Grace Dent reviews Noble Rot: Relentlessly, gaspingly good

Grace Dent is bowled over by this heroically good slow-burner 
Yesteryear dining room: Noble Rot resounds with maturity
Grace Dent12 December 2017

Ambience 5/5

Food 5/5

As 2016 totters to the finish line, I look back at my year circumnavigating the restaurant scene, reconfirming my belief that almost anywhere can create four weeks of buzz. It’s easy: simply find financial backing — there are fools needing parting from money everywhere — then, conjure up a vision. Possibly some old baloney inspired by loving your granny’s Aga, or fragrant upper middle-class family holidays of yore.

Open said restaurant employing a costly PR firm, then dispense dozens of complimentary meals to restaurant industry folk on their night off, who will be both giddy to be outside their own kitchen and desperate to create Instagram content via bathing in the white-hot glow of another restaurant’s hype. And there’s your four weeks. I make no apology for sounding cynical. If you want chipper, ask Jesy from Little Mix for foodie bon mots.

Did you know that quince, as well as mince, was one of the few foodstuffs that The Owl and The Pussycat took to sea in their beautiful pea-green boat? Perhaps not, but after three hours in Noble Rot, this is the sort of thing myself and my guest found fascinating

Instead, give me the slow-burner. The one-year-down-the-track spot still being muttered over in dewy-eyed manner. That place you still mean to get to, but keep putting off as maybe you don’t quite understand what it is: a wine specialist, a magazine editorial office, a tapas bar? I mean, what the hell is Noble Rot anyway? Well, it’s none of the above, but all of them, too. They do definitely put out a decent, hefty, lovingly pulled- together food-obsessed magazine. And dinner is definitely served, down a set of stairs in a proper, comfortable, yesteryear dining room with excellent service. In fact, better service than almost every fancy-pants 2016 opening I’ve wasted good Laura Mercier Primer on this year.

One thing the Noble Rot collective — yes I dropped the C word — definitely does is celebrate the art of grown-up wine-imbibing. My last bill there was an embarrassment of red-tooth provoking riches. A 2014 Fleurie. Yes please. A considerable amount of La Stoppa ‘Macchiona’. A glass of Marco De Bartoli. Actually two. I popped in at 8pm for a cheese plate and a quick gab and was still there at 11.30pm, picking away at a magnificent piece of quince tart. Did you know that quince, as well as mince, was one of the few foodstuffs that The Owl and The Pussycat took to sea in their beautiful pea-green boat? Perhaps not, but after three hours in Noble Rot, this is the sort of thing myself and my guest found fascinating.

One year ago, Noble Rot set out serving a relatively short seasonal British menu, featuring simple dishes with outrageously grandiose titles such as monkfish in oxidised 1998 Bâtard-Montrachet Grand Cru. In hindsight, that dish, albeit delicious, was sublime trolling on their part. It was the sort of dish of which mere mention will have you beaten soundly outside Primark, Doncaster. Today’s menu is more extensive, dreamy but accessible and relentlessly, gaspingly good: think Whitstable oysters, smoked eel in parsley sauce, plates of Ibérico Bellota and snails and Alsace bacon on duck-fat toast. Noble Rot resounds with maturity — you could take your uptight grandfather there — but also has a deep capacity for grandiose silliness. This is a place for the earnestly greedy, too. We ate an obscene oozy burrata with a sweet, blackened piece of squash and a scattering of hazelnuts atop, with a basket of fresh focaccia and sweet soda breads too wicked to put within arm’s reach. The most wondrous piece of braised Cornish turbot in a chive velouté appeared, then grilled lamb rump on a vivid bed of hispi cabbage. There was cheese: definitely a Comté, as pale blue and veiny as the skin under my eyes, in harsh light, the morning afterwards.

Noble Rot did not appear in a flash of over-the-top fawning. It was quietly great but slightly misunderstood, and then moved on to being heroically brilliant. In 2017, I am sure things will only get brighter and better.

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1/128

Noble Rot

1 Olives £3

1 Bread & butter £4

1 Ibérico Bellota £14

1 Burrata £9

2 Glasses of JL Dutraive Fleurie ‘Le Clos’ Vieilles Vignes 2014 £22

1 Lamb £20

1 Turbot £28

1 Cheese plate £11

1 Quince tart £8

2 Glasses of Marco De Bartoli Marsala ‘Vigna la Miccia’ £32

2 Glasses of La Stoppa ‘Macchiona’ 2007 £22

Total £173

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