Cord, Fleet Street

Basil Fawlty:
Are you dining here tonight, here in this unfashionable dump?

Mr. Johnson:
I wasn't planning to.

Basil Fawlty:
No, not really your scene is it?

Mr. Johnson:
I thought I'd try somewhere in town. Anywhere you recommend?

Basil Fawlty:
Well, what sort of food were you thinking of... fruit or...?

Mr. Johnson:
Anywhere they do French food?

Basil Fawlty:
Yes, France I believe. They seem to like it there, and the swim would certainly sharpen your appetite. You'd better hurry, the tide leaves in six minutes.

I make no apologies for starting by quoting the greatest sitcom of all time - in fact I probably should do it more often - but I couldn't think of a better way of illustrating the fact that back in the dark days of the 70s, when British food was largely brown Windsor soup, lamb casserole and gralefrit, we idolised the food of France, where they did things properly. Whipped into shape back in the 19th century by towering figures like Escoffier, French cuisine was disciplined, classy and intelligent while we were none of these things, and it was hardly surprising that for most of the last century, posh food meant French food.

Fortunately, British cuisine can now hold its head up and is quite rightfully now considered amongst the worlds finest, but the fact remains that the French got there first, and at its best l'haute cuisine still has the capacity to stun, bewilder and delight. In London specifically I'm thinking of places like Les 110 de Taillevent or Otto's, where they do everything by the classical book - vol-au-vents, Canard à la Presse, Tournedos Rossini - to superb effect. And now (at least since summer last year), there's restaurant Cord on Fleet Street, serving food so unashamedly, strictly French it should arrive from the kitchen accompanied by a brass band playing La Marseillaise.

French haute cuisine of course isn't just about your three courses but the extra bits of service and flair that frame the evening into something even more special. I'm thinking of things like this dainty cup of cep mushroom velouté, an amuse bouche of precisely the correct seasonality and form, which displayed the skill of the kitchen - the broth was superbly light and buttery, packing a great mushroom flavour - as well as an indication that Cord know exactly what time of year it is (not always a given in every top-end London restaurant, let me tell you), and exactly how to make the most of what's available. Cord are so proud of this dish, in fact, that they attempted to serve it again about 5 minutes after we'd finished the first - a charming little trip up that just made me like them more (we politely refused, though it took quite a bit of will power).

All the house bread was fantastic, but our favourite - inevitably - was a kind of pastry bun thing kind of halfway between a croissant and brioche. It was so distressingly moreish I literally had to move my side plate to the other end of the table to stop myself picking at it throughout the meal, and the accompanying butters - one salted, one parsley and escargot (topped with an actual snail!), did nothing to help with that dilemma.

The a la carte proper began, for me at least, with this lobster and sea urchin raviolo, a combination of skills and techniques that would send any lesser kitchen running in terror, but was absolutely beautifully done here. From the dainty but firm pasta to the perfect balance of flavours in the mixture (just enough sea urchin to provide a spritz of the seaside without overwhelming) to a rich lobster bisque, creamy and salty and seafoody, this was a world class example of the best French cooking. Had each element of this dish been less than brilliant, the whole house of cards would have come crashing down, but as I said, they know what they're doing at Cord. Masterful stuff.

Lamb sweetbreads were equally classy, glazed with late autumn herbs (chervil, sorrel, cobnuts) and served with a glossy, rich veal jus and what I think was a supremely smooth parsnip purée. One of the criticisms levelled at top-end French food is that it can be overly fussy, with too many pointless frills and textures vying for attention. This of course is not necessarily true, as demonstrated by this starkly beautiful dish, where the main ingredient is highlighted and enhanced by some extremely tasteful sauces and sides, and yet still feels as French as anything.

