THE PERSEVERANCE: PEARL OF THE QUARTER

When I was resting between jobs (you'll probably remember my role as Pale in The Tinsley Players production of Lanford Wilson's Burn This) I kept a spreadsheet of restaurants which were due to open.

Exhibiting slightly alarming tendencies of the anorak variety (most men have them but usually keep them firmly under control) I would scour the trade rags and job sites for news about new restaurants and count down the days to when they finally opened. I would pitch up for a meal - barely giving the paint on the doors a chance to dry - usually to the bemusement of the staff.

Things change. Now with increased use of social media by PRs and Chefs most places are known about well before they open. Heston Blumenthal’s Dinner is a good example. It’s also made it pretty difficult to find those undiscovered gems that made all the list-keeping so worthwhile.

Or so I thought until recently when a tipoff from someone I follow on Twitter had me running to Google Maps (RIP A to Z). My contact had mentioned a pub which now had new owners. The lineage of the staff pointed to the Anchor and Hope in Waterloo. I'd got a similar tip from the same person about the rather wonderful Canton Arms in Stockwell so I knew it would be a lead worth following up.

The Perseverance is situated in a quiet road in an odd little area north of the Marylebone Road and just round the corner from the charming Marylebone Station, an area which has thankfully yet to be designated ‘a village’.

The pub has been stripped down, cleaned up and given a lick of paint to produce a casually elegant space which is dominated by a large horseshoe bar. At the moment there’s just a few tables to eat at but there are plans to open a 40 cover dining room on the first floor.

If you're a fan of bling or any sort of see-and-be-seen, er, scene then The Perseverance may not be for you. It's got a relaxed feel that I liked but the emphasis is definitely on the things that matter: food and drink. I'll eat a lot of meals in the forthcoming year but I like to think the ones I’ve had here will be up there with the best.

The menu was one of those that you look at and wish one’s capacity to eat wasn’t being slowly diminished year by year – I genuinely would have been happy eating any of the dishes on it (apart from the soup which I’m sure is terrific but which I hardly ever order in a restaurant).

Chef Justin Aubrey’s food is not of the shouty type that blasts the taste buds with over-reduced sauces and flavours that clamour for attention and which leave you feeling a little ill. No, this is deceptively simple stuff but made with good ingredients and a fine technique to give a surprisingly refined result.

For a starter the Monkfish Liver is probably as interesting and delicious a dish as you can get in London at the moment. Two decent-sized lobes of Monkfish Liver had been lightly browned in butter. They were soft with a delicate flavour of offal and of the sea. A sort of piscine Foie Gras. It had been paired with a salad of Parsley, Capes and Shallot to add a burst of piquancy.

A bowl of steamed Clams had the heady aroma of the bivalves best buddies: garlic and lemon. They were fresh and meaty and left a small puddle of shellfish broth into which I had to dunk chunks of the good homemade bread.

Saddle of Rabbit had been boned and stuffed with its own offal and some greens. The whole had been rolled and covered in bacon and sliced. It was moist and tender with that faint taste of game that rabbit has but with an offal hit. It came with a little jug of a creamy mustard sauce and a small dish of a rich Celeriac Gratin.

Another main course was an individual Wellington. Fillet of Bambi was covered with a mushroom duxelles in the classic manner and wrapped in excellent pastry. A slick of jus, some watercress and excellent red cabbage made for a fine dish to say goodbye to January to. This is seasonal food without making a song and dance about it.

Good pastry was also in evidence in the puds as well. Over a couple of visits there’s been a tart on the menu and the Lemon one particularly stood out in the memory with it’s crumbly pastry and light, zesty lemon cream. Three scoops of a Salty Butter Caramel Ice Cream had proper texture and just the right amount of bitter caramel taste. A similar number of scoops of a tart Granny Smith sorbet would be a good choice if you’d overindulged during the rest of the meal (maybe too much of the marvellous bread); a cup of their good Coffee with a Grappa would serve the same purpose.

The wine list has been intelligently put together with several natural wines available – if that floats your boat – but I was guided towards a terrific Beaujolais which seemed like it would go with anything. Like the food the prices seem pretty reasonable to me and if you don’t want to splash out on a bottle there’s plenty available by the glass or two sizes of pot.

