What the critics say: Redhook, The Fish Shed…

27th September 2010, 11:10am

A round-up of the latest reviews

Tinello, London
Zoe Williams, The Telegraph, 27 September

"J started with a goat's cheese salad with honey and walnuts (£6.50). The cheese was great – chalky in the middle, almost sticky at the edges, tangy and intense, like the atmosphere. Underneath, a herby and fresh salad was married to the dressing with such subtlety that the flavour of lamb's lettuce was as distinctive and powerful as that of the honey. J loved it, and also remarked that the whole place feels way more expensive than it is. I had the squid, potato and chilli stew (£7), and again the amazing thing was not that it was good (in the end, how do you get a lovely fresh bit of squid and stew it so that it's not good?); rather, the flavours were all so balanced that the chilli was no more distinct than the chickpea. 

"I went for a more traditional secondo piatto, the roast pork loin with Swiss chard and mustard sauce (£16). The mustard was muted but all the more appealing for it. The Swiss chard had been very finely diced and cooked in so much delicious fat that it had technically ceased to be a vegetable, but I mean that in the most admiring way possible. The pork was just so perfectly Italian – braised, naturally, so bursting with moisture and flavour and possibility. Why do we insist on roasting pork? Is it just for the crackling? This had none, and it just underlined its deliciousness that you wouldn't have wished for any."

La Lanterna, Yorkshire
Christopher Hirst, The Independent, 25 September

"My wife's main course of risotto cooked with orange and Raschera cheese (a Piedmontese speciality somewhat like Fontina) was a masterly rendition; the separate grains of rice retained a good bite, while slender parings of orange zest cut the richness of the cheese. My ox cheek cooked in red wine for seven hours was a perfect definition of that mouth-watering word 'braise'. Tender, rich and flaking, it is the perfect cold-weather dish. 

"As I mopped up the last of a generous plateful, Alessio emerged from the kitchen to whisk up zabaglione on a spirit stove for a neighbouring diner. The strands of yolky foam he scooped into a dessert bowl were a powerful temptation but I had a slight sensation of coming apart at the seams. Dessert seemed impossible – until we were presented with a second recitation. From a list of 13 homemade ice-creams, we plumped for saffron, hazelnut, dark chocolate with chilli and black pudding. Very grown-up ices, they provided intense, true flavours wrapped up in sweet, chilly creaminess. I thought the chilli had been omitted from the chocolate until it hit – pow! – in a startling aftertaste. The black pudding, which I thought I'd misheard, turned out to be exactly that. Tiny fragments in a beige mix exactly conveyed its singular flavour."

Redhook, London
Jay Rayner, The Observer, 26 September

"It was the steaks that were the real problem. If you are going to run a steak house, serve proper bloody steaks cut to proper sizes. The 300gm ribeye was a nice enough piece of meat but cut far too thin. And it would have helped if they'd brought the shallot and garlic butter I'd ordered rather than the claggy peppercorn sauce I didn't. More depressing still was the New York strip which should be, as the name suggests, a 2in-thick strip of meat. This was just a small, flat sirloin. The New York strip comes from the sirloin, but it is not the same thing."

"Service by our sweet, enthusiastic waitress was without fault. It was when the bill was handed over to a male member of staff that things fell apart. Generally when people have problems with the bill, it is about getting things taken off that they didn't have; with me it was about getting things put on that I did – a blatant attempt to make the place look cheaper than it actually is. I had to send the bill back three times. Clumsy, unnecessary, and a waste of my time. Much like Redhook itself."

The Fish Shed, Devon
John Lanchester, The Guardian, 25 September

"The Fish Shed has this simple and wonderful policy: it sells only fish caught that day and landed in Lyme Bay. (It sells wet fish, too, so as well as being a brilliant chippie, it's also a brilliant fish shop.) This obviously means that the daily offer will vary. I had fancied the lobster, which they sometimes have on, but – waaah! – not that day. They did have dover sole and it was beautiful, filleted and grilled simply. It's a hard dish to beat.

"But you can't go to a chippie and not have fried fish. The haddock was as good as it gets, the flesh moist and dense, the batter satisfyingly thick but also crunchy and light. Overall, it had the perfect texture and density. I have a pet theory that English batter of this sort gave the Portuguese the idea, which they (this part is historically attested) gave to the Japanese in the form of tempura. With batter this good, that theory seems plausible. A younger member of our family had battered sausages, and they were awesome, too, in their fun-food, don't-try-this-at-home way."

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