Cheese and Biscuits Restaurant of the Year 2015 - The Newman Arms

The traditional way to start an end-of-year post, based on Cheese & Biscuits past (he says scanning the few previous years' posts in an effort not to repeat himself), is to praise the dynamism and ingenuity of the London restaurant scene, pick out a few notable new entries alongside reliable old stalwarts, and repeat once again that there isn’t another city on earth that can match it for diversity, energy and innovation.

And certainly all these things are still true, and yet in 2015 it all - impossibly - seems to have stepped up another gear again. The old stalwarts are still there, of course; at least, most of them. I’ve had yet more excellent dinners at Bob Bob Ricard, Tayyabs, Silk Road etc. etc and however proud of the pace of change in London we should never become so obsessed with the new and improved that we take for granted the enormous achievement of brilliant consistency. They may make it look easy; don’t be fooled.

But she sheer number and quality of new openings just can’t be ignored. I could list at least 20 restaurants that are not just enjoyable and good value but in some way unique or groundbreaking, and have all opened in the space of the last twelve months. And these just the ones I’ve managed to visit; from what I hear about The Hour Glass, Oldroyd, Shuang Shuang, The Ninth and god knows how many others listed on the Hot Dinners New Openings, this number could be a lot higher.

Perhaps it’s not sustainable. Maybe we’re living in some hyper-inflated, self-obsessed bubble that’s on the verge of bursting, and we’ll look back on these crazy times and wonder how we ever thought it would last. Or maybe - and this is just as likely - we’re still only just getting started. What a thought. Anyway, however impossible a task this is, I’m going to pick out a few highlights amongst highlights and do my best to come up with a favorite...


The “Believe the Hype” award - Kitty Fisher’s

In a Venn diagram of “restaurants serving world-class food” and “celebrity hangouts”, the intersection would not contain very many options. Filter that yet again with “restaurants you won’t need to remortgage your house to be able to pay the bill” and you’re really left with just one. This charming little spot in Shepherd’s Market built up a loyal following in that most old fashioned of ways - no PR, no grand launch party, just serve good food (expertly sourced grilled meat & fish, and the occasional stroke of genius like Burnt Onion Butter), treat each customer like family, and hope it works. And if you’ve been, you’ll know - it really does work.


The “Best outside of London” award - The Black Swan, Oldstead

Quite a few candidates for this category, but I’ve settled on this idyllic spot in the North York Moors because it feels to me like it encapsulates everything a regional restaurant should be. Experimental where it matters, though never at the expense of enjoyment, with a maturity and confidence that comes with this amount of time running a Michelin-starred restaurant, the kitchen team at the Black Swan would I’m sure be a hit wherever in the country they happened to settle. But here, surrounded by the most extraordinary natural larder, they construct a seasonal symphony of the very finest British (or rather Yorkshire) dishes.


The “Fusion Fever” award - Chick’N’Sours

It wasn’t long ago that “fusion” ranked just below “carvery” in the list of restaurant description warning signs. But this isn’t some shallow PR stunt, mashing together wildly inappropriate cooking styles for the sake of a few headlines. It could have been that, quite easily. But in the hands of Carl Clarke we have probably London’s finest fried chicken served alongside a variety of SE Asian salads and sauces that soothe the soul, lift the spirits and make you wonder why nobody’s done this kind of thing before. Oh, and try the wedge salad with crispy chicken skin, it's a knockout.


The “Where Have You Been All My Life” award - Hoppers

Yeah yeah, I know, you’ve probably read a million words on this place already, and know all about the bone marrow varuval with roti like the finest French patisserie, the black pork kari with its dense sticky spicing, the egg hoppers themselves with their gently tangy casings and soft egg base. But beneath the hype and the queues there is no con-trick here; Hoppers is talk of the town because it deserves to be. Sri Lankan food given a Soho makeover from the team that brought you Gymkhana, Trishna, Bao, Lyle’s... and basically every other memorable meal you’ve had in 2015.


The “Will Someone Please Give Her A Restaurant” award - Darjeeling Express

Asma Khan’s popup at the Sun and 13 Cantons in Soho is, at time of writing, still going, and therefore there is still time to get yourself down to enjoy the finest homestyle Indian food ever served in London outside someone’s actual home. The terrifying thought that once her residency is over she may decide to do something else is therefore reason for my plea to her now - please find a way of making this work long term. Because this food is too good to lose even for a day.


