Aw shucks, Bentley’s easy charm shows it really cares

Every now and then someone in the media decides to name a city as the restaurant capital of the world and, to be honest, it’s not terribly helpful. Front runners tend to include New York, San Sebastián, Tokyo, Rome, Barcelona, Paris, Lyon, Bologna and, occasionally, London. Which strikes me as odd as I reckon the most exciting city in which to eat out is the capital of our nearest neighbour.

It has the further advantage of being close, which is one of the reasons that I eat out more often in London than anywhere else apart from Dublin.

I always find somewhere new too. Last week, I discovered the gloriously old-fashioned Daquise, next to South Kensington Tube station, a Polish restaurant little changed since it opened in 1947. Marinated beetroot with horseradish, followed by veal schnitzel were lovely and remarkably good value.

A return to Noble Rot on Lamb’s Conduit Street saw me eating whipped cod’s roe with radishes and beef bavette with lentils and mustard. All this for €18 as the set lunch, although the wine selection is far too tempting to ignore. (There’s now a second outlet in Soho in what was once The Gay Hussar.)

A return to Bentley’s, over two years after my last visit, was a must. In 2005, on a wet night, I found myself in the back of a taxi with Richard Corrigan, who was running Lindsay House in Soho to great acclaim (including a Michelin star). As we nudged through the traffic on Piccadilly, he pointed down Swallow Street at a wonderfully oldfashioned neon sign that showed an oyster surmounted by the word ‘Bentley’s’. ‘I’ve just bought that,’ he told me.

Established in 1916, by the time Corrigan took over, having been head chef there a decade earlier, it was a dearly loved restaurant but decidedly shabby. He quickly raised it to new heights.

I often find myself sitting at the oyster bar, having a few of those bivalves before, maybe, a dressed Cornish crab. It’s absolutely consistent and utterly brilliant. You meet interesting people too. I had a casual conversation with a man in jeans and a T-shirt who, I later discovered, controlled the world’s supply of uranium. I suspect he still does.

Bentley’s is all about refusing to muck about with brilliant raw materials. A few inspired riffs aside, the food is simple, classic, beautifully presented and certainly not cheap. It can’t be – I gasped when I heard how much the rent and rates cost.

Fresh produce of this calibre never comes cheap. Bentley’s doesn’t compromise and my lunch was a triumph. I started with half a dozen oysters: three natives from West Mersea (€9.30 each) and three rock oysters from Carlingford Loch (€4.40). Delicious as the Carlingford rocks were, anointed with a little shallot vinaigrette, they were rather put in the shade by the natives: denser, more minerally, complex and fabulous. These I ate with a small squeeze of lemon juice and a twist of black pepper as I was once advised

CEREMONY AND FORMALITY COMBINED EFFORTLESSLY WITH WARM HOSPITALITY

to by Corrigan himself. I can still see the look of horror on his face as, in my ignorance, I reached for the vinaigrette. Natives like this are simply too good for that.

Then to lobster spaghetti with tomato and basil (€45) where perfectly al dente pasta was bathed in an intense, almost sweet combination of tomato, cream and butter, studded with chunks of lobster, including a shelled claw. Lobster has a certain sweetness and the rich tomato-based sauce seemed particularly apt.

Alongside I had a cleverly composed salad of pink and white chicory with pomegranate seeds, slices of lightly spiced poached pear and walnuts. This was an exercise in contrasts: between the different forms of sweetness and the refreshingly bitter crunch of the chicory.

To finish, there was an individual Irish apple tart – I think we’re the only people in the world to call a pastrylidded pie a tart – which was brilliantly sharp, the very essence of the Bramley apple, with sweetness and vanilla spice supplied by very rich and very proper ice-cream (€16).

Normally I would finish with some Crozier Blue from Tipperary that is soaked in the sweet Banyuls wine from the South of France, with a small glass of the same. But I conceded defeat at this stage and settled for a perfect and very short espresso to propel me towards the Tube station at Green Park.

There’s nowhere quite like Bentley’s. I like the venerable J Sheekey on St Martin’s Court near Leicester Square for seafood but it doesn’t hit the heights of Bentley’s, where there is a certain ceremony and formality combined effortlessly with warm hospitality. It’s simply a place where you feel cared for.

The late Poet Laureate John Betjeman once said he wanted to be in the haberdashery department of Peter Jones, the department store on Sloane Square, when the end of the world comes. ‘I can’t imagine anything unpleasant happening there,’ he said.

I feel the same about Bentley’s. As the world grows ever more unsettled, there is great comfort in such a restaurant.