It's true to say, however, that there was quite a lot going on with my main course, a chicken supreme stuffed with black truffle presented with such straight, geometric exactness it was faintly exhausting to imagine the amount of work that might have gone into it. And again, all this visual flair would have been for nothing had it not impressed otherwise, but the chicken breast was beautifully tender, the black truffle mixture was rich and comforting, and the foie gras sauce impressed just as much with its buttery meatiness as the lobster bisque had with its rich seafood. Also, alongside the main tranche of chicken and truffle came a selection of winter veg in various forms that brought all sorts of colour and texture. So yes, at the Frenchier-end of French food, but all the better for it, in my opinion.

A nice bright-white fillet of brill, topped with various seaside succulents and served on a bed of coco beans, mussels and champagne velouté, also boasted a variety of clever techniques (I do love a split sauce) but made sure the main ingredient was cooked just-so, and everything else just helped make the most of it. Each time a new dish arrived with yet another fantastic sauce, it was an excuse to soak it up with more superb house bread, which just made you enjoy the experience even more.

"Black forest" was a kind of deconstructed schwarzwälder käsekuchen, with a white chocolate cheesecake base, cheery sorbet, a booze-soaked real cherry and a large fake cherry made out of kirsch mousse. Like everything that had come before, it was a great concept thoughfully and intelligently realised, with every element complimenting the whole perfectly. Oh, and some micro herbs and flowers which cleverly echoed an autumn forest floor.

Pistachio soufflé was another masterclass, but then that should hardly be a surprise by now. The soufflé held its shape well, the texture was smooth and satisfying without being too eggy, and the pistachio ice cream had a lovely strength of nutty flavour.

Two things to mention before we finish. Firstly, the prices - yes, I know. French haute cuisine has never, and will never be cheap, and with starters costing as much as you might expect to pay for mains in any given gastropub, you'd better hope they'd be worth the outlay. And I realise this is an invite (I realise I've been on a lot of invites recently; it's just the way it's worked out, honestly, there's no grand plan) and I didn't have to deal with the full weight of the bill, I still know value when I see it, and you can definitely pay more for worse at lots of different 5* hotel restaurants I can think of. Naming no names (DM me for details).

Secondly, Cord is a play on words of sorts, coming as it does from the Cordon Bleu group, with test kitchens and private dining events downstairs separate from their main campus in Bloomsbury. But I am assured (and I did ask) that both front of house and kitchen are selected purely based on ability, and trainees occasionally do a day or two here as part of their course, the core staff come from far and wide. And it really shows - apart from the incident with the double velouté, everything was on point and attended to, and everything from timing to execution was fairly close to faultless. Staff, in fact, seemed to be enjoying themselves just as much as we were, and why shouldn't they?

So yes, unfashionable as it has occasionally been to say so, French fine dining has never really gone away, it just needed the right opportunity to shine. Cord is that opportunity and then some, a reminder that when done well, there's no such thing as bad cuisine, just bad restaurants. That in 2023, over a century since London started falling in love with this kind of thing, it's still finding new opportunities to endear itself to the city. Now, isn't it about time we started doing the same for Paris?

9/10

I was invited to Cord and didn't see a bill. If you fancy grabbing a table yourself - and I very much suggest you do - use this link so they know you came from here. I don't get any reward, it'll just give me a bit of bragging power.

Fenchurch, the City

There are many benefits to spending an extended period in Southern California, not least, for this pasty Londoner, seeing the sun for more than a few minutes a day, but it wreaks havoc on the old blogging schedule. Believe it or not, this visit to the Fenchurch Grill at the top of the Walkie Talkie happened all the way back in August, an invite to investigate the changes made under a new kitchen regime and (from a personal point of view) a chance to see how the plants in the Sky Garden had matured and bedded in over the last 4 years. I'm still slightly obsessed with the whole Sky Garden idea; I grew up on Sci-Fi concepts like Empire Strikes Back's Cloud City and Silent Running, and the idea of a lush temperate rainforest sailing half a mile up above the polluted streets of a city is quite thrilling.

And yes, I know the ol' Talkie has its detractors (blimey does it have its detractors) but this is one of those times when being a complete pleb when it comes to architecture and the visual arts generally has its benefits - however aesthetically bruising buildings like this are to others, I can quite easily enjoy an evening in them, because I like being 50 floors up having a nice dinner in a sky garden. So there.