The “No Choice, No Problem” award - Pidgin

The relationship of absolute trust between a restaurant serving a no-choice, four course menu and a public willing to pay for it must be profound and unbreakable. But if there’s one chef capable of such unshakable faith it’s Elizabeth Allen, whose flair for modern British food and magical lightness of touch across a multitude of disciplines (fish, game, desserts, you name it) has turned weeny restaurant Pidgin into a destination almost from day one. You go to Pidgin, you put yourself in their hands, and you have the time of your life. It’s that simple.


The Runner Up - Galvin @ Windows

As ever with these kind of things, there’s very little to choose between the winner and runner up, and very little to choose between the runner up and any others in the list above, for that matter. But after having chosen a largely cutting-edge shortlist, and sung the praises from the rooftops of our Modern British talent, the contrarian in me feels duty bound to say that my two meals at Galvin this year, one with the parents in September and one for a friends birthday a couple of weeks ago, were as memorable and accomplished as almost any other meal I’ve had in the last twelve months.

Sure, the Galvin tradition is solidly french, but head chef Joo Won has kept the spirit of the menu that won them the accolades while injecting the odd enticing bit of Asian seasoning, ending up with a menu full of excitement and intrigue. Service, overseen by Fred Sirieix of First Dates fame, is as good as ever, and of course faultless. But Galvin @ Windows is more than just a hospitality show. The food is world class, the attention to detail breathtaking.


The Winner - Newman Arms

There are many things to love about the Newman Arms, from the Dickensian charm of its dining room and downstairs bar, to the lovely thick-crust pies they do on Monday lunchtimes served with buttery mash and fresh parsley sauce, to the astonishing Modern British food cooked up by their superstar chef Eryk Bautista the rest of the week, who seems to have completely bypassed the ‘one to watch’ list and nestled firmly in the ‘one to shortly win every award under the sun’ list. Everything about the Newman Arms is wonderful, and owner Matt Chatfield, whose Cornish connections mean Bautista is never short of the country’s finest ingredients to work with, should be very pleased with himself.

But what lifts the Newman Arms above its many competitors is that it has, over the last few months, turned into somewhat of a testing bed for young talent, hosting popups and special evenings from supper club stars wanting to spread their wings in the capital. Recently I ate lovely home made laksa by the Sambal Shiok guys, matched with Riesling chosen by wine expert Zeren Wilson, a collaboration that would have been hard to envisage least of all organise were it not for the generous intervention of Chatfield. So it’s this sense of community and charity that - much like Islington’s Drapers Arms - mark it out as much more than a (top notch) gastropub. It’s the beating heart of London’s place in the world, and is everything that’s uplifting and gratifying about eating out in the city distilled into one quaint pub in Fitzrovia. It is, in short, my favourite restaurant of 2015, and I look forward to visiting as often as I possibly can in the months to come.

And there’s plenty more to look forward to in the months to come besides, not least the 2016 version of my app which will be out very soon, as well as the usual slew of new openings that will no doubt be jostling for a spot in the 2017 version. I won’t preempt the final 100 now; lord knows enough can happen in a week to make a list obsolete never mind the time it takes to publish a new app, but expect to see most of the above and a few more besides. It’s been a very, very good year, and keeping the app to just 100 entries is a challenge on the level of writing the 100 brand new reviews to go with them. You’ll just have to wait and see for yourself who made the cut.

Anyway, with that I’ll leave you for this year. I hope you had as much fun as I did scooting around the capital for dinner, and if you didn’t then I hope 2016 is more to your taste. There are few better ways to lift the spirits than a glass of wine and a meal out in a great restaurant, and I’m convinced there are no better places in the world to do just that, right now, than London.

Galvin at Windows 2011, Mayfair

Up on the 28th floor of the Park Lane Hilton, nestled in a soft beige sofa, plied with cold champagne and nibbles, it's tempting to think you're somehow immune to life's problems. From this perch in the clouds, London is calm and quiet, the lush green of Hyde Park, the lines of traffic shuffling up and down Edgware Road, the rolling hills of Hampstead in the far distance - you're presented with an idealised version of the city, safe, serene, beautiful.


