Skylon, Southbank

Since the Pitt Cue van shut up shop for the winter, and ignoring the temporary Electrolux marketing campaign perched on top of the Festival Hall, there has been nowhere good to eat on the South Bank. "But what about Skylon?" I hear some of you say. OK, let me rephrase that... nope, sorry, there is still nowhere good to eat on the South Bank.

Oh, it's OK I guess, in a beige, Michelin-frotting, tourist-baiting kind of way. It's just that in a year when London's restaurants have, at all levels, proved themselves once and for all to be the envy of the world, Skylon feels tired and dull, a 90s throwback of obsequious service and soft furnishings that has survived, it seems, purely thanks to a nice (but by no means knockout) view of the Thames and a never-ending supply of sufficiently moneyed overseas visitors.

Perhaps the Grill area would have been less painful than the formal restaurant; it certainly would have been cheaper. But sadly last night this had already hit its quota and so, telling ourselves it was Christmas and pay-day and "Christ, it can't be that bad can it", we shuffled over to the fayn dayning (© Marina O'Loughlin) side of the room.

Call me spoiled, call me hopelessly ungrateful and out of touch, call me a whingeing little good-for-nothing who should stick to reviewing burgers (see the comments on blog posts passim for more suggestions in this vein) but every next word of the Skylon menu made me sigh a little harder. It's a list of dishes expertly designed by someone who knows exactly what London diners wanted fifteen years ago - Beetroot/ Salmon/ Crab/ Scallops for starters, Halibut/ Salmon/ Duck/ Chateaubriand for mains, Panacotta/ Chocolate fondant/ Crepes Suzetes[sic]/ Cheese (£7 supplement, 'natch) for desserts. And at £45 for three courses, it's pushing towards what you might expect to pay in (to pick a few), Racine, Medlar and Bistrot Bruno Loubet, all of whom have more style and panache in their coatroom tags than Skylon have in their entire offering.

"Canapés", an outside-catering standard mini quiche and some kind of duck paté on toast, arrived carelessly arranged and while my friend was in the loo. Then before we'd had a chance to try either of them, the starters, too, arrived - mine a well-timed and nicely seasoned portion of room-temperature quail accompanied by pellets of dry couscous and a tiny dollop of yoghurt. It needed a sauce, but it also needed to be a few degrees hotter and not looking like it had been hanging around for twenty minutes. My friend's crab was heavy on soily brown meat and as a result tasted cheap, like something out of a jar of Shipham's.

With the assumption that you couldn't cock up a chateaubriand too badly we'd ordered this to share, and in fact it wasn't bad - nicely medium-rare with a decent crust and seasoned well. The potato & ceps fondant was very rich but reasonably enjoyable in a sloppy, mushroomy kind of way and the Madeira jus showed someone in the kitchen knew what they were doing, but the beef wasn't of particularly high quality and we found ourselves relying too much on accompanying veg (salsify and shallots amongst others) to pep it up. There was a whacking £12 supplement for it, too.

Although the cheese trolley looked promising from a distance, ultimately the idea of getting the hell out of there proved more inciting than the chance Skylon may redeem themselves in the final hour, so we paid up - £78 a head with one glass of house champagne each and a bottle of one of the cheapest wines on the list. It was, like the Oxo tower just further down the river, a complete waste of time and money, an anachronistic bear-trap of a place hoovering up Southbank revellers while their guard is down after too many cups of Christmas Market Glühwein. Well, at least that was my mistake. But it won't be one I'll make again.

4/10

Spot the odd photo out - my own shots in the dark restaurant came out so universally badly that I thought a sneaky press shot might be OK just this once.

The Oxo Tower, Southbank

Nothing was quite right about our meal at the Oxo Tower restaurant. But before you settle down for a long and satisfying dose of schadenfreude, I should also say that nothing was that bad about it either. Everything, from the decor to the service to drinks and (most importantly) the food weaved a fine line between disappointing and just about acceptable, never dropping below the former and rarely rising above the latter, and so I can neither wholeheartedly recommend it or condemn it. It's a frustrating place, wowing you with superficial glamour while never quite satisfying on any other level.


Take that view, for example. The Oxo Tower is on the 8th floor of a building right on the south bank of the river Thames and is blessed with one of the most fantastic vistas in the city, a grand, sweeping panorama encompassing St Paul's cathedral all the way round to the Savoy hotel. Quite understandably the staff are keen to show it off, and we were offered a seat on the terrace accompanied by cocktails and nibbles. But while I should have been enjoying the view I couldn't help being distracted by the scruffy old uncomfortable chairs, the weird Astroturf on the floor which made me feel like I was sitting in a B&Q garden furniture display, and the regular misuse of apostrophes in the cocktail menu. Also, am I wrong to expect a lychee and rose petal martini to be pink or at least be garnished with rose petals? It tasted OK (and was "only" £10, actually a pretty good price for a cocktail these days) but again, there was just that overwhelming sense of "not quite". The nibbles were pretty interesting though, a fancy black box with drawers containing olives, home made (and very good) pork scratchings and some delicate potato crisps.



Once reseated inside, the general sense of discomfort only continued. So keen are Oxo Tower to show off their fantastic view that there is absolutely no guard against the early summer sun, and anyone unlucky enough to be seated facing west had to squint at their date and the table in front of them until sundown. And yet, eating with one hand and using the other as a visor, an amuse of gaspacho was genuinely lovely, well seasoned and with nice fresh vegetable flavour. Perhaps the food would be worth it after all.



