The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - The Telegraph Magazine
Michael Deacon steps aboard the London Shell Co barge
This week, Michael Deacon reveals what really floats his boat. Food photographs by Mark Whitfield
Ilove barges. They’re romantic. More romantic than, say, yachts. Yachts are loud, preening, insecure, their decks all too often bobbing with the basted moobs of reality-TV judges and disgraced businessmen, crisping in the Barbadian sun. They are the multimillionaire’s midlife crisis, the oligarch’s fertility symbol, the seafaring equivalent of a jewelled codpiece. They are, in a literal sense, show-boats.
Barges, by contrast, are modest, unassuming, endearingly awkward; their ugliness and their limitations only make them the more likeable. They speak to the instinctive British regard for plainness, and distrust of ostentation; they ’re so chin-up, mustn’t-grumble, might-brighten-up-later. A cruise down some swanky foreign riviera? No, thanks. We’re quite happy enough, puttering along a canal in the drizzle with a flask of stewed tea. Look, dear, how pretty! A shoal of plastic bags.
Yes, that’s what I call romantic. Of course, you may not entirely trust my judgment in these matters, given that on this page two
months ago I wrote a heartfelt paean to the beauty of power-station chimneys. But, if you doubt me, visit this week’s restaurant. Visit it if you don’t doubt me, too. Because it really is lovely, and I think just about anyone – aside, perhaps, from an oligarch miffed about my opening paragraph – would enjoy it.
London Shell Co, which opened full-time last month after a spell as a pop-up, is a restaurant on a barge that serves dinner while dawdling pleasantly along the Regent’s Canal in London. It’s run by a brother and sister, Harry and Leah Lobek, who decided on a barge chiefly because restaurant rents in London are so extortionate. Frankly, I’m glad they are, because if they weren’t, Harry and Leah might have come up with something ordinary. Good, no doubt, but ordinary. Instead, they’ve launched something special.
I went on a crisp winter’s night, a Friday. Their vessel, the Prince Regent, sat waiting in Little Venice, just above Paddington Station. First thought: what a great idea for a restaurant. Second thought: what a terrible idea for a restaurant. The boat was so small: the tables squeezed claustrophobically together, couples bunched up into fours or more, and the kitchen barely big enough to boil an egg. How on earth were they going to manage?
On the other hand: it was cutely intimate, dinner on a boat would make a nice change, and they’d just handed me a welcome-aboard drink. I love going to restaurants, but it’s rare that I get such a tingle of boyish excitement about it.
Before we set sail, Harry made an announcement. ‘As we’re on a boat, the journey will entail a very, very small amount of peril,’ he said. ‘But don’t worry – the canal is only a metre deep, so if we do sink, you can always just stand up and walk out.’
Everyone aboard was to be given the same dinner, with most of the courses fish-based. (The catch, in case you’re wondering, was from the sea, not the canal. No beer-battered shopping trolley or rat marinière.)
First, a snack of angel-hair fries: a fun, salty tangle of stringy crisps, like an edible version of Worzel Gummidge’s hair. Next, Carlingford oysters – deliciously slurpy. We were now nosing softly along the canal. I looked out at the black, untroubled water, and above it the dangling branches of trees, the pinched flats, the snug houses, and the watchful lights of London, as they all drifted silently by.
Next, an acidly sharp pickled herring. Not so much a palate cleanser, said my friend, as a disinfectant. But it was followed by a dreamy whipped goat’s curd, just meltingly delicious, with beetroot, sorrel and hazelnuts.
The Prince Regent pootled on. We passed moored barges, sleeping gardens, a couple walking the towpath. Floating in the water was the occasional piece of litter – a takeaway coffee cup enjoying a late-night dip – but somehow it only added to the jumbled oddball charm of the voyage. Beauty and grime, romance and bathos, all viewed from our cosily bibulous tub.
Next we ate a cod fillet, velvet-smooth and soft as hot butter, served with braised cannellini beans, smoked pork and cavolo nero. Finally, pudding: a warm, comforting wodge of apple and pear crumble with Pomona cream.
We were sailing back the way we had come; I hadn’t even noticed where we’d turned. Usually I keep dutiful notes, but here, frankly, I forgot. I was busy enjoying myself. And, to judge from the merrily rippling hubbub, so was everyone else. This is not a restaurant of stark silences and scraping cutlery; it’s fun, relaxed, lightly giddy, with a cheerful sense of shared adventure, however gentle that adventure be.
I so want London Shell Co to be a hit. From its prettily illustrated hand-drawn menus to its goofily punning name, it’s so sweet and friendly and unassuming, and as eager to please as a puppy. If it were a film, it would be a lovable, quirky indie taking on the jaded, fat-budgeted schlockbusters. For anyone who eats out a lot and itches for something different, it’s a treat.
God bless the Prince Regent, and all who dine in her.
I love going to restaurants, but it’s rare that I get such a tingle of boyish excitement about it