What the experts recommend: London openings
Campania & Jones 23 Ezra Street, London E2 (020-7613 0015)
Occupying a fine late-victorian building in Hoxton, this Italian is a “ramshackle charmer that makes others’ attempts at artless, rustic chic look like a Hilton executive suite”, says Marina O’loughlin in The Guardian. At lunch, you can get two courses with a glass of wine for £15, and “everything is as fresh and salty and real as a saunter down the Spaccanapoli” in Naples. My vegetarian pal was “in heaven” with handmade tortelli, scattered with spears of al dente asparagus and a purée of verdant spring vegetables. “Ditto with stout, blowsy” gnudi (literally, “nakeds”: the filling of stuffed pasta without the pasta) bathed in butter, Parmesan and leaves of crisped sage. There are wide pappardelle, “somewhat overdressed in a swamp of ripe veal and beef ragù, but I guess generosity shouldn’t be seen as a flaw”. Mains (of rib-eye, bream, and polpettone, or “big meatballs”) are elaborate but just as beguiling. And there’s a “vast slab of fluffy, boozy tiramisu for dessert. Well, of course there is.” About £40 a head, plus drinks.
Rick Stein, Barnes Tideway Yard, 125 Mortlake High Street, London SW14 (020-8878 9462)
I took my son Freddy, a seven-year-old “seafood obsessive”, with me to try out Rick Stein’s first London restaurant, overlooking the Thames in Barnes, says Tom Parker Bowles in The Mail on Sunday. He reckoned it was the best lunch he’d ever had. While I wouldn’t go that far, it is “now firmly on my list of best places to eat seafood in London. No fuss or nonsense, just reliable, consistent and easy to love. Rather like the great man himself.” We start with fat chunks of mackerel, “still possessing the sweetness of the truly fresh”, mixed with cubes of tart, vinegared rhubarb, whole peppercorns and curls of orange peel. It’s a dish that “fills the mouth with the sprightly joys of spring, simple, yet beautifully put together”. Lacklustre sashimi is a disappointment, but fish soup is “rich and sonorous”. And even the smaller £25 portion of fruits de mer is “lavish”: razor clams, scallops, langoustines, winkles, cockles, whelks, mussels and a whole crab. “They’re fresh cooked, sweet and undulled by the ice’s grasp. Four thumbs up from Freddy.” Lunch for two, about £70.
Henrietta 14-15 Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, London WC2 (020-3794 5314)
One of the cocktails at this relaxed and friendly hotel restaurant is called Language, Truth and Logic, says Fay Maschler in the London Evening Standard. Anywhere that names a drink after philosopher A.J. Ayer’s seminal exposition of the verification principle would, I am certain, be all right by me – but it helps that the food is so damn good. A flatbread to share – soft, pliable but slightly charred – is “heaped with freshly picked crab lavished with garlic butter and topped with ‘coastal’ herbs”. My companion, a chef, identifies dill, oyster leaf and sea aster. “I just cram it in.” A bowl of spring vegetables and flowers with wild garlic and Graceburn cheese is a “balm to the senses”. Quail is unusually succulent (for quail). There is the odd misfire (under-seasoned beef tartare; bland taramasalata), but the desserts – cherry blossom ice cream, and an inspired raspberry puff with sweet-andsour rose petals – “reassert eminence”. Meal for two, with wine, about £130.