A dinner, incidentally, which began with a little amuse of cauliflower mousse with hazelnuts and truffle which made a very tasteful and interesting start to proceedings. I always think it's a gamble for kitchens that decide to serve an amuse; get it wrong - too boring, too big, too clumsy - and you're better off just leaping straight into starters, but get it right and it's a nice little overture for the food to come, a dramatic opening fanfare (like the one at the beginning of the Star Wars movies, but tastier).

Starters were equally poised, precise and enjoyable. Quail had been portioned into breast, beautifully tender with a layer of crushed hazelnuts delicately spread on a golden brown, crisp skin, and the confit leg had a great texture, neither too chewy or too dry. Neither of these things are by any means a given when it comes to quail. There's something about the combination of poultry, toasted hazelnuts and cream/white wine sauce that takes me back to childhood - I think my mum used to make something similar, possibly an old Delia Smith recipe - so I found this starter particularly evocative.

Steak tartare rarely survives being buggered about with (technical term) too much, but by virtue of high quality meat, tenderly braised beets and a presentational eye for the colourful and geometrically precise, the other starter was received just as well. It's a good control variable, steak tartare - everyone knows what a good one tastes like in theory, but not very many kitchens can make that theory a successful reality. This more than passed muster.

I was looking forward to my main even more after I discovered how well they'd treated the quail, and yes, this chicken had a similarly lovely crisp, bronzed skin, an invitingly soft flesh and was complimented perfectly by grilled corn, girolles and some salty cubes of pancetta.

The other main was cod & fennel, a tried and tested combo, and was a nicely cooked bit of fish but I do wonder at the logic of putting soggy green leaves (spinach?) on top of what looks like would otherwise have been a nice crisp golden skin, and then putting croutons on top of that. Surely it would have been a better texture - certainly better visually - to leave the cod skin as-is, and put the spinach & breadcrumbs on the side? But there was more than enough to enjoy in the cod itself, and the sides were strong.

To be perfectly honest, I have completely forgotten what these desserts were, which either tells you how much wine I'd drunk by that point, or that they weren't particularly memorable. Anyway they look nice enough don't they? Look, if you want professionalism, buy a paper.

And if all the above doesn't convince you, and you needed any more reasons to visit Fenchurch, consider this. Most nights the queue for the Sky Garden stretches right out of the security area and halfway down Philpot Lane. But a booking at Fenchurch not only guarantees you a lovely Modern British meal with friendly service and cracking views, but the ability to smugly skip the queues for the lift and still leave you with the option of mooching around the Sky Garden before or after dinner. Personally, I'd recommend before, as later in the evening they have DJs playing loud music and it tends to get a bit more full-on, but some of you may not be quite so middle aged.

However you enjoy your visit, Fenchurch stands as yet another nail in the coffin of the old Tall Restaurant Syndrome, which states that the quality of food in a place is inversely proportional to the quality of the view. Not only is the Sky Garden well worth a visit in its own right, but if the dishes here - precise, intelligent, attractive - were served in a nuclear bunker 200 feet underground it would still be worth a wholehearted recommendation. And a wholehearted recommendation is what I'm going to give - after so many years in this lofty space, with presumably all the temptation in the world to serve bland international bistro fare only good enough to keep the tourists happy, Fenchurch continues to improve and now stands as one of the best restaurants in the City.

8/10

I was invited to Fenchurch and didn't see a bill, but the above with a glass or two of wine would have come to about £80-£90 per person based on the online menu prices.

EDIT: I am reliably informed (thank you PR) that the desserts were Roasted peach, olive oil biscuit and Wigmore ice cream, and 64% Manjari chocolate, caramelized hazelnut, and cereal milk ice cream.

