Lack of eastern promise at Dockmaster's House

10 April 2012

Oh, those wily bankers. They probably don’t even spend their ill-gotten gains in restaurants, preferring instead to huddle together in boardrooms catered for by nice girls who have done a course at Leith’s.

The move, which could be detected last year, of restaurateurs going east towards new sites in the City and Docklands, seems now, how shall we say, not a sensible one. When masters of the universe are lying low and expense accounts are slashed or burnt, who is there to patronise fancy places?

Last Monday’s driving rain — incessant, intrusive, let’s not bother to go out rain — may have been one factor in the scarcity of fat cats, or many cats at all, at Dockmaster’s House, the most recent venture from Iqbal Wahab, the chap who launched Cinnamon Club in Westminster and Roast in Borough Market.

We walked through two empty dining spaces in the converted Georgian building — an historic architectural assembly that stands out like a healthy thumb in the drab pecuniary surroundings — before coming across some other punters in a sort of conservatory construction that makes you marvel at someone’s mastery of dealings with English Heritage.

The back wall is bare brick, and in front of floor-to-ceiling panes of glass at the outside edge tall angled standard lamps loom over tables. "Might be useful for root canal work," said one of my companions, rather surprisingly since he is not a dentist. Now dentists are probably still doing all right. People go on getting toothache. I get another kind of ache when I spot certain phrases in restaurant publicity. Dishes "given a contemporary twist" is one.

A twist that was certainly unexpected was finding a pat of unsalted butter served with the breads, one of which was a white roll flavoured with pickled mango. I have to admit that mixing chopped mango chutney into a yeast dough is an interesting idea but rolls and butter seem a peculiar prelude to an Indian meal. They were followed by an offering of mashed potato balls fried in gram flour batter served with dribbles of coriander and tamarind purées. At an audition for canapés they would have been rejected for being hefty and dull.

Three of us covered a lot of bases in the first course by ordering Mumbai chat platter, kebab platter and charcoal- grilled saffron prawns with clove-smoked haddock kedgeree. Any fan of puri spheres filled with crisp and crunchy, sweet and tart would be satisfied with the Bombay street snacks.

The kebab platter included prawn, chicken, lamb leg and lamb chop, arguably a fair exchange for £11.50. The smoked haddock kedgeree was a stodgy affair, not a patch on a similar dish I remember made by Vivek Singh at Cinnamon Kitchen.

At £18.50 each, the dishes of Kerela [sic] seafood stew and Chettinad breast of guinea fowl had a lot to live up to, particularly as vegetable side dishes are priced at £5.50 and a selection of, presumably Indian, breads is £6. To put it succinctly, they were not worth it. The word "gloopy" crept into the recipient’s description of his seafood stew. Pistachio crème brûlée underlined the wisdom of not messing with the classic manifestation of the dish.

Caramelised carrot cake, a sort of halvah served in a brandy-snap basket, was the better destination for nuts and the souky flavour of cardamom. Our delightful French waiter, Christophe, turned out to be the highlight of the meal.

Event organisers might be interested to know that private dining rooms and bars occupy parts of the three floors of Dockmaster’s House. Private diners might want to go for lunch.

Dockmasters House
Hertsmere Road, London, E14 8JJ

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