What the critics say: Wallace & Co, Bingham Restaurant…

1st February 2010, 12:13pm

A round-up of the latest reviews

Dean Street Townhouse, London
Giles Coren, The Times, 30 January

"Richard wanted oysters but I was on the spirits so vetoed those (I'm the consummate host, me) and anyway I am on my Back off on Meat (Boom!) jag just now, so I called for the separate vegetarian menu and gave the table impeccable duck eggs on wild mushrooms and toasted brioche; beautiful macaroni cheese (more gleaming Seventies revisitation); baked spinach and Pennard Ridge tart and a beetroot and goat's cheese thing that has not stuck in the mind (as goat's cheese and beetroot things so rarely do)."

"So, ten out of ten, you might think. But, in fact, no. The dish I was looking forward to most of all, the caramelised sweetbreads on a Lincolnshire onion tart, arrived quite horribly over-salted. Like, top-fell-off-the-salt-cellar over-salted. Enough to kill seven or eight toddlers. Inedible. And I am very, very glad about that. Because, frankly, I have been so unequivocally enthusiastic about everything Soho House founder Nick Jones has done recently that I've been screaming for him to screw up, just so I can say so, and show how unbiased and unbiddable I am. And now he has. It was so salty I nearly puked. Nearly had to go to hospital. Nearly emigrated. So get a grip on your damned salt cellars, Mr Jones, okay?"

The Ledbury in Notting Hill, London
Jasper Gerard, The Telegraph, 29 January

"The Ledbury's plush dining room rattles with money like a Harrods deposit box. But if the clinical white is icily urban, the menu is warmly rural. 'There's lots of baking,' my friend says, noticing celeriac baked in ash, beetroot in clay and deer in hay."

"My friend goes à la carte while I tackle the set lunch (£22.50 for two courses, an extra fiver for three) which, unusually for the genre, looks ambitious and appetising. I start with celeriac baked in ash with purslane, hazelnuts and wild boar. A heavenly aroma announces the arrival of a salted crust, housing what could be a pie, on a roughly carved board. With circus ceremony this is sliced in two, revealing – celeriac. 

"Has this humble vegetable ever made such an entrance? Perhaps it is star-struck, for it rushes back to the kitchen. Minutes later it returns for act two, chopped up. The ash extenuates its smoky flavours but the celeriac is the mere supporting cast for our star, the wildly irresistible boar. What a restaurant of contrasts: theatrical yet strangely domestic, smooth yet earthy."

Lutyens, London
Zoe Williams, The Telegraph, 29 January

"There's absolutely nothing wrong with Lutyens, Terence Conran's latest restaurant, and yet I walked in and felt underwhelmed. It has marvellous lighting, and my companion, J, could really have been anybody – Jackie Onassis, Angelina Jolie, anyone. It has the crisp, white feel of a well-heeled 1940s restaurant, austerity-proof, the kind of place the daughter of a good family might choose to split up with an insufficient young gentleman. There's absolutely nothing wrong, but for God's sake this is the old Reuters building; it should pulse with booze and adventurous spirit, not this elegant cleanliness."

"The mains reminded me of the upmarket fish restaurant Scott's. J's did, anyway: a fantastically but justly expensive Dover sole (£29.50), which the waitress filleted at the table so fast and deftly they should make room for her in the Fantastic Four (if only there were more call for a fish-filleting superpower). 'I hate it when they're slow, so it's cold when they give it to you,' J said, and we both nodded, pondering how fortunate we were to have avoided that calamity. Otherwise, it was perfect, white, delicate, as uneventful as snow. What on earth am I talking about?"

The Bingham Restaurant, Surrey
John Walsh, The Independent, 30 January

"The silk curtains are drawn across the river view, so instead you inspect the loveliness of the décor in the bar and dining rooms. They're heavily designed in textures that suggest opulence, but threaten suffocation. The décor, cushions and patterned carpet are all pale gold, while recessed ceiling lights fight with giant chandeliers and discreet side lights to create a dim and churchy atmosphere. The bar is wonderfully well-stocked and appealing (and will be fabulous in summer) but in our dining room, all the tables were pushed against the walls and windows, leaving an empty open space in the middle of the carpet across which the waiting staff could have played French cricket or danced the tango with ease. 

"From the start, though, the food lifted the spirits. The focaccio bread impacted with olives was delicious. A bonne bouche of parmesan custard with butternut squash mousse was a complex little treat, tickled by crispy ginger on the top and touched with a hint of curry down below. The chef, Shay Cooper, paid his dues at the Vineyard in Newbury and picked up three AA rosettes at Olga Polizzi's Hotel Endsleigh in Devon: he is a whizz at modern British cooking. The menu features quail, artichokes, pig's trotters, hedgehog mushrooms, razor clams and sweetbreads. You can find foreign accents in this part of Surrey – a vacherin mousse, some ricotta gnocchi, foie gras, orange polenta – but you know they're tolerated only for bringing heady new flavours to the local provender."

Wallace & Co, London
Fay Maschler, Evening Standard, 28 January

"The escabeche was properly done — the fish first fried and then marinated in vinaigrette — but the flesh was a bit creaky, lacking the suppleness and maybe, God knows, the Omega 3 you expect from an oily species. A homemade Scotch egg is no longer a thing of wonder. Every gastropub is knee-deep in them, so much so that we start to expect and demand soft centres. At Wallace & Co, the yolk was hard-boiled but the sausage meat coated with the deep crunch of breadcrumbs from a loaf not a packet was high quality and a whisper of warmth indicated fairly recent deep-frying.

"Imam bayeldi is described on the menu as 'spiced Turkish aubergine dish', no reference to the translation of the imam (priest) fainting either from rapture or because of the extravagant use of olive oil. An overdose of tomatoes meant that an imam visiting Putney would probably have stayed firmly on his feet but the vegetarian mish-mash had lively spicing. The frittata was more of a depressed soufflé and would have been useful for lagging pipes."

Hunter 486, London
David Sexton, Evening Standard, 28 January

"All our courses were fine. There's an 'all-day grazing menu' here, none too challenging in concept, with Caesar salad, fish pie, steak and chips, and pizzas. But the delivery, under head chef Shane Pearson, formerly at the Electric Brasserie, is polished and professional.

"From the fixed menu (two courses, £15.50, three £19.50, plus service), a double-baked blue cheese soufflé was dense and eggy with a good cheesy flavour, served with some pleasant caramelised beetroot and some even sweeter beetroot purée, plus a cress salad, perked up with sesame. A mound of this same salad also appeared alongside a terrine of foie gras and guinea-fowl (£9.50), a generous portion, in big rustic chunks, keeping the tastes well apart. Both these starters were picturesquely presented on a piece of slate, rather than a plate, with some arty smearing involved too."

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