Northbank, St Paul's

You've probably never heard of Northbank. I say this with some confidence because I'd never heard of it, and as I spend most of my waking hours thinking about where to eat next and have the Hotdinners' "Recently Opened" list as my homepage, for somewhere to sneak under my radar for so long (it's been around since 2007) takes some doing. But even the most restaurant-spoddy of us (Zeren Wilson I'm thinking of you) have our blind spots, and I know for a fact there are a good number of good, solid places that are quietly getting on with the business of feeding people straightfowardly decent food without the distraction of having to appeal to the Instagram crowd, or even (ahem) fickle, trend-chasing bloggers.

But it's no good being a decent, mid-priced restaurant if you can't make the numbers work, and so Northbank have very wisely (and fortunately for me) invested in a bit of PR. And it's at their invite I set out one cold, rainy evening to this welcoming space on the Thames Path near the Millennium Bridge, to find out what all the lack of fuss is about.

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The Old Fashioned at @northbanklondon is rolled around with cigar smoke and tastes incredible. Like mahogany bookcases and St James members clubs. #invite

A post shared by Chris Pople (@chrispople) on Oct 23, 2019 at 10:51am PDT

The first thing I should say about Northbank is that their bar is knocking up some absolutely great cocktails, and has a nice comfortable place to drink them in (plus an outside terrace), so if nothing else it should probably feature on your list of places to pop in for a classy drink in the Blackfriars/St. Paul's area. Above is an Old Fashioned flavoured with cigar tobacco, one of the best twists I've enjoyed on this classic in many months. It's also £9, about half what you'll pay in some joints.

Northbank is (mainly) a seafood restaurant, and so the only sensible thing to start with is a great big tray of oysters - natives, as well, always a nice surprise to see. They were great, although I do prefer it when restaurants serve oysters on ice; there seems something risky about eating a room-temperature oyster although I'm sure there was nothing to worry about. The mignonette was nicely made, too.

Just to be contrary in a seafood restaurant, and on the advice of my waiter, I went for venison for a main course. It arrived rosy pink, with a faintly underpowered but still pleasant game jus, and some roast winter veg, and was in every way straightforwardly enjoyable.

Less successful was a bowl of mash, which had been over-whipped and was rather sticky and glue-y. It contained a good amount of butter, and the potatoes had a nice flavour, it was just a shame that the technique had let them down. Still, I did eat it.

Crab linguine was fantastic, though. A huge bowl of it (which you might hope for, for £22), and well made pasta that had a good bite without being too crunchy, this was a great vehicle for a generous proportion of fresh crab, with just enough chilli to create a gentle heat and a little dash of lime for acidity. There was also a lot of garlic, perhaps too much for some but I like garlic. 2019 truly was the Year of the Pasta restaurant, and it seems even places that don't have it as their main feature are upping their pasta game. It's good to see.

Desserts were a treacle tart, which was warm and bubbly and comforting, presented with some nice smooth ice cream...

...and a slightly-less-successful summer fruits and chocolate cake thing which could have done with a bit more sugar. However, the sorbet was lovely, so it was worth ordering it just for that really.

So, no eye-catching concepts, no explicitly 'grammable content, no fuss, no fanfare. But Northbank deserves your time and your money because it does what it does competently, quietly, and elegantly, and with views over the Thames. I hesitate to mention service on an invited review, but I'm sure such enthusiasm and efficiency can't just be magicked up when they know they're being reviewed, so I'm going to give them thumbs up for that too. In short, they're doing plenty right and not much wrong and that should be more than enough for most people. Even the fickle bloggers.

7/10

I was invited to Northbank and didn't see a bill.

Bob Bob Cité, The City

I should start this post with a kind of disclaimer. This will not be a normal review, partly because we didn't pay for any of the following and also because after so many years, and so many wonderful caviar- and champagne-soaked evenings in the glorious Soho location, the chances of my being even the least bit impartial about a brand-spanking-new Bob Bob are nearly zero.

