SO|LA, Soho

I was halfway through my evening at Sola (I'm not going to do the SO|LA thing in this post, it would drive me mad), being plied with top ingredients, fed fine wines and cosseted with charming service, that I suddenly remembered that this meal was the result of my annual public vote. Partly I'd forgotten because the vote was so bloody long ago - thank you global pandemic - and usually I try to follow up on the result as soon as possible, to get the whole sorry business out of the way ASAP. But also, having had some of the worst meals of my entire life forced upon me as a result of that vote, it seemed incredibly unlikely that a restaurant as good as Sola - and it's a very good restaurant indeed - should succeed in a competition where previous winners had included an all you can eat buffet, a carvery in suburban Croydon, and a train station pasta chain.

But anyway, here we are and you won't hear me complaining. Sola is the latest venture from the rather dizzying career of chef Victor Garvey, previously of Duende, Encant, Barolo, Rambla - I mean, I've completely lost count but then I imagine so has he. The concept is Californian Fine Dining, not a contradition in terms actually but a nod to the high-end Asian-American restaurants of Los Angeles and the Pacific West Coast more generally. There's a place in La Jolla called George's at the Cove which strikes me as the kind of place Garvey has in mind - tablecloths, tasting menus, and stunning views of the ocean. There's no flocks of pelicans or basking seals in Soho, sadly, and the views of Dean Street are often memorable for the wrong reasons, but in their little section of newly pedestrianised street they've created a little private haven of soft furnishings and greenery, and with the mercury hitting 30C of a Tuesday evening, it was here we settled in.

Four dainty amuses arrived speared into a wooden 3D map of California, which was rather clever. From left to right they were quail egg "Mimosa" (devilled eggs, which I'd last eaten at Juniper & Ivy in downtown San Diego, so that's another tick for authenticity), nori cured salmon, tuna tartare with a generous base of foie gras and loads of truffle on top, and compressed watermelon lime and basil.

Bread next, a foccacia studded with sun dried tomatoes which was excellent, and a whipped butter came topped with loads more shaved truffle, which was also obviously a Good Idea. I judge the success of a bread course in a tasting menu by how much of it I manage to avoid eating before the next dish arrives - this had all been demolished by the time the gazpacho turned up.

Gazpacho, incidentally, that was one of my favourite dishes from two of those previously mentioned restaurants, Encant and Rambla. Garvey has Spanish - or more specifically Catalan - heritage, and here has worked a little taste of Spain in amongst the trip to California. It was a real zinger of a dish, a bright purple beetroot sorbet sitting amongst summer flowers and luminescent cubes of compressed cucumber, before being draped in a robust tomato broth. Every bit of it was brilliant.

From here on, each subsequent savoury dish seemed to not only continue the tasteful and intelligent theme, but somehow kept getting better and better. Torched mackerel, with a deep, rich flavour of the finest quality fish, lay alongside painstakingly-sculptured "flowers" of kohlrabi and watermelon. Then over the top was poured tomato ponzu, an astonishingly flavoured sauce that would have been worth the price of admission by itself.

I'm sure there's a certain amount of sly humour at play in Sola's use of foie gras, given that the actual state of California banned the sale of it between 2015 and 2020. Here a nice solid chunk of it was served with "KPH sauce", named after food writer Kay Plunkett-Hogge and containing an addictive blend of Thai-style flavours in a sweet syrup, green mango, peanut and coconut. I'd genuinely never had this kind of flavour combination before; being surprised as well as well-fed is one of the joys of going to restaurants like this.

Next, lobster flambéed on a hot rock tableside, and served literally as is, just the beautifully unadorned tail meat on its own, very Spanish style. OK so admittedly there was also a cute little bowl of wild mushroom agnolotti and roast chard, soon to be soaked in another fantastic clear dashi broth, and that was brilliant too.

A fillet of seabass, skin crisped up beautifully and topped with caviar, arrived sat in a yuzu-spiked foam, into which was poured a stunning seafood bisque. And if you can read that list of ingredients without wanting to dive right in, then there's something definitely wrong with you. Some foraged coastal herbs to add a bit of colour too, which are always welcome.

"Squab" is a word you often see on American menus, but I'm not sure whether it's a materially different bit of game to our own "pigeon" or whether that's just a North American word for the same thing. Anyway its appearance here made perfect sense in the context of a Californian menu, and this was very nicely done with white peach and sand carrot (from Normandy apparently) and finished with another great sauce, this time laced with togarashi (a Japanese spice mix).

As you can probably tell from the above, the savoury courses at Sola are right up there with the city's best; successful, intelligent food that is unashamedly high-end but never anything less than joyful. The desserts were by no means a failure, but just seemed to have slightly less of a touch of magic about them than what had come before. Pistachio semifreddo had a weirdly subdued flavour and strangely unsatisfying pappy texture, and although the scoop of (calamansi?) ice cream was nice, it just seemed like it was doing the same job as the semifreddo.

Chocolate cremeux was various different blobs of chocolate ice cream and mousse, and although perfectly nice again just seemed a bit underthought compared to what had come before. Don't get me wrong, I still polished it off, there just wasn't fireworks.

We managed to end on a high though - Sola's house chocolates are superb, one spiked with wasabi and one contaning a punchy passionfruit jam, all with a delicate chocolate casing. Very much Paul A Young level work, which is high praise indeed I'm sure you'll agree.

The bill came to £180.55 for two but, full disclosure time, it should have been a bit - OK, a lot - more. Once he'd got wind of the public vote result back in March, Garvey in fact offered to comp the entire meal, but in the Covid era it felt wrong to accept so much from an industry that may need all the help it can get in the next few months, so we compromised on paying the prix fixe price for the full California tasting. Without the friends & family discount the bill would probably have come to over £200pp with service and tax included, but you know what, it really did feel like a £200 meal, from the thought and effort that had gone into everything to the beautiful surroundings and attentive service. £200 can get you a lot less in London, I can tell you from experience.

I don't want to break down scores for individual elements of a meal - that way madness lies - so 8/10 really reflects an essentially perfect savoury offering and slightly disappointing desserts. I think if you were more of a dessert person your score would be lower, but the good news is that the pastry section at Sola is being boosted and refined, and there's every chance on your own visit the desserts would be perfect too. And there's only one way of finding that out.

8/10

I was kindly given a discounted bill at Sola