it."
Rating: 6.75/10
Telephone: 020-7224 0028
Address: 34 Portman Square, London W1
Open: Tues-Sat, lunch, noon-2.30pm; dinner, 7-11pm.