So no, this won't be a normal review, but then Bob Bob Cité, like Bob Bob Ricard before it, is nothing like a normal restaurant, and almost defies criticism based on the usual criteria used for judging the success or otherwise of a place to eat. It's hugely reductive - and largely unfair - to say that not many people went to BBR for the food - they did, of course, because it was lovely, from their luxury fish pie glazed immaculately with the restaurant's logo, to their famous Eton Mess en perle which arrived in a meringue globe dissolved dramatically at the table. But even these theatrics inevitably played second fiddle to the extraordinary interior and rarefied atmosphere of the building itself, where every inch glowed with marble and brass, and backlit "Press for Champagne" buttons cooed seductively in the booths.

By employing the services of big-name chef Éric Chavot at the new site, Bob Bob Cité managed to grab a few headlines many months before their doors opened. Chavot won two Michelin stars when he worked at the Capital back in the day, and though I hate Michelin and everything they stand for, usually when on familiar - ie. French - ground, their bourgeois opinions aren't so easily dismissed. He is clearly a great chef, whose style fits around the super-luxe Bob Bob aesthetic wonderfully, and whose food would be a reason to visit even if you were to enjoy it in a reclaimed knackers yard under a railway bridge. They've upped the food game, in fact, to such a degree that it now stands alongside the best of Henry Harris' uber-gastropubs (the Coach in Clerkenwell, the Hero of Maida or the Crown in Chiswick) for this kind of thoughtful, precise, classical French cooking.

So let's stick with the food for a bit. This particular evening began with a glass of Krug champagne and 20g of Russian caviar because that's absolutely how all evenings should begin at Bob Bob. Presumably Chavot didn't have much involvement in this, or the excellent warm baguette which arrived at the same time, but whoever opened the caviar tin and poured the champagne did an excellent job. Service, needless to say, is just as sparkling as it is in Soho.

French Onion soup was the first real Chavot dish, and he played an absolute blinder. I can find quite a lot to enjoy in even quite a humble FOS, but when treated to good beef stock, and aged Comté, this classic really shines. One word of warning though - the next time I tackle one of these in a white T-shirt, I'm going to tuck a napkin down my neck. Because once the final morsels of glossy, beef-soaked caramelised onions had been mopped up, I looked like I'd gone for a swim in the stuff.

Duck egg "au plat" was a kind of posh brunchy affair, with a huge fried duck egg resting on top of addictively salty cubes of cured beef and pickled veg. One minor criticism that cropped up was that the advertised "Gruyère and truffle foam" played rather a subdued role, and though I'm sure Chavot put exactly the amount of "Gruyère and truffle foam" on the plate that he thought fit, I'm afraid when I'm promised "Gruyère and truffle foam", I want a lot of it. Otherwise, this was very lovely.

I love that Bob Bob Cité have snails on the menu, partly out of the usual foodie compulsion to appreciate the most unusual or unlikely ingredient on a menu, but also because I love the idea of eating such rustic French fayre in such an unlikely situation. They arrived, admittedly, slightly more fancied-up than usual, beneath a soft potato foam and studded with crunchy bacon bits, tasting earthy and rich and wonderful in their vivid green parsley sauce. Perhaps the French do know a bit about cooking, after all.

There are few more satisfying starters than steak tartare, and Bob Bob Cité's version has plenty to recommend it - good aged beef, the perfect balance of shallots and capers, a lovely soft quail's egg on top - even without 10g of Siberian caviar on top to turn it into the "Steak tartare impériale". Completely ludicrous, of course - I mean who on earth takes a perfectly decent dish and slaps a tablespoon of caviar on top - and yet, because this is Bob Bob and if anybody can get away with it, they can, it works. The seafood and the beef create a kind of extravagant surf'n'turf, every bit of it a joy.

Beef Wellington made great use of a different bit of cow - 35-day-aged fillet - presented first as a whole inside pastry, then taken away to be plated. Perfectly pink inside, once draped in truffle sauce it became the platonic ideal of a beef welly, immaculately executed and basically unimprovable in any way.

