Monthly Archives: May 2012

Slums, prostitutes and French people in London

. Drinking, Eating . , , , , , , , , , , ,

France is the world’s fifth largest economy. At the turn of the last century Argentina was the world’s fifth largest economy. By the 1900′s Argentina was already living beyond its means, but it took several decades for it to become a basket case. France is sadly heading the same way. Their people refuse to work harder, adapt to change or recognise that socialism is daft.

Whenever Paris is sacked, either by revolutionaries or Germans, their best and brightest decamp to London. Such is the case now as waves of French entrepreneurs, financiers and anybody with ambition flood London. Paris is left with a bunch of Gauloises smoking libertines.

In the meantime, the French schools in London are massively oversubscribed and the more than 500,000 French in London are spilling out of the Gallic quarter in South Kensington. London real estate, already booming following the post Arab Spring exodus, is doing stratospherically well.

I like the French. What is there not to like about great food, fabulous wine and beautiful women? I am happy that many of my French friends will be living closer to me.

So where do the French eat and drink when they get to London? Martini Mandate decided to check out continental style food and drink in London. The African Queen and I chose three favourites, the Wolseley in St James’s, the Delaunay in the Aldwych and Les Deux Salons off the Strand.  She is both african and titled, but like most of her people, the African Queen prefers to shop on the continent and is most at home in the cafes of Paris.  We were at various points accompanied by a crazy mathematician and a warlord.

The gorgeous Wolseley 6/80 with the famous lit-up badge on the radiator

The car would have been the star inside the gorgeous interior of the Wolseley showroom

Wolseley Motors was the largest auto manufacturer in Britain through the 1920′s. Its legacy lives on today in the Isuzu Car Company of Japan (founded originally as a joint venture) and in the Wolseley Restaurant in London. The Wolseley restaurant is the site of what was once the Wolseley Motor Company’s London showroom. The large room with its high ceilings is airy and masculine with original black lacquer and natural marble. The restaurant probably makes more money than the car company ever did.

The Wolseley is like a club for people who don’t like to belong to clubs. You can get a reservation here (and they have tables for walk in guests), but regulars have priority. The artist Lucian Freud famously dined here at the same table every day. When he died they decorated his regular table with a black tablecloth and a single candle. It was a classy and understated statement from a restaurant that is all about classy understatement. The menu is large and mittel-european; schnitzels, cakes and coupes, chicken soup, chopped liver. The food is good. Not spectacular, but reliably good.  This is a cafe and cafe’s are not known for cocktails.  I like to drink Americanos at cafes on the basis that “in cafés you have to drink the least offensive of the musical comedy drinks that go with them.” (James Bond in Ian Fleming’s A View to a Kill). The cocktail menu is limited but the waiters are superb and the bartender will accommodate any reasonable request.  Just make sure your request for an Americano (Campari, red vermouth and soda) doesn’t get you a weak black coffee.

Cashing in on its success, the Wolseley opened a sister restaurant called the Delaunay in the Aldwych, presumably named after the French artist. This is a handsome, masculine room – it doesn’t have the vaulted ceilings of the Wolseley, but it has critical mass and presence.  Like the Wolseley, the Delaunay is an all-day operation but here the inspiration from the grand cafés of Vienna, Zurich and Budapest is more apparent in the dishes. There is a forceful mittel-European slant, with two of the menu sections entitled wieners (including a New York hot dog) and schnitzels. The African Queen tried a chicken schnizel. It was perfect, as was my bockwurst, but these dishes rarely challenge a kitchen.  This is basic, reasonably priced cafe food.  There is a good selection of wine by the glass, half litre carafe or bottle. My Old Fashioned was made the old fashioned way with the bar tender painstakingly crushing sugar cubes with water and bitters, creating a nicely muddled paste before adding bourbon.  Its all very competent and reliable.

The elegant interior at the Delaunay

While the Wolseley is in undeniably posh St James’s, the Delaunay is in the Aldwych, which is a less distinctive territory sandwiched between the diamond dealers of Holborn and the tourists in Covent Garden and the theatre district.  The clientele too is more diverse than at the Wolseley, consisting of people who couldn’t get reservations at the Wolseley and the inevitable gaggle of braying Sloanes .  The latter are easily recognised by their excessing air kissing and the common greeting of “darling, where have you BEEN?” as if they were long separated freedom fighters, hardened by loss, stumbling into the same fox hole in Kandahar. Most likely they last met on a shopping spree in Milan.

Les Deux Salons is off the Strand, in what was one of London’s most infamous rookeries.  These were the slums of Victorian London, mazes of narrow streets and alleyways, home to thieves and prostitutes;  the dark heart of Dickensian London. The Wolseley and Delaunay have cafe menus,  Les Deux Salons’ menu has more traditional restaurant dishes on it than brasserie ones.  The decor is familiar; polished brass rails, mosaic marbled floors, dark wood, frosted glass mirrors, red booths, ball shaped lights – it’s brasserie cliche on a grand scale.  It’s a darker space than the others, with a decidedly inter-war French glamour.  We shared a charcuterie plate.  I ordered a Negroni.  The story goes that the Negroni was invented by a bar tender in Florence in 1919 when Count Camillo Negroni wanted something stronger than his normal Americano.  The bar tender replaced the soda in the Americano with gin.  The version at Les Deux Salon is decent, but there are others (for example the folks at Dabbous) who have  turned this drink into an art form.

All three restaurants are confidently presented by successful restauranteurs.  Chris Corbin and Jeremy King, the folks behind the Wolseley and the Delaunay, made Le Caprice and the Ivy into the brands they are today.  Les Deux Salons is the brainchild of Will Smith and Anthony Demetre of Michelin starred Arbutus and Wild Honey.  I will continue to frequent them all – as will my newly arrived French friends. These restaurants are not havens for cocktails, but what they make, they make competently.  The overall experience will leave you feeling well fed and watered. Bon Appetite!

