VINOTECA MARYLEBONE – A LITTLE WINE? EEEEEEEEE.....

Somebody asked me the other day why I hadn’t written a post for a while.

Well, there was Christmas and New Year when many places closed down for the holidays. There were the visits to old favourites that wouldn’t necessarily have blog-worthiness, the right blogicity if you will; but mainly it was down to that ennui with the London dining scene that strikes me de temps en temps.

Sure, there have been shedloads of new openings and the law of averages probably guarantees that some of them might have been adequate (almost), but merely reading the offerings of the majority just sent my feet to sleep.

Looky-likey, me-too menus are the last refuge of the lazy restaurateur. I mean, I like charcuterie as much as the next diner but it’s hardly the world’s most onerous task to buy some decent cured meat and cut it. As HS once said to the chef at a famous Wandsworth restaurant "Well sourced and sliced". In most cases very, very thinly indeed.

Luckily on a recent visit to the brand spanking new outpost of the rather wonderful and very successful Vinoteca I didn’t have to endure the heart-attack inducing excitement of Beer-Battered Fish and Chips or Rib Eye Steak with faux Triple-cooked chips on the menu.

To be honest I was a little worried about my prospective meal. Dos Hermanos have been frequent visitors to the original in Clerkenwell since it opened and despite a few changes in personnel it has kept the quality of its food and wine and the warmth of its welcome at pleasingly high levels.

The owners have always talked about not rolling out the 'concept' but happily in the case of this new branch they've managed to succeed with that difficult second restaurant.

Hidden away in a side street off the Edgware Road the setup at the new gaff will be familiar to anyone who's visited the mothership. Open kitchen, bar and a dining area with some tables so restricted of width my legs wouldn't fit. I spent most of the meal with my limbs akimbo (and if that ain't enough to put you off your Sauvignon Blanc nothing is).

Toytown tables aside, the experience at Vinoteca W1 continues to be a good one. Staff are friendly and enthusiastic, there's a great selection of wines by the glass and the range of food is interesting and prepared with care.

Pork Cracklings came as long strips which were dense and crisp. They gave my choppers a good workout but in an era where a lot of food has become very soft this is a good thing.

A big bowl of mussels and clams was notable for a particularly good broth that was devoid of the grit that plagues lesser examples and had me wishing their good bread wasn't served in such parsimonious portions. The mussels and clams were sweet and fresh which is all you could ask of bivalves.

Crubeens are made from Pigs Trotter which have been cooked, shredded, breaded and deep-fried. A serving of three of these blighters were excellent: hot and porky and with a satisfying crunch. A chunky sauce gribiche and a few leaves made a starter that would make grander places look very silly indeed. Intelligent wine pairings too: the suggested Sicilian white to go with this dish just made things better.

When I go for a meal I appreciate the little twists that show there’s someone with a brain and imagination in the kitchen. A big hunk of roasted Brill came on top of some decent greens with a sauce made from minced anchovy and chilli oil.

Sounds de trop, right? Wrong. Although it pushed the envelope of what would be a reasonable match for a non-oily fish it worked very, very well adding a hot, savoury (oh ok, umami) dimension to the dish.

Only a meanie would complain that the (unadvertised) potatoes were a prosaic and unnecessary addition and that the fish could have done with a little less cooking…so I won’t.

Pudding was a little game of let's investigate geometric solids with a Sphere of Vanilla Ice Cream atop a cube of Sticky Toffee Pudding. Light, not too sweet, it did exactly what it said on the tin.

I liked the Coffee too and in place of the usual Grappa I had a rather lovely, chocolately, dusky, Diplomático Reserva Exclusiva to help the chocolate truffles down and which had me walking down the road about a foot above the pavement, happy with the start to the new blogging year.

Oh and Vinoteca also do charcuterie. But I won’t hold that against them.

28-50: RESTRICTED LATITUDE

While nearly all restaurant reviewers and bloggers will write about the food they have eaten, very little will be written, if at all, about the wine (or beer) they have drank. It may be that they don’t drink, although I haven’t come across that many tea-total foodies. Sometimes the food doesn’t match that well with wine: Dim Sum only seems right with some Pu’er tea. Much of the time the selection of wine on offer is so limited and the markups so brutal that it’s a case of damage limitation – hence the ever popular second-from-bottom of the wine list strategy.

There’s group of people who regularly visit restaurants but for whom the food is of secondary interest. The wine enthusiast (or blogger) will talk about their meal as if it was constructed around the choice of tipple. The meal will stand or fall by the quality of the wine and not the food, indeed there’s a sense of palpable unease when they try to write about the food at all. Similary for food bloggers who know very little about wine (er, that’ll be me then).

Although I thought this strange at first, in fact it makes perfect sense. I suspect that there’s much more knowable about wine than there is about restaurants which can be very reliant on the right combination of ingredients, cooking, service etc.

Opened by the people behind Texture, Xavier Rousset and Agnar Sverrison, 28-50 Wine Workshop and Kitchen is, as you might expect from the name, a place where the focus is definitely on the wine. As I’m a bit of a naif when it comes to such things I canvassed the opinion of friend and bon viveur Gary Marshall who when I showed him the wine list just said one word: “Volnay”. Good enough for me.

