The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - The Telegraph Magazine
Table talk
William Sitwell finds near perfection at Harlequin
EYES CLOSED, the sun beating down. You’re on a sunbed somewhere toasty, chatting with friends, pausing occasionally to summon up the effort to find the glass beside you that’s filled with something cool and fizzy.
One of my favourite games to play during such sybaritic moments is to imagine your own restaurant. You can conceive of the location, décor, wines and menu. Those lying around the pool can argue about the relative merits of their establishment. It is the perfect fantasy pastime. Because you can chat about the glassware and crockery, the clothes the staff might wear, the wine list and the chairs, safe in the knowledge that you will never be so foolish as to attempt to make the dream a reality.
Because those discussions – unless ruined by someone who actually has a restaurant – do not take into consideration horrible realities such as the rising cost of food, scarcity of employees, business rates, squeezed margins and health and safety.
My perfect place has around 30 tables. Sometimes I cook a little, sometimes I serve. I might clear a plate or two if I feel like it. Or I might just sit and eat with friends. There’s a simple little wine list and, crucially, a set, no-choice menu. I’m not sure where it is. But when the sun shines there are tables outside and when it’s raining there’s lamb on the menu and good red wine.
And fortunately I have just witnessed a miracle. For my dreamy neighbourhood restaurant has just opened.
There are 26 covers, a modest wine list, a set menu, and they give you the bill on a scrap of paper.
It’s called Harlequin and its arrival, like a good school or a new Waitrose opening, will doubtless lift property prices in the Wandsworth Bridge Road area of London. The chef is James Erasmus and while his surname brings butterflies to my stomach and a feeling of schoolboy dread, his kitchen work is nothing but soothing. With South African roots and cheffing experience at some of London’s smartest casual suc- cesses (The Harwood Arms; The Ledbury), he crafts a menu of deft and charming balance. It changes monthly but you’ll get five courses for an astonishingly generous £40. The food reminds me of Lupins, another near-perfect little gaff near London Bridge. Each dish is substantial enough not to be in the venal tasting-menu bracket and because you all get a plate there’s none of this sharing malarkey.
We started with their home-made focaccia with ‘biltong carpaccio’, the latter more seasoned Springbok rugby player than Neapolitan ballet dancer, and well seasoned too. I appreciated the sleight of hand in a dish of cod brought on shore at Looe in Cornwall. My approach to fish is a bit like my childish fruit habit. I mean, I buy fruit and put it in the fruit bowl, but then snack on cheese and biscuits. Perhaps assuming there might be juveniles in the house, the chef cooks the cod with bits of smoked ham hock. I leapt on it, scoffing the accompanying soft white beans and thinking that in this way I could be a conniving pescatarian.
We had a duck course also. Roasted breasts of mallard came with a date or two – deeply sweeter, so much cleverer than orange – and some pumpkin covered in dukkha (a mix of nuts, seeds and seasoning). The latter a perfect textural union on a plate of glorious harmony.
Pudding was a Seville-orange malva; a South African take on sticky toffee pudding. It was so good that as I spooned it down I felt unfaithful, treasonous almost to the good old British version.
There was a time when my local was Arlecchino in Notting Hill, a cheerful trattoria. Translated into English, Harlequin is I think a more beautiful word, and placed in Wandsworth it’s certainly a quietly nimble, stylish and exquisite restaurant.
Nicely dimly lit, homely wooden tables, pastel-coloured rustic earthenware plates, low-cut water glasses and waiters eager and keen but not overbearing. This place has its heart in the right place and its eye on the locals. But beat a path to its door, wherever you live. Revel in the lack of choice (there’s also a veggie menu) and let them feed you in return for really not very much money. This is not a fist-pumping, star-tilting joint, but the start of a well-executed strategy by a young team who know what they’re doing. They are risking those margins with their pricing strategy and I hope they are rewarded.
However you have shaped your restaurant around the pool, my little dream is up-and-running, and I don’t even have to work there.
Like a good school or a new Waitrose, Harlequin will doubtless lift property prices in the area