Restaurants
James Pembroke
The average price of a three-course dinner in the capital including half a bottle of house wine and the tip is £50.51. So says Harden’s London Restaurant Guide. Before we all start dusting down our recipe books, we need to remember that this average is heavily raised by hedge-funder restaurants like the River Café, which at £100 a head was voted the most overpriced restaurant, and that there are still lots of bargains, especially when one opts for Asian and Middle Eastern food. Tom Hodgkinson and Victoria Hull of The Idler magazine gave us the most delicious Abyssinian dinner at the Red Sea in Shepherd’s Bush, where we shared the Special Kitfo, a highly spiced and delicious chopped beef dish with two types of cheese, for £9.50 a head. The next day, as large as Ed Balls, we headed off to Beaune, stopping en route at the world’s most beautiful restaurant, Le Train Bleu at the Gare de Lyon. Although the prices are at River Café levels, the sight of those magnificent fin de siècle wall paintings of Antibes and the rest of the Cote d’azur make it worth every penny. The French clearly like to stock up before boarding whereas we Brits are too frantic to spend time in a station. However, not thirty yards from Kew Bridge station I discovered the Glasshouse restaurant, which is part of the same group as La Trompette and Chez Bruce. This elegant Michelin-star restaurant offers a threecourse weekday lunch for £32.50, thus bringing it under the Harden’s average if you share a bottle of Greco di Tufo. It is set at the top of one of the prettiest station parades in England and just 200 yards from the Botanic Gardens. The food and service are fresh and Franglais. I’ll be going back the next Friday I can spare.
En route to the Quiet American’s daughter’s 21st in their schloss near Hastings, we stopped for lunch at the Kentish Hare near Tunbridge Wells, where we had the best pub lunch I have enjoyed
outside London in years. It was full to bursting with locals, joyous in the knowledge that they would have lost their local boozer were it not for the efforts of that outstanding entrepreneur and philanthropist Sir Keith Mills. Needless to say, this local hero left school without any qualifications. Hearing of the pub’s closure, he hired the Cornish Tanner brothers to create a pub restaurant. And what a success they’ve made of it. All our dishes were irresistible and had to be shared: fried duck egg on pancake with smoked ham, crab gratin, smoked haddock risotto and pork belly. The staff are so proud that their enthusiasm makes the atmosphere soar. And the chef Bobby Brown has proved once and for all that we Brits appreciate excellent food in our pubs and will no longer accept the pings of the microwave.
Red Sea Restaurant, 382 Uxbridge Road, London W12 7LL; redsearestaurant.co.uk; 020 8749 6888.
The Glasshouse, 14 Station Parade, Kew, TW9 3PZ; www.glasshouserestaurant.co.uk; 020 8940 6777.
Kentish Hare, 95 Bidborough Ridge, Bidborough, Royal Tunbridge Wells, TN3 0XB; www.thekentishhare.com; 01892 525709. Three-course set menu for £22 Tues–sat lunch and Tues–thurs dinner.