Eating in the neighbourhood
We should all have a favourite neighbourhood restaurant, no matter what our locality. These are usually places you treat more like a pub than restaurant, with a crowd of regulars that are greeted or avoided in equal numbers. For years, mine was 192, a tiny two floor wine bar restaurant in Notting Hill, opened in the early Eighties by Alastair Little. Apart from its brilliant wine list, which offered Yquem by the half bottle and a range of obscure Pomerols and Fronsacs, the menu changed twice daily as did the ideal location – up for lunch and down for dinner. A touch of glamour was added by the occasional visits by locals such as David Hockney, Nicholas Roeg, Martin Amis or Helen Fielding, but the core clients were louche media and creative types. One of the most regular fixtures at the bar once pointed to a neighbour and remarked “See that chap over there who looks like a shit who owns the place, well he is and he does”. It was actually owned by a handful of people and most of them were charming. On its closure nearly twenty years later, one observer claimed it should have been preserved as a sort of socio-cultural-alcoholic World Heritage site. Time moved on, as did the early chefs, who included Rose Gray, later of River Café fame and Rowley Leigh, whose Kensington Place subsumed 192’s role as the preferred boho destination for West London. Shortly before Kensington Place changed ownership a decade ago, a new restaurant opened even closer to home called The Ledbury.
I suppose the peak time for restaurant going is when you are in your mid twenties to early thirties, when cash is not in short supply and before marriage or commitment. It’s that time when if you are too late to find a room in a foreign hotel within your budget, you inevitably go for the more expensive rather than the cheaper, option. The Ledbury was certainly a cut above the other locals, but not excessively, though I confess, my visits are not on a weekly basis. It was founded by Nigel Platts-Martin, the most discerning restaurateur in London – at that point, he also owned The Square, then my favoured grand restaurant. Brett Graham, an Australian then in his mid-twenties, had spent four years there and been chosen to open The Ledbury, which he now part owns. Curiously, there was nothing especially exceptional about those early meals, rather in the way I never imagined in the mid-Seventies that Raymond Blanc was going places when I first ate at his restaurant next to Oxfam on the Banbury Road in North Oxford.
Within three years though, word went around how brilliant Brett’s food was… wine lovers also flocked there for lunch, as he was happy to cook elaborate yet complementary meals to go with great wines. I had oenophile friends from abroad who would stay at our house because they were dining and then lunching the next day there. Like 192, the menu changed twice daily, though regular dishes appeared such as crapaudine, a rather suggestive sausage shaped beetroot baked in artist’s clay or his superb flame grilled mackerel or Roe Deer baked in Douglas Fir and served with smoked bone marrow. Brett has an obsession with game of all sorts and regularly hunts venison, grouse and pheasants at the leading shoots in Britain. He has taken this interest to a further stage, importing some from the white deer herd owned by the Danish Royal family and now has more than 70. They are kept at Aynhoe Park in Oxfordshire, along with two other herds – 120 Fallow Deer from Petworth in Sussex plus 100 Sika deer, which are kept at the Duke of Buccleuch’s estate at Boughton House in Northamptonshire.
Such is his obsession with quality that he is experimenting with at least 10 different types of grass to feed them, as well as using restaurant waste to supplement their diet. The herds at both estates are part of a plan to repopulate their deer parks for aesthetic reasons as much as anything else though he has started serving the Sika at the Ledbury and ultimately will offer the others too. The last time I saw Brett in the street, he had just returned from shooting in Berkshire, rootled around in his bag and presented me with three fresh deer hearts along with detailed advice on the best way to prepare and cook them. His enthusiasm and sense of excitement when he describes a new dish or the tweaking of an earlier one is infectious, which adds to the gaiety of the experience.
But a great restaurant is not just measured by its chef’s passions – it has to be a seamless combination of three things – food and wine, ambiance and service. When it comes to this trinity, it surpasses its rivals in all three. There are plenty of wines listed for less than £50 a bottle while at the top end, the margins are usually less than double. There is something completely friendly and unrushed about the atmosphere – young couples on a meaningful date, curious Chinese, regulars plus a scattering of chefs from the elsewhere trying it out for the first time. There are always a couple of tables still occupied by five in the afternoon. I also recall eating at the Ledbury and hearing that a certain chef from a one star Michelin had just been in and two weeks later dining at his place and discovering several blatant copies of Brett dishes on his set menu. How do you describe the cuisine? Innovative Anglo-Continental? Invariably, the essential ingredients of the dishes are usually identifiable and have the intensity and purity that only a great chef can muster. One memorable dish in a recent meal was Grilled River Teign Oyster with smoked butter and sea purslane. They were monsters, somewhere around seven inches long with an intense maritime flavour and the texture of foie gras. Or perfectly pink breasts of roast grouse with girolles and lemon thyme – every dish has that freshness and execution that takes an immense amount of trouble and care to achieve.
A former pub, the single floor dining area hasn’t changed since opening – a spacious blending of columns and white-clothed tables for four with the kitchen in the basement. Most of the leading chefs around the globe have been there, including Alain Ducasse, who was dumbfounded by how tiny the kitchen is. During the riots in 2011, a group of local yobs stormed the restaurant and attempted to rob the clients. They were foiled midway when the kitchen staff stormed the restaurant brandishing cleavers and knives. Boris Johnson, the then mayor, was so impressed he visited the Ledbury the following day, although unlike David Cameron, he had never eaten there. He assumed the clientele wore lots of bling, but was told that in fact that was more the looter’s style. Brett refused to close and barricade the place the following night and kept open without any further disturbances.
The Ledbury has certainly won a clutch of awards, including several years at number one on the National Restaurant Awards, two Michelin stars and until recently the highest UK restaurant on the Worlds 50 Best list. However, the one accolade it has yet to receive is that third Michelin star, which is as curious as it is unjust. Any serious diner will tell you that the cuisine is far more creative and thrilling than what is served at Ducasse at the Dorchester, the Waterside Inn or Gordon Ramsay yet until now, Michelin hasn’t budged. Perhaps under new management in Paris, things might change this year, as there has been a tendency in the last France guide to show more appreciation for younger, innovative chefs.
If your budget does not run to the set menu of £125, there is a four-course lunch for £80, which might sound expensive unless you have seen the prices of similar places in Paris. It is common to pay nearly double that for a meagre three-course offering and treble that for dinner.
In the past year, the Roux family have opened Caractère, which is actually now my closest neighbourhood restaurant. Although the cuisine to me is superior to its flagship, Le Gavroche, it could never win my heart, as it has a printed menu, which remains unchanged for months at a time. I may now only go to the Ledbury a couple of times a year rather than every couple of months, but there is still nothing this side of the Channel that raises my spirits so high before arriving and then fulfils them for the ensuing four or five hours.