Set in a basement at the Fleet Street end of Fetter Lane 28-50 is an exceptionally pleasant space in which to eat and drink. Bare brick walls, solid wooden tables, a bit of noodly jazz playing unobtrusively and, praise be, decent lighting. Although I assume the latter is for the benfit of the oenophiles.

There’s a shedload of wines to choose from by the taster (75ml), glass (150ml), carafe (250ml) and bottle. However, my eye was drawn towards the Winemaker of the Month selection for a little vertical tasting (hey, I know all the jargon) of three Rieslings from Domaine Trimbach.

To be honest I found the first two, a ‘08 and ‘04 a little lightweight for my palate with very little length. The ’97 (far left glass) was richer, more complex and with greater length than the other two. I know when I’m really enjoying a wine because I’ll keep sniffing and swirling and tasting, looking for more nuances.

The first of my starters was a relative disaappointment. Brandade with Chorizo and Sweet Peppers was a rather messily thrown together dish that looked pretty unappetising. The Brandade seemed to be receding, the toast was too thick and oily and there was a pointless piece of rocket shoved in the middle. Was this really a dish of the ex-sous chef of RHR? The fish and meat were actually of decent quality so it tasted a lot better than it looked.

A second starter, a Ballotine was a big leap in quality. Salty, porky Ham Hock and rich smooth Black Pudding had been rolled together and slices of it lightly fried. It was punchy yet still showed a great deal of refinement. Potato Salad used the the correct variety of tuber which provided a little bite. They had been dressed with a mixture of mayonnaise and finely chopped capers and cornichons to lend acidity and balance to the meat. Impressive stuff, if a little stingy on the portion size. Still better that than a big plateful of mediocre.

During a little self-enforced lull in proceedings I started on the Volnay. Gary does like his Burgundies but even to this untutored palate his recommendation was spot on. I was told that the ’97 Burgundies are drinking very well at the moment and for one moment I thought it was my swirling technique that was being admired.

Tastewise, there wasn’t a huge amount of fruit evident and it was quite dry. There was also an intriguing hint of, er, manure. Yes, definitely something of the farmyard but in a good, intriguing way. There was also a balance about the wine that was refreshing after having encountered far too many alcoholic fruit bombs. Yet again I found myself wanting to continue tasting to discover more. Wine is a wonderful thing, isn’t it?

I was so wrapped up in slurping and slooshing the wine that my main course was a bit of an unwanted intrusion, unecessarily distracting. Not so far from the truth as it turned out. If I wanted to know how the owners compensated for ungreedy markups on the wine I only had to look at the thickness of my Rib Eye steak.

Apart from the odd minute variety I’ve had this was easily the thinnest steak I’ve ever eaten. Its lack of thickness and decent ageing made it a very dull steak indeed. It was cooked perfectly of course but that hardly seemed the point - I just expected a bit more from an £18 Steak. Oh, and a small bowl of chips were an extra £2.95. I sort of understood the trade-offs at work here but it just took a little getting used to.

You wait an age for a Baba Au Rhum and then all of a sudden two come along. The one at 28-50 was possibly even more enjoyable than the one I’d had at Brasserie Joel. In this one the Chantilly was already an integral part of the sponge and you also got a little jug of rum on the side to pour over the pud. Only the accompanying strawberries didn’t work – not ripe enough – surprisingly, given what I’d had before, this was a case of less being more.

Despite my misgivings about the food, most of which I understand now - although I still don’t know why a good chef is here to put stuff on toast - I had a good time at 28-50: comfortable room, pleasant efficient staff, enjoyable wines. And if you can get past the fact that the food is actually the supporting act to the wine then I think you’ll have a good time too.

VINUM: VILE ‘UN

Tee Hee. Sometimes there are meals that are so staggeringly inept that all thoughts of cost go out of the window and one just enjoys watching the wheels come off the car like the exploding charabang of Coco The Clown at Billy Smart’s Circus.

A few weeks ago, HP and I sauntered past what used to be a dire bar called Heeltapper’s that sat at the corner of Paul St and Worship St. It was being refurbished as a bar and restaurant which, in this area, usually fills me with dread as invariably they have a sign outside on the day they open saying “experienced sous chef needed”

Still, when I walked past the other day, they had one or two things on the menu that looked interesting, they apparently had a huge wine list offering many by the glass and they had a promotion via Top Table that gave a 50% discount on all food.

So, I booked. I deserve everything I got. This really is one of the more laughingly appalling restaurants I have set foot in for, well, as long as I can remember.

I arrived around 6.15pm and, apart from a few city boys having a pre-football beer, I was the only person in there for the whole of my visit.

The room is harmless but shows not one iota of design flair. Straight off the shelf identikit blah UK restaurant.