Further Reading

Blogger reviews of the Wolseley by The Date Guy and Gin & Crumpets. Reviews of the Delaunay by Twelve Point Five Percent and London Stuff. Reviews of Les Deux Salons by A Girl Has to Eat and Get Forked.

The Wolseley on Urbanspoon

The Delaunay on Urbanspoon

Les Deux Salons on Urbanspoon

Sweet Things Gone Dirty and Drinking Whiskey at Noon

. Drinking, Eating . , , , , , , , , , ,

Carnaby Street is most often associated with the swinging sixties when bands like the Beatles, the Who, the Small Faces and the Rolling Stones worked, played and socialized in the area.  Edgy fashion boutiques served both mods and hippies whilst underground music clubs like the Roaring Twenties and the iconic Marquee Club played host to the new sound of sixties London.  A 1966 Time Magazine cover cemented Carnaby Street as the centre of Swinging London.

It’s still a pretty cool neighborhood, although gentrified and sanitised for the most part.  There are still plenty of edgy boutiques and some decent places for food and drink.  I visited recently at lunch time to check out the Pitt Cue Company’s claim to serving the best barbecue in London.  They also specialise in Bourbon and Rye based cocktails.  I took the Irish Lass with me on the (correct) assumption that it wouldn’t take much to convince her to start drinking whiskey at noon.

Pitt Cue is tiny.  There is a small bar area with a few stools.  The main restaurant is in the basement with room for 30 covers – seated intimately.  The decor is spartan – white paint and bare light bulbs.  You come here for the food and the drink.  Pitt Cue started as a trailer serving hot American style BBQ under the Hungerford Bridge last summer – it was a sensation.  This year they opened a restaurant.  The foodie blogs and twitterati have been buzzing about this place.  The no reservations policy meant we queued outside from about 11:30 for the doors to open at noon.  The Lingerie Collective next door picked up some passing trade.

The menu is straightforward; it’s about barbecued meat.  The woman at the next table announced that she was vegetarian.  The waitress was struggling to find veggie options on the menu (there are none).  Trying to be helpful I leaned over and pointed out that the animals we were eating were also vegetarian.  I received a well aimed kick under the table and decided to order a drink.

Looking for the familiar I started with a Hair of the Pig; a Bloody Mary made with bourbon.  This was very spicy, with an immediate sharp zing, followed by a gentle, warming, slow burn.  It’s a bit like the gentle warmth you get after the initial burn of splashing aftershave on freshly shaved cheeks.

We cooled down with a Cider Sour which was an unqualified hit.  Made with dry apple cider, lemonade and rye whiskey this is a drink I’ll be serving at home this summer.  It is refreshing, with the apple adding a sour undercurrent to the flavour, the cider adding a gentle effervescence and the rye adding bite.

The infamous Pickle Back

We ate the best barbecue in London, hands down.  We eschewed the ribs and went for pulled pork, ox cheek, chicken wings, chipotle slaw, crispy cabbage and crispy shiitake mushrooms.   I will gladly have the pulled pork as my last meal on earth.  It is warmly moist and shot through with flavour.  The ox cheek was similarly wonderful, with the thicker, slightly gelatinous consistency of the cheek soaking in and retaining the flavour of the barbecue spices. The crispy shiitake mushrooms deserve a special mention.  Pickled and lightly breaded, they are slightly sweet and have the consistency of meat.  Perhaps the vegetarian should have stayed.

Of course we  couldn’t leave Pitt Cue without ordering the infamous Pickle Back; a shot of home made pickle juice followed by a shot of rye.  It sounds like a revolting wager but this unlikely combination really does taste amazing.   The Pickle Back is reminiscent of a dirty martini made with rye whisky; the pickle juice adding a briny flavour.  This is sweet pickle juice so there is an unexpected complexity to the combination.  They do their own pickling at Pitt Cue so I wouldn’t suggest trying this combination at home with commercially bought pickles.

Staying on the whiskey and pickle juice theme I also tried a Big Mac ‘n’ Rye; bourbon, pickle juice and sweet vermouth served with bitters and an orange slice.  The flavour here could be described as a sweet manhattan gone dirty  (I knew a girl like that once, but that’s another story).   This cocktail has a bitter aftertaste that might take some getting used to.

There were some desserts on offer but we needed coffee and decided to shift venues.  Faces lit up in the hope of a table as the line of people at the bar clocked our departure.  The Carnaby Street area does good coffee and we popped into the SpeakEasy nearby for a Flat White.  For my American readers, this is a coffee drink consisting of a shot of espresso and micro foam (steamed milk from the bottom of a pitcher).  It is less milky than a latte and has less foam than a cappuccino.  The flat white was invented in New Zealand which is a country near Australia.  Kiwi fruit and hobbits come from New Zealand.

The SpeakEasy has a young, hip and cheerful staff with a pared down aesthetic, all painted cement floors and polished concrete counter tops.  The coffee is very good.

You’re not going to find Swinging London, ’60s psychedelia and the Rolling Stones in Carnaby Street.   The seedy underground clubs are mostly gone, the Rolling Stones are in their 60′s, and Hoxton and Shoreditch is where today’s hipsters hang out.  You will find some cutting edge retail shops however, and one damned fine barbecue joint.

Further Reading

Blogger reviews of the Pitt Cue Company from Humbugs & Handbags and Love 2 Feed

Blogger reviews of the SpeakEasy from the Cafe Hunter and From Coffee with Love

Pitt Cue Co on Urbanspoon