Unfortunately, events this week have revealed a side of the capital that are pretty far from ideal. I spent Tuesday night sat in the dark at the back of my house near Clapham Junction, kept awake by a combination of police helicopters, terrifying rolling news reports and the occasional distant scream, desperately hoping nobody would run out of estate agents windows to smash and instead turn their attention to my front room. In the morning, the walk to work was strewn with discarded coat hangers and empty shoe boxes, and even before I hit the police cordon on Lavender Hill I'd passed numerous looted buildings. I was relieved that the lovely people at Mien Tay looked like they'd escaped the worst of it, though God knows what kind of evening they and their customers had, being so close to the violence. But it was the sight of a hastily abandoned meal still on the table amidst the broken glass at Pizza Express that was particularly traumatising. Nobody deserves that, not even people who choose to spend their evening in Pizza Express.


You could see the columns of smoke from fires in Battersea and elsewhere from Galvin @ Windows, staff told me last night. That must have been strange, trying to carry on as normal in their restaurant in the sky, knowing what was happening to their own houses and neighbourhoods as London broke and burned on the streets below. Some of the stories that emerged from that night are hideous, but it's never been truer to say that when times are hard, real heroes are born. People like the staff of the Ledbury, who fought off a mob with kitchen utensils and fat fryers, locked frightened guests in the wine cellar for safety, and refused payment even when grateful customers returned the next day and offered to settle up. And people like the Turkish restaurateurs of Stoke Newington who instead of shuttering up and giving in, gathered their friends and bravely stood down the rioters using broken chair legs and cook's knives, their businesses - and dignity - protected.

So, yes, it's been a funny old week, one that puts the silly business of writing restaurant reviews into pretty sharp perspective, and I'm not going to pretend I'm the least bit qualified to offer any commentary on the causes or solutions, or pontificate grandly on what it means for London or the UK that a significant minority of our population seem to have decided that there are no important repercussions to beating your way into Jessops and nicking an armful of digital cameras. It's unfathomable; I literally do not - probably never will - understand it at all, and so I won't try. I'll just get back to doing what I normally do on this blog, and tell you what I had for dinner last night.



One of the reasons I find the food at Windows so interesting is that I've seen it, over the years I've been a very infrequent visitor, gradually morph from very traditional French haute cuisine to dishes that are far more recognisably English. They still have a refined style and are immaculately presented in that way that the top French chefs know so well, but there's a refreshing lack of pretension and an honesty to the ingredients that is far closer to, say, L'Enclume and even St John than temples of French gastronomy like Le Gavroche. An amuse of vegetable consommé was fresh and well seasoned and clean tasting, not to mention looking very attractive, a light cheesy gougere on a chocolately olive paste matching the vegetable broth with rich pastry and dairy, but all the flavours were precise and familiar, just done very well. And I liked another canapé-style radish and spring onion bites dipped in sweet Romesco sauce, summery and colourful.



Pigeon breast, gamey and soft and full of flavour, was served with a dainty toast and paté of some kind and an artful smattering of beetroot rolls and sweet blobs of blackcurrant. What made this dish special though was a toasty slick of pine nut paste of some kind and roasted pine nuts, the earthy savoury flavour of the nuts adding a wonderful extra dimension.


This truffle-fried egg was apparently an interloper from the full tasting menu, and was suitably decadently dressed in fresh sliced black truffle. Perfectly seasoned and timed to runny perfection, it made me think that Galvin should seriously consider entering next month's Scotch Egg Challenge at the Ship - wrap a bit of sausage meat around this chap and they'd be in with a real chance I'm sure.


Main of Telmara (East Anglia somewhere apparently) duck was pink and delicious, as you might expect, served with soft cherries and interesting bitter white turnips. What really caught my attention though was a fancy gourmet sausage roll, powerfully herby with a dainty light pastry casing. A very successful mix of flavours and textures.


A pre-dessert, another refugee from the tasting menu I think, was a blueberry and custard thingy with a topping of lime mousse. It was full of brilliant summer flavours, and although I perhaps could have done with a little more of a lime hit from the mousse, it still disappeared in happy seconds.


The cheese waiter at Windows explained that they had been "trying something different" with the cheese selection recently and had asked their supplier, La Fromagerie, for a slightly more experimental range. At first, in my blindly patriotic way, I was disappointed to learn they had just one non-French option, but they certainly all did look very interesting, and I barely recognised any of them which is always quite exciting. In fact they were all so new to me that I can tell you the name of just one - the blue Fourme d'Ambert at the bottom there - which was reliably creamy and gently salty. The star of the plate, though, was the one to its right, which I promise I will reveal once my investigations are complete. It was an extraordinary product, the only way I can describe it is that it was like eating a cowshed, powerfully natural and unpasteurised.

EDIT: I even got the Fourme d'Ambert wrong. The full list of cheeses, beginning with the blue and going clockwise are:

Bleu d'auvergne
Mothais
Tomme de Savoie
Pave de l'aveyron
Petit creux
Reblochon


I had been invited to Windows to try what they call the "Menu du Chef", which at £39 for three courses is pretty good value considering the location, the view, the service (so famously good they made a TV show out of it) and the quality of the food. And though I know nothing about wine and have long given up trying to say anything perceptive about it, our sommelier charmingly and carefully talked us through some really delicious wine pairings - I particularly liked the Pinot Noir that came with the duck, although I always seem to like Pinot Noir anyway. It was a genuinely lovely evening, not a foot wrong put by anyone front or back of house, a delight from start to finish.


So, life goes on. It speaks volumes about the character of this city that on Wednesday morning, the day after the main period of troubles, the headlines were just as much dominated by the extraordinary residential cleanup operations organised over Twitter, and the spontaneous outpouring of community spirit as demonstrated by the Peckham Peace Wall as by securicam shots of hooded rioters and burned out buildings. If it takes a gang of disaffected troublemakers to shake our faith in the inherent decency of humankind then there are enough heartfelt campaigns like Keep Aaron Cutting and Help Siva to remind us all that actually, there are far, far more good people out there than bad. It's been a difficult week, but as I say, hard times often only bring out the best in decent, compassionate and civilised people. And I'm willing to bet that the true character of this city wasn't hiding under a hoodie on Tuesday night stealing trainers, it was up early the next morning with a broom along with thousands of others, ready to put things right again.

Help make London a better place by donating to Kids Company, a charity dedicated to working with and supporting vulnerable children



I was invited to review Galvin @ Windows

Pauillac lamb at Galvin @ Windows

There are some invitations that however high-minded or ethically sensitive you consider yourself as a blogger, you do not turn down. A multiple steak tasting at Hawksmoor, a Brindisa ham carving school and any number of lavish Bibendum sponsored wine events certainly qualify for an immediate "yes", and have subsequently turned out to be every bit as fun as they promised. And so last week when Fred Sirieix, restaurant manager at Galvin @ Windows (Hilton Park Lane), attention drawn presumably by a couple of (completely un-sponsored, I might add) glowing reviews on these pages over the last couple of years, invited me and a couple of lucky others to try some special Pauillac salt marsh lamb that André Garret (head chef) had managed to get hold of, my response was a foregone conclusion.


And speaking of ethical dilemmas, the consumption of suckling lamb is itself a bit of a tricky one. This is, after all, very young lamb, torn away from its mothers teat and mercilessly slaughtered barely before it's had a chance to take its first steps, with a subtle, sweet flavour and meltingly soft pink flesh. I had tried suckling lamb once before, from a tiny little restaurant in Paris called La Cerisaie, and the tender rich flavour of my own slow-braised shoulder in a rich jus took me right back to that meal all those years ago. And although the focus of the evening was the lamb, I should also mention my starter of "salad of salsify & heritage carrots, deep fried duck egg and truffle cream", which was nigh-on-perfect.



Towards the end of the meal Fred, presumably deciding that serving the worlds most exclusive lamb wasn't quite enough of a highlight for one evening, flourished a bottle of Armand de Brignac rosé champagne. This ludicrous bottle of bubbly, its gleaming packaging as flamboyantly flashy as some of its most notable customers (Jay Z is apparently a fan), is sold by the bottle at Galvin for about £600, and here we were knocking it back like it was Ribena. For the record, it was very nice, but am I too much of a pleb for much preferring the vanilla-y, rich Pommery Brut NV we had as an aperitif? Probably I am.


The Pauillac suckling lamb will be on the menu at Galvin @ Windows until the end of January, and as well as the braised shoulder is available as an assiette. The evening dinner menu is £58 and comes highly recommended.

Many thanks to Hollow Legs for letting me nick her photos, battling hardly favourable lighting conditions

Galvin at Windows, Park Lane (revisited)

I can't remember who it was, but somebody once explained to me their theory of the relationship between the quality of a meal and the altitude it is served at. Apparently, so the theory goes, you will have a worse meal the higher up you go. So starting in your Michelin-starred basement restaurants like The Greenhouse, Hakkasan and Le Gavroche, where the atmosphere is hushed and exclusive and the food divine, all the way up to the most extreme example - airline food - microwaved, over-salted slop eaten with your neighbours elbows jabbing into your ribs. And somewhere in the middle we have the "revolving restaurant" category, reliant largely on the tourist trade and unimaginative soppy couples after a nice view, serving overpriced, mediocre food. I'm thinking particularly of the Oxo Tower restaurant and the Coq d'Argent - awful places which if they didn't have the added value of a sweeping backdrop would have closed years ago.

But like all good theories, it's the exceptions that prove the rule. And although Galvin at Windows, perched high atop of the 28-storey Hyde Park Hilton on Park Lane, would no doubt do very well fleecing its well-heeled clientele with a "never mind the food, check out the view" attitude, they have thankfully decided to go down a much different route. The meal I had last night (sorry no photo of the menu, but I had this one) was not only presented in front of a vista that stretched from Wembley Stadium to Hampstead Heath but consisted of some of the most accomplished dishes I'd eaten for many months.


Let's start with the bread, which came in two variations - a wholemeal and a white olive bread. A slightly chewy crust on the white perhaps but a good flavour, and the butter was lovely and spreadable.


Amuse of tomato gelée did its job perfectly well. The tomato flavours were fresh and the gelée was actually a very good texture - not too off-puttingly solid but thick enough to scoop onto the spoon. Young basil leaves provided colour and a nice Italian flavour combination. Pretty little thing, isn't it?


My starter was a slab of seared Landes foie gras sat on top of a soft gingerbread biscuit and surrounded by semi-dried grapes and a kind of honey jus. The best foie gras recipes never muck about with the liver too much, and this was true to that form, being just interesting enough to be worth its paycheck while still allowing the rich, creamy foie to star. It's also, as you can just about tell from the picture, a hugely generous portion for a starter, and my waiter was kind enough during ordering to point out that the beef also comes with more foie and did I want to reconsider? Of course I didn't.


Once I'd polished off the cruelly inflated goose organ, another unannounced mini course arrived, of Mesclun (baby leaf) salad, balsamic and goats cheese. This was my least favourite course, which although perfectly pleasant in a salady kind of way didn't really have anything to lift it out of the mundane. The baby leaves were just that, and the goats cheese seemed a bit timid. I fully admit I'm not really a salad person, though, so maybe if all you're used to is lentils and quiche then this you'd probably think this was brilliant.


The main course finally arrived in the form of a cute little pink medallion of beef fillet, a slow-roasted portion of fatty rib topped with another generous slab of foie gras, and a colourful selection of caramelised roasted veg. And you could hardly fault any of it. The beef was cooked perfectly, the fillet well-seasoned and smooth in texture and the rib section meltingly tender with its slivers of juicy fat. Vegetables were bitesize examples of perfect French cooking, each a self-contained, juicy canapé and great fun to eat. I have, admittedly, tasted better beef - but then the fillet steak is never really just about the raw flavour, particularly not in French cooking, and it still tasted great.


Sadly, we didn't have room for desserts, but that didn't stop various final petits fours arriving, including a juicy raspberry chocolate, very fruity strawberry marshmallows and a startling little sphere of crispy salty caramel with a liquid centre. We ate them as the sun was setting over the Wembley Stadium arch.

You'd have to be very, very unlucky not to enjoy an evening at Galvin. This is a mature, confident kitchen serving Michelin-star standard food, and has even improved since my last visit in 2007. That it was totally booked up on a Thursday night in the middle of a recession is not really a mystery - what is a mystery is why the Espoir (rising star) I spoke about in the 2007 review has not yet come good. From what I can gather, the food is definitely up to scratch - at least as good as that served at Chez Bruce, for example. But then, who cares what Michelin think these days - increasingly not anyone who's opinions I trust. All you need to know is that the the service and the food at Galvin @ Windows is as good as you can hope for in this price bracket (it's not cheap - £58 for three courses), and you can certainly do a lot worse. Oh yes - and the view's not bad either.

8/10