The front of house was friendly enough and honest to a fault. Probably too honest. I asked who the chef was. He said ‘ he’s British” well, that’s cleared that up then. “but” he added “ he’s not here tonight. It’s the second chef. He’s OK”

Filled with confidence, I fought my way through the crowd ( I am being ironic here just in case it is not clear ) to my table and had a look at the menu.

To be fair, if there was anyone in the place who could cook one or two of the dishes could be quite agreeable. But, there was not one trace in the entire visit that showed anyone with the most basic level of first year catering college training.

As for the wines. A very large list of bottles ( over 300 they told me ) but a dispiritingly small choice by the glass. In fact five each of red and white and many from the same maker. Mmm, so the choice of the name Vinum. That’s some more irony, right? Again, the front of house showing disarming honesty said “ that’s all we have, it’s not great is it?” Nope.

To begin, I chose a Goat’s cheese and beet salad. I imagineered a salad of at least two types of beets with some creamy cheese and a few peppery leaves. What I got looked like it was made by my six year old nephew after watching Blue Peter. Chunks of fridge fresh goats cheese cut into large lumps, some more lumps of school dinner type beetroot and a scary mound of frissee tossed in what I am sure was Sarsons. As horrible as it sounds. The glass of over priced white burgundy at £5.50 just about dulled my tastebuds enough to endure.

For the main course, I wanted the Suckling Pig. The waitress told me it was off. So, I ordered the chump of lamb. She pottered off and then came back to ask me how I wanted it cooked. “pink” I replied. She pottered off again. Then she came back and said “ we do have some suckling pig. Do you want to change” Despite my Reggie Perrin like vision of the chef fighting with the dog over the last portion of pork, I did change my order. Bit dim really. It was as bad as the starter. A stunningly ill conceived dish.

It came plonked on top of a stone cold “salad” of overcooked, mushy green lentils with crudely chopped tomatoes and a few spring onions cut on the bias to show that the chef had passed the first level of his NVQ. The pork was two decent slices with a tiny bit of crackling and on top a dollop of applesauce that was mouth searingly hot from the microwave. If I had many more pork dishes like this, I may have to think about changing religion.

With it a side of the increasingly common “hispi” cabbage. I think “hispi” must be native American for “ soggy and shit”

A glass of Bach Merlot Blend from NZ for £5.50 passed me by entirely.

I could not face pudding although part of me wanted to see just how bad it would be, so I got my bill. With the 50% discount , both the wine and the food came to £11.50. With tip ( why should staff suffer because they work in a crappy restaurant?) the bill came to £27. That’s £27 for two courses of such defining incompetence that I kept expecting Jeremy Beadle to jump out. And, that’s with a promotional discount

I know, I know, what more did I expect? Well, I expected anyone who is going to charge money for food to at least have a basic comprehension of how it should be prepared.

What it did go to show is that I don’t have to go to the US to have truly dreadful meals. I can just walk 100 yards from my front door and save on the air fare.

VINOTECA

I AM A VINOTECA BOY

Ah, how many bloggers do you know who would reference an obscure Pet Shop Boy's track for the heading of their daily, er, entry?

After the normal training at 6.30am/chores/shopping/shaving bonce routine that is the norm for my free Saturdays, I decided that I deserved some lunch and a nice glass of wine.

Beguiled, as I had been by Vinoteca on my brief visit pre the disappointing meal at St John, I decided that it might just fit the bill. So, Boxing News in hand, I sauntered in there a little before 1pm.

The place was entirely empty and, I suspect, stays that way until later in the evening. All the better for me. I was able to spend a very happy 45 mins sitting with a glass of Rueda in front of me while munching on a plate of cold meats and cheeses with oatcakes, olives, almonds and chutney.

Vinoteca has been open for a few months. The three owners, Brett, Helena and Charlie are all incredibly amiable and welcoming and really know their stuff. The wine list is serious, extensive, well priced and accessible ( my wine cost a mere £3.85 which is practically giving it away for a wine like that ) the food I saw being prepared the other night looked suitably rustic and hearty. During the daytime at weekends the food options are limited to cold cuts. That was fine by me and I chose a small plate of mixed meat and cheese for £6.00.

Eschewing the normal suppliers of Spanish meats in London, Brindisa etc, Vinoteca imports all of its cuts direct from Huelva via a link that is Helena's friend's boyfriend's father's butcher's supplier ( I kid you not ) but however "six degrees of Spanish Bacon" it may be, it is well worth the effort. The chorizo, lomo and salsichon was all splendid absolutely top quality. They are also, they told me, one of the few to offer Jabugo in the UK.

With the cold cuts some british cheeses ( Monty's and some others, I did not recognise ) good bread ( from St J, I suspect ) served with a suitably lawny olive oil, pickles and biscuits. For £10 including the glass of wine, a very reasonable price for a simple lunch.

Vinoteca does not take reservations in the evening which normally brings me out in hives. However, with friendly people like this and food/wine of this quality, I can see myself happily propping up the bar area waiting for a table.

Well worth a visit

Afterwards, as I pottered home, I realised that Liverpool Vs Everton was on the box. So, a quick pint in The Artillery Arms kept me company while I watched the boys in red beat the boys in blue not really caring either way really.