Popup restaurant for Haiti, Putney

Reviewing a "popup" restaurant can seem at best pointless, at worst almost cruel. With such limited availability you're very unlikely to be able to use the review as a guide to eat out, and there's a danger the whole post could just seem like a protracted "look what you missed out on" taunt. But A quick glance at the calendar over at the Putney Popup website reveals not only a few very tempting evenings still yet to sell out, including Atul Kochhar's Benares and Rowley Leigh's Le Café Anglais, but also a second date for Phil Howard of the Square, whose cooking I was lucky enough to enjoy last night.


I hadn't visited The Square since early 2008 and yet the memory of that wonderful meal still seems as vivid. Put simply, I believe it to be the best fine-dining experience it's possible to have in London, even though these days it has strong competition from both its sister restaurant The Ledbury and the still scandalously unstarred Launceston Place in Kensington. A charity popup restaurant isn't perhaps the fairest situation in which to assess Phil Howards team, who after all are trying their best in a different surroundings and with little to no 'bedding-in' time, but as I discovered last night, The Square at 80% is still a very satisfying experience indeed.


Two dainty amuses were the first to arrive, one a tiny cone containing what tasted quite like taramasalata, and another which looked like a small black bread roll and contained some sort of seafood paste (possibly squid). Clever cooking techniques and robust flavours - even more impressive in a temporary kitchen.


Beetroot and goats cheese is a tried and tested combination almost to the point of cliché - it seems every restaurant in the country has used these ingredients together at some point. But here, lightened with a clever balsamic 'cream' and using various different types (and colours) of beetroot it was lifted above the average. The vegetables were sweet and juicy, and shavings of parmesan added an umami kick.


It's no real insult to say that the "ravioli of scallops and langoustine claws" wasn't quite up to the level of the truly mindblowing "Cornish crab lasagne with basil cappuccino" I was served at The Square a couple of years ago - after all, I think that crab is probably the single nicest dish I've ever eaten in my life. But their skill with top quality ingredients was still stunningly evident, from the sweet, clementine-flavoured champagne foam to the lovely course texture of the seafood mix inside the perfectly cooked pasta. I suppose it could be argued that this wasn't the most attractive of dishes, but what it lacked in visual appeal it made up for in heady, velvety freshness.


Main course of smoked venison loin was even better. Sweet, impeccably cooked venison was arranged neatly on gorgeous creamed cabbage, and an interesting selection of root vegetables provided extra texture. It was all surrounded by a reduced sauce which was as good as any I've tried and provided a deep, silky bed for the venison and vegetables. This was most certainly a two Michelin star dish and all the more impressive for having been constructed in deepest Putney.


A pre-dessert was reminiscent of the Ledbury's famous summer fruits Bellini, which immediately begged the question, where did they get their summer fruits from? However all was forgiven on tasting it - perfectly balanced red fruit purée beneath a rich pink strawberry mousse, topped with a single light doughnut.


I had decided to go for the cheese course, and although I was perhaps slightly disappointed they hadn't brought over the complete cheese trolley from the mothership, they had nevertheless selected a very interesting plate of cheeses. Comté, Stinking Bishop and Tomme de somethingorother were as tasty as always, but were overshadowed by a simply stunning piece of Camembert, definitely the best Camembert I've ever tried. All the cheeses came from Paxton and Whitfield, so I'm going to make it my mission to track down some more for myself.


With petit fours of excellent nougat and a cup of fresh mint tea, we were done. The evening would have been worthwhile even if the food had not been delicious - the fact that it was also the best meal I had enjoyed in some time was a delightful bonus, and I'm pretty sure it wasn't just the smug sense of charity do-gooding that made it taste better. There's still time to snag a table for the next Howard evening on the 18th, so what are you waiting for? It's for a good cause, after all.

8/10

The meal at the Popup Restaurant in Putney cost £60 not including service and alcohol. Many thanks also to Rejina, my charming date for the evening.