When I’ve visited good, independent operations I’ve always bemoaned the fact that there aren’t more of them around especially in the central parts of the capital. With chains increasingly cluttering up our high streets the hope that we could have similar joints on every corner begins to look like a pipe dream. Places like The Perseverance make me think there’s still hope. Budding restaurateurs please take note or better yet pay them a visit, they’re nice people.

WATERLOO & CITY: DERAILED EN ROUTE

We had already eaten quite a few of them when a busboy returned and whisked away a plate of very decent roasted Brussel sprouts with bacon with the words “sorry, these were meant for another table”

It was not just the fact that we had actually ordered this side dish (although we never did get our own) that surprised us, more that although the dish was now less the requisite number of sprouts by about four, it was plonked on a neighbouring table without a word. They tucked in none the wiser as everyone at our table sat, mouths agape as our germs were shared around by the helpful staff member.

It was the low point of a meal that had started out rather well.

The oddly named Waterloo & City (for those who don’t know, it is named after one of the more unpleasant sections of the London Tube System- also known as The Drain) is a new restaurant in Culver City, whose kitchen headed up by British chef, Brendan Collins. It styles itself as a British style gastropub. It is nothing of the sort of course, but the tag works to describe a lively, attractive dining room offering hearty food in a noisy but fun atmosphere. We had chosen the location as a venue for Sybil’s birthday celebrations and the eight of us were soon seated and drinking on a well-priced wine from Puglia while we looked at the menu.

The starters were terrific. My own choice was an outstanding combination of grilled quail, topped with a perfectly fried Quail egg and sitting on a mound of chopped livers on toast. Other dishes included a passable cheese plate, a ceviche of yellowtail, courgette flowers stuffed with shrimp and, best of all, a large platter of excellent house made terrines and pates served with chutneys and pickled vegetables. Sybil’s dish of Tuna Tartare never made it to the table and we asked for it to be knocked off the bill, which our server did without a murmur.

So far, so good, but it was when the main courses arrived that the meal began to hurtle downhill at an alarming rate. A take on Nobu’s Black Cod with a Miso crust was undercooked to the point of rawness on the bottom, a dish of short rib ravioli was tough and flavourless and most alarmingly of all, my own choice of honey glazed pork shank was inedible.

I am not sure if our very helpful young server understood my joke when I said “I wanted Old Spot, not cold spot” but he took the dish away with a look to suggest that it was not the first time it had happened that night. I knew that it would not be the last, as my friend, Brent was busy raising an eyebrow over his own portion of the same dish as I made my complaint. The shanks had obviously been pre-prepared in advance to allow them to be finished to order during service. That’s fine, however, I suspect that they had just popped them in the microwave and given them a quick glaze before bringing them to the table. The accompanying fries too shrieked of pre-prep and tasted as if they had been left too long at the pass. They were stale and tough and left almost untouched by a table that would normally have been battling over them to the last one.

Neither Brent nor I particularly fancied a second stab at the pork shank so switched, in his case to a main course sized portion of that lovely quail dish and in my case to an admirable attempt at a Shepherd’s Pie.

It was at this point that the great Brussel sprout debacle occurred. We pondered on warning the other table that they were eating other people’s brassica, but decided in the end that they were probably happier in their ignorance. We did tell our main server and he rolled his eyes once more. I am guessing this was not the first time that a plate of vegetables had done the rounds in Waterloo & City’s opening weeks.

By way of recompense, our two shared desserts were on the house. A plate of cold doughnuts was not much to write home about, but the Sticky Toffee Pudding was spot on, dense, gooey and almost enough to take away the horror of the example served to me a few weeks ago at Gorbals.

The final bill, with all its deductions, came to about $60 a head and included a well deserved tip for our server who kept up a remarkable level of good humour despite having to field problems all night.

That good humour, along with the lively atmosphere and the quality of our starters is enough to make me think I might return again. Perhaps this time to sit at the bar for one of the beers on their extensive list and definitely some more of those superb terrines and pates. They need to iron out the major flaws soon however or I fear that their name could become even more relevant as all their considerable investment goes down The Drain.

