What the experts recommend
Darby’s 3 Viaduct Gardens, London SW11 (020-7537 3111)
Darby’s in Vauxhall is a cracking place to have up your sleeve, says Grace Dent in The Guardian. Big groups of friends, client dinners, date nights, whatever: everyone will surely like this high-ceilinged “IrishAmerican eating palace”, which serves a “fine yet wholly unbefuddling menu” in classy but relaxed surroundings. It was recently opened by Robin and Sarah Gill, known for The Dairy and Sorella in nearby Clapham, and “well-respected among food types for genuine, heartfelt, hard-earned reasons”. But while The Dairy is “fancy-modern” and Sorella is “tipsyItalian”, Darby’s is a “culinary bear hug” of upmarket comfort food (and named after Robin’s father, the late Irish jazz musician Earl Darby Gill). Come here for Dooncastle oysters and Guinness; lobster brioche roll with roe mayo; grilled Dexter sirloin; or Secret Smokehouse salmon and cultured cream. A “decadent, airy cloud” of chicken liver mousse is served with “unforgettable” Jerusalem artichoke and truffle jam. Monkfish fillet in seaweed butter is heroically good; crisp, beef-fat potatoes are slices of heaven. And, to finish, the Tia Maria affogato left me “jubilant”.
About £40 a head. Octopus Havelet Bay, St Peter Port, Guernsey (01481-722400)
I should warn you that the service at Octopus can be slow, going on chaotic, says Jay Rayner in The Observer. The cab driver who took me was aware of its reputation for great food but sometimes shambolic service, and it is true: “waiters have to be flagged down like racing taxis as they attempt to skim, wild-eyed, past us”. But if you are in Guernsey, and don’t mind a bit of chaos, then do give Octopus a whirl. We started with excellent, savoury-sweet scallop “beards” (the frilly skirts that surround the main meat), floured and deep-fried and served with punchy rouille. Then rock oysters, grilled under a burnished champagne sabayon with spinach and seaweed, “all cream and acidity and surf and hurrah”. The main event was a vast “hot seafood pot” – a very decent value (£49) “glorious” sharing stew of crab and lobster, plus mussels, prawns, scallops and baby octopus. It was “completely engrossing”, could easily have fed three people and – for me at least – it was well worth waiting for. Snacks from
£3, mains from £10.
Bob Bob Cité Leadenhall Building, 122 Leadenhall Street, London EC3 (020-3928 6600)
The original Bob Bob Ricard in Soho, with its caviar-heavy menu and a press-forchampagne button at every table, opened its doors just as the global financial crash was unfolding in the autumn of 2008, says Giles Coren in The Times. Yet rather than going under sharpish, instead it survived, prospered and soon bedded down into a Soho favourite. So presumably Bob Bob’s backers know exactly what they are doing in opening an even more luxurious sister branch in the City – reputed to have cost £25m to kit out in all its shameless opulence – just as “austerity has wrung us dry”, “Brexit is grinding us into dust” and “robotics are predicted to kill off the human race by Christmas”. Either way, Bob Bob Cité will need to pull in an awful lot of “Krug-swilling party boys” to make the investment pay. In the meantime, we mere mortals can enjoy chef Eric Chavot’s thrilling cooking. I enjoyed a “superb” onion soup, an elegant steak tartare, plus a delicious, rich, tarragony chicken pie with hispi. The puds were stunners: an “île
flottante for the ages” and a delightfully alcoholic baba au rhum. Price: “if you’re asking you don’t want to know”.