What the critics say: Pizza Express, The Canton Arms…

23rd March 2010, 8:17am

A round-up of the latest reviews

Pizza Express
Giles Coren, The Times, 20 March

"There's nothing wrong with the ideas, it's all the familiar Italian guff about sunshine and grandmothers and hillsides, with Francesco's Insalata Semplice, for example, described as 'the classic Italian first course salad of buffalo mozzarella, Santos and vine tomatoes, rocket and toasted ciabatta bread tossed with red onions, chives, Calabrian oregano and basil...' 

"But with chainstore cash restrictions in place on ingredients, and this being England in March, the words prove to be nothing more than meaningless post-M&S Newspeak. Indeed, these pale, crunchy tomatoes had so little flavour that, in a blind tasting, you would probably have guessed they were apples. Or frostbitten toes. The mozzarella was pointless too, cold, grainy and without flavour. Good guesses from a blind man here might have been 'wet bog roll', 'lint from the washing machine', or 'a teddy bear egg left out in the rain'."

Alimentum, Cambridge
AA Gill, The Sunday Times, 21 March

"The menu's fine — an ambitious tasting bit, à la carte, and plat du jour. I began with a potato velouté poured over a little cairn of smoked haddock, and a quail's egg. This is a Scottish dish called cullen skink, but they didn't call it that. The quail egg is this year's fashionable garnish, and serving soup as if it were a chemistry experiment on a plate the size of a cardinal's hat is just too effortfully soigné. 

"It tasted fine, well made, but the haddock was too salty and the egg would have been better left to the bird. And all of it was too little, and too tepid. Then there was the beef, which came with an excellent truffled pomme purée, and for pudding a banana parfait, which was slimy Instant Whip with a smear of bog-cleaner lime and an alcoholic sorbet I left to itself. Puddings are not this kitchen's thing."

Caponata, London
Zoe Williams, The Telegraph, 19 March

"Caponata has an upstairs restaurant that is 'more intimate', but it wasn't open on the Thursday night we visited, so we found ourselves in the less intimate (though same menu-ed) space below. It was not uncool – there was a glass-walled courtyard (not very well insulated) that had a vertical garden, which kept things fashionable, if a little chilly. But small plastic tables, industrial-looking cement pillars and an unforgiving grey floor that was probably something very arty like Dalsouple conspired to give the impression that we were eating in someone's garage."

"'I fancy gnocchi,' said L. 'I've been thinking about gnocchi all day.' And maybe this is where the disaster started, before she'd even ordered it, just with her high expectations. But, no, I don't think we can blame the innocent diner for this. Gnocchi with gorgonzola and treviso radicchio (£9) looked like regurgitated dog food. I am not saying that for effect. There is no hyperbole or mischief; the likeness was absolutely precise. It had the dun colour of indeterminate protein, the dented, knobbly shape of something partially digested, an unappetising sheen over the whole thing and two limp leaves of radicchio as a garnish. It was utterly repellent."

Bistro Bruno Loubet, London
Lisa Markwell, The Telegraph, 21 March

"From the vantage point of a corner table, with St John's Square behind me and the gently curved, raised ground-level room in front, I can see Loubet studiously inspecting every order at the pass. Staff in chambray shirts and jeans, with rough cotton aprons (do they really match the curtains? Now there's a first?) bustle around the room. The specials (whatever's fresh off the boats in Cornwall, and the veal cut of the day) are written in crayon on a distressed mirrored wall panel – an affecting, if not entirely effective, device. 

"But back to that menu. I am tempted by pressed seared tuna with lardo and green apple purée. Not that he'd remember, but Loubet and I met at a Slow Food festival in Turin many years ago, and spent a happy morning sampling lardo, which is heavenly. I'd never have let slivers of pure pig fat pass my lips unless implored by a chef, so I am in his debt for that alone."

The Canton Arms, Stockwell
Fay Maschler, Evening Standard, 18 March

"Menus which change for every meal are short and to the point about seasonality and vibrancy and bolstered by a couple of dishes — one usually a main course for sharing — written on a blackboard. Two of those that we tried were an excellent Aussie-leaning steak pie with rich, dark gravy and buttery shortcrust pastry — 'My favourite bit is the pastry,' said a waiter who I thought I remembered from the Anchor & Hope — and a French textbook cassoulet where the white beans, humming a garlicky tune, were precisely the right texture."

"The main course for one of roast 'Cob' chicken with sauce soubise and watercress was the only time a dish faltered. Onion sauce — the meaning of soubise — is lovely with lamb but in my view less so with chicken, however crisp the skin (which it was). Little chocolate pot topped with pouring cream at a little price (£3.60) was the ideal dessert in composition and quantity and crème fraîche tart with pink rhubarb was heaven."

Eddie Gilbert's, Ramsgate
Jay Rayner, The Observer, 21 March

"If you were merely to sit at a table in the upstairs restaurant at Eddie Gilbert's one lunchtime and attempt to understand what it was about from the food being sent out, you would easily get the wrong end of the stick. Here come plates the size of small sailing skiffs, bronzed planks of fried fish sticking off both ends and hemmed in by heaps of dripping-fried chips. Downstairs is a classy wet fish shop.

"Upstairs in the bare-brick and beamed dining room, the air is thick with the smell of rendered cow. We are therefore in a classy re-engineering of the working-class cafe: the simple things done well. Study one side of the menu and there is little to disabuse you of the notion. There are lists of fish to be grilled or fried (in vegetable oil, if you are too much of a wuss for dripping, or a GP). There are fishcakes and bowls of shell-on-prawns by the half pint, whitebait and, for those feeling truly adventurous, mussels with white wine and garlic."

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