Grace Dent's review of the year in restaurants 2013

A reluctant Grace Dent goes to Winter Wonderland to reflect on her year carousing around London’s restaurant scene
Grace Dent20 December 2013

I have always been slightly fearful of Winter Wonderland. I have witnessed the eggnog-soaked masses clomping from Fenchurch Street Station in Santa hats, dragging their screeching offspring in the direction of Hyde Park’s glühwein stalls and haunted houses. I have seen the ominous Twitter shout-outs from the cast of TOWIE bragging about free passes to the Giant Observation Wheel. No, no, no. In fact, my favourite Christmas Grouch phrase is ‘Dashing Through the NO’. If I want to observe Hyde Park from a great height, I’ll call Fred Sirieix, the manager at Galvin at Windows on the 28th floor of the Hilton, and he can speak French to me while I knock back gimlets on a high bar stool. ‘But there’s an ice kingdom!’ squeaked the ES team. ‘And you can go on a carousel! And there’s a weird karaoke show where blokes from Austria get up and sing Rihanna tunes in heavy accents and tons of Christmas office parties wearing headbands with antlers get up and dance!’ By this point I could sense resistance was futile and besides, a long evening at an (enforced) fun park, where the dining options appeared to be chiefly budget Bavarian sausages and burnt onions, would give me time to think about my Grace and Flavour 2013 round-up, because when all is said and done, writing this column is one of the greatest jobs in the world. If I died tomorrow, people could say, ‘Well, it was tragic she was squashed by a runaway rickshaw in Old Compton Street, but she did spend a large part of the year catapulting herself around the world’s greatest city, eating, drinking, carousing, gossiping and people-watching.’

Two of my favourite places this year are the fresh, high-end Indian revelation Gymkhana on Albemarle Street in Mayfair and Berners Tavern at The London Edition hotel in Fitz-rovia. It is testament to the Gymkhana chefs and their venison-filled naans and chargrilled lasooni wild tiger prawns that I first visited the place on a truly painful evening with a man I haven’t spoken to since and, nevertheless, consumed my finest three-course dinner of 2013. Affairs of the heart are forgettable, dinners like Gymkhana’s live on in one’s mind. I recommend both here and Berners to anyone asking for a place to impress these days. Birthdays, high days, trying-to-charm-someone’s-knickers-off days: Berners is the most beautiful room to dine in within the capital. Vast, high-ceilinged, festooned with art, brimming with pomp, Downton Abbey in a disco style. Every banquette has a buzz.

If I’m picking a top ten or so, then, after this, and in no particular order, comes a list of delicious discoveries. If you can secure a table at small but beautiful Middle Eastern meze haven Honey & Co on Warren Street, W1, then grab it with both hands. Or maybe turn up at the window, press your nose against it and hope that husband-and-wife team Itamar and Sarit will take pity on you. This is Israeli food influenced by the roots of the entire region; it’s a little bit Jewish and a touch Algerian with a sprinkling of Morocco and echoes of Iraq.

I love winding up at Coya on Piccadilly for arroz nikkei (Chilean sea bass on a sticky rice, spicy porridge concoction) and Pisco Sours. Coya is very special and also slightly ignored by the press in favour of the Michelin star-winning Peruvian hit Lima. I tell people to go to Coya if someone else is paying, as £30 for a main course isn’t anything that should trouble one’s own credit card. Maybe the finest singular dinner I ate in London this entire year was one night in June, when I went to Tartufo in Cadogan Gardens, SW3, and ate three glorious courses of grilled Scottish scallops on fennel, black truffle risotto with demi-sel brown butter, wild rocket and lovage ravioli with flowered thyme and veal jus.

I still have a big soft spot for Balthazar in Covent Garden with its delightful bustle and old-school charm. Summer 2013 was when I brought back the big, brash 1980s Piña Colada as a suitable summer cocktail to order. Oh yes, I have my knockers (oh, quiet at the back) but believe me, everyone is happier once they’ve had a big glass of Club Tropicana-style rum.

Other tremendous nights of eating and carousing in London have been at Casse- Croûte in Bermondsey, which is a tiny French sensation brimming with Gallic charm, where I love the coq au vin — a rich, dark, decadent mess of bird, shallots and champignons. I must also mention Neil Rankin’s Smokehouse on Canonbury Road, N1, where I direct anyone with a carnivorous streak.

I send everyone with a parent or out-of-towner they need to pacify to Brasserie Chavot on Conduit Street, W1, for rack of lamb or baba au rhum with crème fraîche Chantilly. I slaver thinking about the short, thick slices of dark red, home-cured salmon with gravlax dressing. I can make my own mouth water by thinking of a ladle of finest mince schooshed across dripping toast at The Quality Chop House in Farringdon. It may have sat there for aeons, but new blood has made it an institution all over again.

Nowadays, if I’m not at any of the above places, I’ll be in the St John’s Tavern in Junction Road, N19, which is, for me, the 2013 king of remarkable pub food such as whitebait with devilled aïoli, and silver mullet with samphire. My favourite London downtime moments are afternoons frittered away laughing with friends and demolishing glasses of Pinot Noir and breaded haloumi with squash, beetroot and tomato, chilli and chive oil.

But it’s not all fun. No one wants to hear that being a food critic is sometimes awful — in fact, you’ll be greeted with a chorus of the world’s tiniest violins whenever you dare quibble that tonight’s trip to a far-flung postcode to eat a meal you don’t fancy, on a night you’re on deadline, and already have food poisoning from a restaurant three days back, is anything less than a totally awesome life experience. No one wants to hear this, so simply ignore this paragraph.

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The best thing is taking friends on review nights and letting them eat a bushtucker trial of bleakness while bathing in the sad, fearful gaze of a chef who knows his menu is terrible and his waiters are a liability. ‘We won’t… close the restaurant down, will we?’ friends say. ‘We’d feel terrible.’ ‘Did you like the food?’ I say. ‘No, it was shit! Inedible!’ they say. ‘OK,’ I say. ‘Well, if I don’t say that, then Londoners will waste their spare time here and be conned out of half their week’s salary and that’s your fault, too.’ ‘I can’t do that either!’ they moan. Similarly my office is littered with receipts from restaurants that are trying really hard, but still being very bland, and that I can’t quite bring myself to get excited about. There is no fun in getting stuck into a dinner that’s purely boring.

Here is a collection of restaurants I went to in 2013 that I will never set foot in again. Bo London, no. Gremio de Brixton: refused to pay for the food, ended up serving myself drinks as I was clearly invisible. A Wong: I needed a haircut by the time I got through that ‘taste of China’ menu. Galeto: I think we all remember my friend noticed your duck’s hearts dish had the texture of penis. Paesan: peasant food in Farringdon — no, go to Moro. Chotto Matte: like eating dinner in a 1993 Janet Street-Porter youth television set — I’d rather get a lovebite off DJ Normski than eat there again. The Keeper’s House: a cold room serving tiny portions of expensive gloop steeped in diners’ fury. This is my idea of hell. And let’s face it, if you read my columns, you’ll know hell is where I’m going. Happy Christmas.

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