Cheese and Biscuits Restaurant of the Year 2008 - Tayyab's, Whitechapel

It is perhaps a sign of these credit-crunchy times that, for me at least, 2008 was not quite as chock-full of Michelin starred, multi-course blowouts as 2007. And when I did occasionally push the boat out, results were mixed to say the least. Under the "disappointing and expensive" category are Texture, Quo Vadis, St John, Le Bouchon Breton and Andaman, all of which managed to present a bill of at least £70 a head and serve food which although not exactly bad came far short of being value for money. Only one fine dining restaurant - The Square, in Mayfair - do I consider worthy of the stratospheric prices they charge, and I hope to goodness that they steer a course through the tricky economic waters of 2009 as I intend to visit again as soon as my bank balance allows it. As for the others, well, we may be about to see a kind of culinary Darwinism at work. I would keep a close eye on some of those names above and see how many are here in twelve months time.

But I am not going to make The Square my Restaurant of the Year. Yes, it's served three of the best meals I've ever eaten, with dishes so perfectly judged in terms of presentation and taste that they can scarcely be bettered in the country, but at £100 a head that's exactly what you'd expect. Likewise Hawksmoor, which dishes out beautifully cooked steaks and wonderful cocktails and has become almost a second home for me in the last few months, but again you would damn well hope so too at £30 a plate, plus extra for chips. The Square and Hawksmoor have hit just the right point on the value for money graph and I'm quite happy for them, but perhaps a truly great restaurant needs something more - not just an ability to meet expectations but smash them into a billion pieces, and not just once or occasionally but again and again and again. And with that in mind, there could only ever really be one winner.

I have in the past moaned about the queues at Tayyab's, even going so far as to suggest an alternative to the daily scrum on Fieldgate Street. The crowds start congregating around 6pm, and by 7:30 or so they snake around the inside of the restaurant, past the sweet counter and back again and sometimes even out into the street, hundreds strong, day after day. And if you have to ask what restaurant in the world can possibly deserve this kind of fanatical devotion, then you haven't eaten there. Juicy, spicy seekh kebabs; sizzling hot platters of bright red lamb chops coated in addictive tandoori spicing that stain your hands for hours afterwards; masala fish which manages to be crispy on the outside and fluffy and moist inside, the robust spicing never overpowering the tilapia meat itself; and dry meat - oh, the dry meat. A heavenly concoction of spices and stock, reduced for so long it's become almost a concentrated meat purée, and yet containing chunks of miraculously tender lamb, the Tayyab's dry meat is a monumental achievement. It is also, as far as I am aware, unique to this restaurant.

One of Tayyabs' biggest fans, and this is saying something for a restaurant whose Facebook 'Appreciation Group' has over 1,000 members, is Gavin Baxter, who has been a regular since far before it became trendy amongst bandwagon-jumping foodies such as myself. Along with other members of the Opinionated About Forums he was an early advocate of the then still relatively unknown Pakistani grill house and was there for the ride as it expanded from a tiny canteen in an old newsagents to the former pub next door and subsequent fame and glory. Gavin signs off his OA forum posts with a quote from Benjamin Franklin on beer; it also struck me as an appropriate final word on my 2008 Restaurant of the Year, with one small alteration:

"Tayyab's is living proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy"

Looking forward to 2009, there are no prizes of any kind for guessing what I'm expecting this year's highlight to be. I'm afraid there are no available spaces for the trip to El Bulli in September, but rest assured I will write it all up in as much detail as circumstances allow, and I'll be thinking of everyone who didn't win the email lottery as I tuck into my spherical olives. I also promise to not be too smug and keep going on about it.

So, final "thank you"s to Simon Majumdar for mentioning me in the Times Online, to Niamh of Eat Like A Girl and Trusted Places, Helen of FoodStories, Lizzie of Hollow Legs, Charles and Joel of Tipped, Andy Hayler, Silverbrow and of course to everyone else following Cheese and Biscuits in such frankly baffling numbers. I hope you find enough here to entertain you in the year ahead. Cheers, and have a Melón con jamón on me: