Toba, St James

It's a strange part of town, is St James. Essentially a lesser-known southern extension of Mayfair, it's barely a half mile square and yet contains quite a high density of fancy hotels (Duke's, the Stafford, the Ritz), private members' clubs and the odd royal palace. Whereas some aspects of Mayfair come across as brash or showy (it is home to Sexy Fish, after all), St James is old money - genteel, refined, that little bit more exclusive.

It's a surprise, then, to find Toba in the space recently vacated by Ikoyi. Ikoyi, you may or may not know, had 2 Michelin stars and served a £300 tasting menu - pricey by anyone's standards but sort of fitting for St James. Toba is hardly a budget joint - where is these days? - but is definitely a more affordable affair than the previous residents.

All of which would amount to nothing if the food wasn't up to scratch, but it's a pleasure to report that everything we tried at Toba wasn't just unique for London - as far as I know, at least - but was absolutely wonderful. I'm no expert on Indonesian cuisine (despite having lived there for a few months back in the early noughties, long story) but it's fair to say that we have hardly been blessed with many such places. With parallels with Malaysian food, it is nonetheless its own beast, and if there's a better showcase for this kind of stuff anywhere in the country I'll be very surprised indeed.

We started with "Indonesian" prawn crackers - though apart from their relative small size and slightly increased density from your local Chinese version, they were very familiar territory. However they were great dipped in the trio of house sambal - shrimp, Balinese style and torch ginger, the latter I'm told being a very rare sight on these shores.

Another trio next, this time three flavours of deep-fried fritters. These kind of things can, in lesser kitchens, often suffer from being greasy or hard work - just think how many terrible cheap fish cakes you've suffered from a mediocre Thai restaurant. These were utterly perfect - greaseless and moreish, with a nice hot chilli oil dip to compliment the fried food. The corn in particular was a highlight, with a lovely soft, bubbly texture.

However, if anything the mains were even better. First, rendang, provided in several cubes of slow-cooked beef so ridiculously tender they were bordering on ethereal, dissolving in the mouth into pure essence of beef. Now, you may notice this isn't a huge amount of food for your £16.50 but if portion control is helping them run a business, and serve rendang this blindingly good, then I'm all in favour. Rich, complex and intelligently created, I can't imagine there's a better rendang anywhere outside of Java.

If you think you like the sound of "Deep fried chicken wings tossed with salted egg yolk, chilli and curry leaves", well then join the club - and if anything the reality was even better than the promise on paper. Great big healthy, meaty wings were soaked in a buttery, creamy coating that despite containing all the advertised bits and pieces, somehow was still so much greater than the sum of its parts. I'd say the egg salted chicken wings and the rendang are must-order items at Toba but I have a feeling there's plenty else on that menu with the potential to delight as well. It's just that kind of place.

Filling up on a bowl of fragrant yellow rice (very good, of course) and accompanied by a bottle of Italian white (£30, the wine list being one area at least where you don't feel pressure on the budget), the final bill came to just under £50 a person. And yes, it's a lot for what is essentially street food, and comparisons could possibly be made - I hope they won't mind me saying - with the Melaysian food served at Mambow in Peckham Rye, but in fact Mambow isn't that much cheaper anyway. Both are very good, and each come highly recommended.

So why not Indonesian, and why not, after all, St James? Who cares where they are if the food is as good as this? Populated by friendly, keen staff (which you'd hope for given the 15% service charge) this smart little place is about to make London fall in love with Indonesian food, and if that comes with a bit of a St James premium then so be it. Good things are worth paying for.

9/10

Maison François, St James

I've lost count of the number of times I've moaned on this blog about not being offered tap water in restaurants, but last week in St James, weirdly and uniquely, we had the opposite problem. For whatever reason, and I'm sure they have theirs, Maison François only offer sparkling mineral water, not still. Ordinarily I'd applaud a restaurant that refused to profiteer on bottled water but for once to specifically ask for it and be denied felt like a bit of a snub. I don't know, maybe I'm getting old.

Anyway, turns out there was more than the unavailability of bottled water to grind my gears at Maison François, despite things starting sprightly enough with a charming welcome and a nice table in the plush, gently-lit dining room. The menu is archly French Bistro, and of course there's nothing wrong with that, albeit with a slightly bizarre habit of translating every other word so you end up with things like "Truite de rivère, watercress velouté, broad beans" or "Seasonal greens - beurre asiatique, amandes or lemon, olive oil". I'm being snippy, of course, but it's the kind of stuff that, done well, you'd quite happily lose a few hours to, working your way through the different patés and salades and legumes. I had high hopes. Until the food arrived.

It's not that the sweetbreads were inedible so much as just spectacularly unimpressive, bland underseasoned protein swabbed with a sickly sweet dressing. I generally order sweetbreads - in fact any offal really - if I see it on a menu so have been lucky enough to be served some really great examples recently (take a bow, Parillan Borough Market with your lovely chargrilled versions spritzed with lemon juice) but this was just not good, a mediocre raw ingredient not treated very well.

Better was a paté en croute, which had a good mix of different meats amongst nice chunks of soft fat, and a very decent layer of dark, rich jelly on top. True, the version at the Rosewood is slightly better, but then most things they do at the Rosewood are at least slightly better than anyone else's (apart from their burger, but that's a story for another time). It was still a very nice paté en croute.

Bigorre ham was just a case of arranging a product on a plate then dumping some celeriac in the middle of it, but it went down pretty well, given you can't really muck up the serving of ham very much. £19 for a few slices of bog-standard prosciutto (yes, I hear your outrage, France, but you have to come to terms with the fact that Bigorre will never be Iberico) is way too much of course, but then this is St James.

Mains continued the theme of being not quite good enough. Pork chop was timed well, to just very slightly pink inside, but the sauce ("moutarde") was too thin and sharp, and didn't really help.

Quarter of a roast chicken was on the menu as coming with "fines herbes" but I swear it was exactly the same sauce that came with the pork. Had it had been a nice sauce that wouldn't be a problem of course, other than being a bit lazy, but the same thin wine-y astringency worked equally badly with the chicken.

Halibut was overcooked, but even if it hadn't been this tiny portion for £38 accompanied by a charred lemon and a dollop of bland blitzed herbs was hardly likely to ever set pulses racing. Mashed potato needed more butter and more salt, again for a supreme example see the Rosewood.

There was little chance the famed Maison François dessert trolley would save the evening given how disappointing everything had been up to that point, but quite how ordinary the pastries were still came as a miserable surprise. Tarte Bourdaloue was the best of them, having a nice flavour despite being a bit soggy, but the Paris Brest was genuinely wrong, chewy and stale where it should be crisp and light, although the hazelnut filling was OK. At the risk of sounding like a stuck record, the version at the Rosewood is much, much better. Also, while the idea of a dessert trolley is a good one, in practice there really isn't enough room to wheel it round the tables, and there was generally a queue of people waiting around it to either visit the bathroom or return to their table, having to watch solemnly as someone self-consciously selected their pudding.

The bill came to £330 for three people, which is too much. And yes, this is St James and we had a couple of cocktails but the fact is there are lots of places in town doing this kind of thing much better - even Zedel is more accomplished and you'd struggle to push the bill there to over £50pp, and then in the same price range as Maison are places like the Wolseley or Bellanger, each in prime locations of course and offering a much more enticing experience for the money.

It just seems that Maison François really doesn't have much going for it, when you consider how much further your money will go elsewhere. I'd have liked nothing better than to praise yet another top-drawer bistro in London - you can certainly not have too many of them - but by failing to deliver on even its own modest ambitions for traditional gallic cuisine and compared to all those other places doing the same thing and more - I've even had better food at a branch of Côte - then it really doesn't add up to a place worth bothering with. So I suggest you don't.

5/10

Exterior photo courtesy of Guild of Saint Luke architects

Quaglino's, St James

It's fair to say that the last time I was invited to one of these all-in-one entertainment/restaurant/bar venues, it didn't go too well. Circus is (or rather was, I've never been tempted to go back for obvious reasons) a cabaret and dining joint in Covent Garden firmly aimed at bridge-and-tunnel birthdays and hen parties, where vaguely pan-Asian dishes, looking a lot better on paper than they taste in real life, are served, occasionally interrupted by an annoying thumping soundtrack and bit of half-hearted hoop-spinning. It was all a bit... tacky.

The problem is there's a fine line between a classy cabaret venue and a tacky "theme restaurant" and that difference is measured in everything from the décor to the service and yes - the food and drink. On the first measure, the décor, Quaglino's is knockout. Guests enter via a plush and glamorously-lit bar with panoramic views over the vast basement dining hall and stage. After a martini or two, you then descend a sweeping staircase to the restaurant level, where tables are sensitively individually spotlit and surround another huge central backlit bar. It's a beautiful space, and in great nick (unlike Circus), Art Deco lines and styles but with enough soft furnishings to make it feel intimate.

Then there's the service, and yes they knew I was reviewing and I shouldn't dwell too much on this but we didn't want for anything, and managed that clever thing of fussing just enough at the start when drinks and food needed ordering, then fading completely into the background once the conversation started flowing.

But I imagine most of you are here to learn about the food, and I suppose I should come straight out and say that, served without the service and trappings of this incredible space, some of Quaglino's' crowdpleasing vaguely European dishes may struggle to make themselves heard. That's not to say anything we ate wasn't enjoyable, but only that it was solid, dependable stuff, cooked competently, raised to greatness largely by virtue of the context in which it was served.

So autumn squash velouté, a rich thick broth (not very velouté-y really), cooled with chunks of goat's curd, was a decent starter, seasoned well and with texture provided by toasted pumpkin seeds, but hardly an earth-shattering arrangement of ingredients. It soon disappeared though, the bowl wiped clean with some warm house baguette.

Venison tartare with oyster emulsion was, despite my caveats, a dish that could hold its head in any context, with bags of gamey flavour and just a teasing hint of seafood in the "oyster emulsion" holding it together. I've long been of the opinion that venison makes a much better steak tartare than beef, and though I can hear the howls of protest from tartare purists already, I suspect at the back of their minds they all know I'm right as well.

I had tagliatelle with peas (lots of peas... I mean a serious amount of peas... like "we have to get rid of more of these peas or they'll go off" amount of peas) and a generous coating of black truffle, and I polished it all off quite happily. No, the pasta wasn't Padella-good but Padella don't have nice Art Deco lampshades and live entertainment do they? So there.

Confit duck leg I didn't try, but as far as I can gather it went down quite well and didn't suffer too badly from dryness that can affect this kind of thing. And don't worry, it was served with a (good) sauce, I just didn't take a picture of that. I think we also ordered fries but I didn't get a photo of those, either. Look, we were just enjoying ourselves, OK? There was a woman singing cabaret versions of modern pop songs, I was a martini down and someone had given me a very nice glass of pinot noir. That's basically all I need for a perfect evening.

Desserts were suitably friendly. I had a creme brulee which had a nice delicate crust and good creamy vanilla-speckled filling, and we also had a very decent cheeseboard with an ash-covered goat's, a very dense and salty blue and a creamy Brie (which may in fact have been Tunworth). All a good temperature. And a good portion size. All good, in fact.

You'd have to be a really sour cynical type not to be swept away with the theatre of an evening at Quaglino's, and believe me, I would have counted myself firmly in that group before my dinner there. Yes, I was invited, but had we gone and paid for it ourselves even with a martini I don't think the bill would have crept much over £50 a head; the menu we ate was £30 with a glass of fizz, something approaching a bargain for this part of town never mind somewhere with live entertainment and fancy loos. Sometimes, and I'm getting a twitch in one side at the thought of even typing this, sometimes food isn't everything, it's the whole package that matters. And there are fewer fancier packages than Quaglino's.

8/10

I was invited to Quaglino's.

Café Murano, St. James

London has never been and most likely will never be the kind of place where you can simply walk into the nearest restaurant and expect to be served an enjoyable and fairly-priced meal. Handled correctly, this city can be a foodie paradise, but it's always going to be lots of other things as well - a tourist hotspot, a center of commerce and finance, home to nine million people of all different preferences and persuasions - and not everyone has the same priorities (or standards) when it comes to eating out. For everywhere selling great food for a reasonable price there are a dozen Frankie & Bennys, Cafe Rouges and Garfunkels waiting to chew up and spit out anyone foolish enough not to have done their restaurant homework. It is easy to eat well in London, but it's not always obvious.

In a town so liberally strewn with potential traps and pitfalls, then, a little knowledge goes a long way, and finding myself in St James of a weekday evening, hungry and slightly out of my comfort zone (St James is out of most people's comfort zone I imagine, unless you happen to be one of the cast of Made in Chelsea and/or a minor royal) I fired up the app to see what was going on. The Ritz - well, possibly if someone paid off my mortgage for me before my next credit card bill arrives but that seemed less than likely; Gymkhana - tempting, but again hardly a budget option and I was planning on taking the parents there next week anyway; and Kitty Fishers - bit of a walk with no guarantee this wildly popular spot would have any room for us anyway once we got there. So, what to do? It was then I realised I was stood fiddling with my iPhone outside Café Murano, which had plenty of room at the bar, and deciding I'd rather spend the rest of the night actually eating rather than deciding where to eat, went inside.

And I'm very glad I did, because what a lovely place this is, comfortable and friendly thanks to an attractive long bar and charming front of house who put us very much in the mood for enjoying ourselves even before the Aperitivo di Maggio (Bobby's gin, Pimm's, grapefruit juice, sage & orange bitters) arrived. And needless to say, once they had arrived we enjoyed ourselves a whole lot more.

House focaccia, pleasantly moist and tacky was the next sign that we were in safe hands. I always appreciate when restaurants go the extra mile to bake their own bread, even when the results are less than brilliant; this was top stuff though, with the perfect texture for soaking up the excellent peppery olive oil it was served with.

A plate of salami also demonstrated some intelligent purchasing decisions. So often in London, Italian food is a poor facsimile of the original, with all the form and colour of the real thing but none of the flavour. You will, I'm sure, have seen a charcuterie board like this in umpteen "Italian" restaurants in town, looking fine until you try some of it and are rewarded with the taste of cold fat and slimy supermarket ham. Not so here - this was top pig product, moist salami and lovely thick curls of marbled (speck? [edit: I'm reliably informed it's coppa]) ham. And the carta di musica (love that name) wasn't just there for texture, being gently seasoned and with a nice flavour.

Asparagus, Parma ham and parmesan is a familiar combination of ingredients, but Italian food is all about familiarity - the trick is in the use of the very best ingredients, and combining them sensitively. In this case, crunchy, glossy asparagus, more excellent ham and generous shavings of good parmesan.

"Spring Minestrone" is about as good as vegan food gets - that is to say, expertly balanced and seasoned, with notes of fresh spring herbs, but just missing that extra depth of flavour you'd get from animal stock. Perhaps criticising minestrone soup for being minestrone soup is a stupid thing to do, but it occurred to me as I was eating it so I'm mentioning it to you now. I still liked it.

I ordered "Tagliolini, sprouting broccoli, lemon & homemade ricotta" with the glorious memory of a recent lunch at Padella in mind, where fresh pasta, lemon and ricotta were combined to knockout effect. I still enjoyed the Tagliolini at Café Murano - the pasta itself was particularly nice, all bouncy and firm and full of life - even if overall the dish didn't have quite as much going for it as the other place. The ricotta was a little sloppy and the seasoning slightly subdued, but there are still worse ways of spending your money than on a plate of nice fresh home made pasta.

Pitch-black squid ink cavatelli, with clams, Datterini tomatoes and samphire was more impressive, a dish that could have been airlifted from Sicily it felt so authentically vibrant. Imported Italian tomatoes were also used in a side salad, flecked with crunchy sea salt and drizzled with Balsamic vinegar. All of it the kind of thing you'd happily order again and again.

As I've said, London may never be the kind of town where you can pick a restaurant at random and be entitled to expect a great meal. But sometimes, when I find myself chancing upon an unassuming Italian bistro in St James (albeit one with a bit of a pedigree) it feels like every day we're getting a step closer to that ideal. There are loads of great places to eat out in London, and despite all the rubbish and tourist traps and ripoff joints there are just enough spots like Café Murano to remind us that, all said and done, we have it pretty good here. Don't you agree?

7/10

Andaman, St James

There was very little sign of Credit Crunch Britain from inside the sleek, clubby bar at Andaman in St. James. Captains of industry flirted over champagne with suspiciously young Eastern European girls, and a multitude of staff with flamboyant Gallic accents circled the room, topping up glasses and nibbles. The scene was set, or so I thought, for a delicious evening of pampered escapism and a chance to try the food in one of London's newest and most exciting haute cuisine restaurants. I began with a martini.



Seemingly eager to impress, the barman rattled off a list of gins I could choose for my drink and whether I wanted an olive or a twist. These were good questions, and I was happy to answer them - most bars I'm lucky if I even get "gin or vodka?". But then all my illusions were shattered as he chose a warm martini glass from under the counter and a room-temperature bottle of gin from the shelf. The liquid was warm almost as soon as it was placed in front of me - not the kind of thing you'd expect from a top London hotel bar. Fortunately the evening improved slightly from then on.



Things started falling into place once we were seated at the impossibly tiny restaurant at the end of the bar. Despite a rather obvious gulf between the prosaic a la carte and the much more interesting tasting menu, we didn't have time for a full evening of food so ordered a starter and a main course. First to arrive, however, was a little wooden block of amuse - a shot glass full of gorgeous warm artichoke velouté (topped pointlessly with a hoop of smoked salmon with a straw through the middle) and a tiny delicate cone of cauliflower mousse. It was suspiciously close to the amuse served at the Square, but I didn't care one bit because they were both lovely - really, really lovely.


Starter proper was a "chartreuse" (a kind of terrine, according to Google) of dressed crab meat. Fresh crab sat on top of a disc of the green vegetable terrine, avocado being the main ingredient, alongside two stripes of light carrot sauce and, in one of Andaman's few concessions to texture and modern cooking methods, a clever little dollop of green vegetable "caviar". It was nothing if not fresh, competent and visually appealing cooking, if hardly enough to set Michelin pulses racing, but then at £12.50 it was actually pretty good value as well. So I was sated if not overly impressed.


My main course was a generous and professionally-cooked chunk of veal sat alongside what were described as "seasonal" vegetables but contained another asparagus shoot (note to Andaman: Green asparagus can generally only be described as "in season" around springtime). The veal jus was rich and silky, the vegetables cooked extremely well and the meat itself was as you'd expect veal to taste - rather characterless but juicy and pleasant. It was another solid dish, enjoyable but rather corporate.


For what would have been our pre-dessert had we had time for a dessert, the wooden presentation block returned, this time holding a little cone of delightfully zesty raspberry mousse (there's that seasonality again) alongside a nut-covered bite-size block of ice-cream. These were, again, really excellent and brought pangs of regret that we hadn't had time for the full tasting menu. Perhaps Andaman's cooking style works better on these petit plats than when charged with more substantial dishes - others certainly have had good things to say about the Full Monty - but I shouldn't really be making excuses for a place like this.


I don't want anyone to think I was disappointed or even underwhelmed with my meal at Andaman. In the context of some of the dross that passes for restaurant food in the capital, it's very good, with a potential to be excellent. But for a spot in an exclusive hotel gunning for (I'm led to believe) two Michelin stars from the get-go, I was preparing myself to be overwhelmed. And in the end I was just, kind of, "whelmed". It was nice, and not too wallet-blisteringly expensive, and we had a lovely evening. But if they think they can compete with the Square or Foliage based on this evening's performance, they have another thing coming.

7/10