THE MALL TAVERN: I AM A FUGITIVE FROM A CHAIN GANG II

The Prawn Cocktail Years have a lot to answer for, although if Simon Hopkinson and Lindsey Bareham hadn’t written their retro-cooking classic then as sure as Dib Dabs are Dib Dabs somebody else would have.

Yes - there’s a bit of a retro revival going on and it ain’t pretty. Fondues are the dish de nos jours and it’s easier to find a gourmet Sausage Roll than a decent pint of ale in a pub these days. The kids are just lapping it up.

And why shouldn’t they? As HS’s book Eating For Britain (buy it now!) shows there’s some great dishes from our past that are worth reviving. The trouble is the current trend manifests itself as putting a crappy, dried-up Scotch Egg on the menu. Wither all the creativity? And more importantly, could it be found in West London?

The Mall Tavern is yet another take on the modern gastropub, part of a chain owned by the Perritt Brothers. In the way that better examples of the genre are, it didn’t look like a chain gaff and according to the blurb had a good chef at the helm. There were rather too many French people there on my visit but the pub can’t help being in Notting Hill. Maybe as another retro measure they could put up a sign saying No Dogs, No Work Shoes and definitely No French.

But I digress. Massively. One of the USPs of the pub appears to be the range of snacks. Anything that gets people to eat a little something whilst drinking is obviously a good thing but the food on offer has to be up to snuff otherwise you’d be better off with a pack of peanuts.

I'm don't know where Cauliflower Fritters comes in the pantheon of great British bar snacks and I'm not sure they're a suitable match for a pint of Old Hooky but both were very good in their own way. The beer was well-kept and only slightly-annoyingly served in a jug (hey, groovy).

The fritters were small florets that had been blanched but still left with a bit of a bite and lightly battered. Served with a curried mayonnaise dip they were like a little veggie nod in the direction of our subcontinental, imperial past.

Lamb Scrumpets - another new one on me - were rissoles of meat that had been breaded and deep fried. Larry was pretty fatty but since the frying was good they weren’t de trop. I also liked Dorset Meatballs – little porky spheres in a tomato sauce with lots of fennel in the mix. More Old Country than West Country.

Asparagus should be really good at this time of the year but the specimens I had here weren’t. Chopping up the thicker bits and mixing them with shallots was a good idea but none of it had much of that lovely asparagus taste. Disappointing.

I am a sucker for Chicken Kiev although I have no idea when I last had one. Probably in a restaurant called La Cazuela in Fuengirola c1990 which served “The best Chicken Kiev on the Costa del Sol”. I think it came with kiwi fruit, but in those days everything came with kiwi fruit.

Chicken Kiev should be a fairly dense piece of fowl with garlicky, buttery juices just bursting to get out and splatter you and your beige slacks. This one opened with a wimper.

The Scotch Egg shape, while aesthetically pleasing didn’t work with the result that the chicken meat didn’t envelope the sauce properly. The crisp coating was good but it had come away from the chicken. And the filling wasn’t great with large unchopped bits of garlic strewn hither and thither.

A hash brown was more a sort of thick Rosti. A bit heavy going it was the wrong sort of starch to accompany an already rich plateful. Coleslaw done well is a fine dish but this one was poor – a mixture of finely shredded vegetables does not a slaw make.

Chips tasted ok but would have been better crisped up a bit. The kitchen must have had a heavy Friday night because they’d mislaid their vegetable peeler.

A decent sweet rescued things somewhat. A couple of big slabs of Neapolitan Ice Cream gave me a real À la recherche du temps perdu moment.

In spite of an indifferent main course the relaxed surroundings, good beer, a bit of original thinking in the snack department and smiley efficient service contributed to me having a pleasant time at The Mall Tavern.

It was only later, whilst indulging in a bout of post-meal analysis (Dos Hermanos do it all the time), that I felt a little short-changed. The kitchen can obviously cook but in a dining room where initially I was the only one eating it should have been better.

I’ve talked about this before but sometimes the difference between the merely competent and the excellent is the love and the effort the kitchen puts into the food. Details are important. If you’re not going to slip into the morass of gastropubs you’ve got to keep your standards up. Gastros that fancy themselves a cut above please take note.