Lobster thermidor always struck me as a slightly bizarre thing to do to fresh seafood. I have a lot of time for many of the fine dining clichés that have been handed down through generations of mistachio'd and toque-hatted chefs - pommes Dauphinoise, tournedos Rossini, blanquette de veau to pick just three other Escoffier recipes - but loading a halved lobster with bechamel, egg yolks and cheese seems like a good way to simultaneously ruin both a cheese omelette, and a lobster. That said, the person who ordered this had absolutely nothing but praise for it, so perhaps I should wind my neck in.

Dover sole, served on the bone and topped with an interesting array of capers, gherkins and lemon, fell apart into nice meaty chunks and ate every bit as good as it looked. Classic French class.

Even sides were exemplary. Truffled mash was about 80% butter, which was entirely welcome, chips had a fantastic texture, crisp on the outside and creamy within, and some grilled hispi cabbage arrived charred and in a cloud of woodsmoke, as if it had just been lifted from the bonfire.

I'm not sure what happened to my photography in the final moments of my meal at Bob Bob Cité but there's every chance the surplus of champagne served to make me a little distracted. I have (vague) memories of being similarly... distracted after a vodka tasting evening at the Soho location, so clearly this is just something that happens when you put yourself in their hands. Anyway, desserts (as far as I know) were, like everything that came before, very French and very good. Rhum baba was soaked in alcohol (this is a good thing) and lemon meringue had all sorts of clever techniques happening at once, and bags of flavour in the lemon curd.

That's the food, then - all of it at least intelligently conceived and expertly constructed, a masterclass in French haute cuisine that lives up to every last penny of the rather 'haute' price points. People will come to Bob Bob Cité for the food, because it's great, and because fancy French, done as well as this, is almost a novelty in London in 2019 - blame changing trends and fashions, but also (mainly) blame rubbish hotel restaurants charging way too much for pretty poor examples of it. Eric Chavot's cooking is definitely worth the journey.

But if the food has stepped up a level, incredibly the design of the new place exists in a different stratosphere. I've been in some pretty fancy restaurants in my time, but Bob Bob Cité's extraordinary interior design feels genuinely otherworldly, like it's been lifted from some idealised futurist paradise. There's the attention to detail you'd expect from their fanatical approach to everything, from the dot-matrix display that ticks round the ceiling like a tongue-in-cheek nod to the local traders, and the hand-painted tableware emblazoned with an exquisitely tasteful font. But from the leather booths to the polished Art-Deco-by-way-of-Asgard chandeliers the place just sparkles. Just moving through it is like taking a mood-enhancing drug, one room in various brilliant shades of blue, another shining in pink and red. And as a backdrop to all that, floor to ceiling windows that provide a sweeping view over the Leadenhall's vast atrium and surrounding architectural marvels (the Gherkin, and the Lloyds building are neighbours). It's like eating and drinking on the set of some utopian Sci-fi. There is absolutely nothing else like it in the world, I'm sure.

So come for the food, by all means. Treat yourself to caviar and champagne, indulge in escargots and flat fish on the bone, and baked cheesey lobster. You'll enjoy it. You will. It's great. But if you agree that a large part of the, for want of a better word, experience of eating at the original Bob Bob Ricard is to be swept up in the grand theatrics of the room, resisting - and failing to resist - pressing the Press for Champagne button one last time, of knowing you're spending too much and drinking too much but never wanting it to stop, then I should warn you, this new site will test your resistance even further. If Bob Bob Ricard is the very definition of luxury, Bob Bob Cité is the future of indulgence itself - the new benchmark by which, from now on, anyone aiming to provide the ultimate restaurant experience will be judged. At any new opening across any of the bewildering number of new buildings that have swept across London in recent years, no matter how extensive the fit-out, no matter how big name the chef, expect to hear some variation of the following: "Well, it's good," they'll say, "but it's no Bob Bob Cité."

9/10

We didn't see a bill for any of the above, and given how much Krug and caviar was consumed, it could have been well north of £200/head. But it's worth pointing out that they do a chicken pie for £21 so you could go in, order that and a glass of Picpoul and escape for around £30. You won't do that - nobody will - but, you know, you could.