A quail starter was nearly right. Clearly a lot of work had gone into boning the teeny leg and breast portions, and the selection of summer vegetables was cooked perfectly and very pretty. But the bird itself was soggy, smelling rather more of the oil it was cooked in than of nice fresh poultry; it seemed they had sacrificed a nice browned skin and crispy texture for tender moist flesh with slower cooking. Which is a bit of a shame. In a similar vein, a crab starter was fairly underwhelming, just a blob of fresh crab meat and salad, although an accompanying mini rye loaf was very good indeed, as was the selection of house breads. Whoever's in charge of baking at Oxo Tower knows what they're doing.


Mains were more disappointing still. Despite being told the lamb came medium rare, it was overcooked and chewy, didn't have a great deal of flavour and was rather a chore to eat, although the accompanying cheese "crumble" (kind of a mini cottage pie) was - bizarrely - gorgeous. And I don't know what they'd done to my lemon sole, but this usually robust and flavoursome fish was bland and mushy, in dire need of seasoning - or something - to lift it, and the collection of insipid vegetables and froth beneath tasted like pond water. Even the "caviar" on top was muted, with hardly any flavour at all.



Although we skipped dessert, they were nice enough to bring what would otherwise have been the complimentary pre-dessert of raspberry panacotta. It was nice enough, but certainly nothing interesting enough to make us wish we'd gone for a full extra course. Same goes for the petits fours.



The bill for two came to £141. We had ordered a £36 bottle of Beaujolais and a £4.50 side of French beans, but that total doesn't include the cocktails (which they strangely didn't charge us for); as I say, none of it was technically inedible but I think I am entitled to expect a little more dazzle from a meal that sits alongside places like the ever-reliable Galvin @ Windows in this price category and style of cuisine. And Galvin can even beat them on the view. For somewhere that asks so much of your wallet, the Oxo Tower never gives enough back to represent value for money, and value for money is really what it's all about. The restaurant was at capacity last night - clearly there are enough people who think "never mind the food, what about the view", but I'm afraid I'm not one of them. And I can't see myself returning.

5/10



This post was originally written in May 2011

The Pitt Cue Co., Southbank

Sometimes it feels like when it comes to food (and many other things besides, without going into too much detail), you always want what you can't have. My obsession (I may as well face facts, it is an obsession) with burgers, something I've kept reasonably under control in the last few months but still bubbles just under the surface like a dormant addiction, was borne of a craving for decent US fast food joints like Shake Shack or In'N'Out, coupled with the fact that none such places existed in London. But then before too long came Byron, not perfect but pretty damn good for a chain, serving tasty pink burgers in cool minimalist surroundings, and soon after that the big boys got involved - Hawksmoor and Goodman both serving up their famously brilliant beef inside extensively researched (and thoroughly taste-tested) buns. Then finally, we were granted the Meatwagon, and at long last the very best west-coast US burgers had met their match in the capital. The dream was realised - and how we rejoiced.

So, once the Meatwagon had become my second home and I'd eaten my way through their menu too many times to count, attention drifted onto another staple of US comfort food that was desperately unrepresented in London - BBQ. I used to be a big fan of Bodean's, the mini chain of smokehouses that are scattered around some unlikely locations in London (Clapham, Fulham, and so on) but to say they've gone off the boil in recent years is a bit like saying that Nottingham Forest aren't quite the dominant force in European football they once were. Each subsequent visit was like watching another set of needles fall off a dying Christmas tree, until eventually we are left with a sad, bare shell - the basic structure and purpose of the place is still there, but none of the joy and life. And the less said about Barbecoa the better; I foolishly allowed myself to hope that a restaurant backed by the might of the Jamie Oliver empire may have amounted to little more than a confusing, directionless menu of massively overpriced commodity meat. How wrong I was.


And yet who would have guessed, after all these years, that the holy grail of succulent pulled pork, crispy charred chicken wings and heavenly slow-roasted brisket lay not in a gleaming city-centre 160-cover concept restaurant but in an unassuming food truck parked under Hungerford Bridge on the Southbank? The Pitt Cue Co. is a modest operation at first glance - just three guys dishing out paper boxes of BBQ food to the hungry masses, punctuated by the occasional train rumbling far overhead - but there is enough thought, expertise and painstaking attention to detail gone into every single thing they produce to make the senior management of anywhere else in London foolish enough to claim to serve "authentic" US BBQ break down and weep.



Pulled pork is where this kind of food begins and ends, and Pitt Cue have absolutely nailed their version, with huge, silky chunks of pork, slow-roasted Gloucester Old Spot I believe, impossibly soft and melty and yet - crucially - not unpleasantly greasy. Perhaps this is where lesser versions have been going wrong - you need a big animal with plenty of fat to allow for the slow cooking to loosen and tenderise the flesh without it running horribly stringy, as any number of jaw-achingly tough examples I've suffered elsewhere have demonstrated. God knows how much of a profit they're making on £7 for this clearly top quality protein, not to mention some wonderfully smoky beans and crispy slaw shot through with fresh parsley, but for now let's not worry about such things. The Pitt Cue Co pulled pork is priceless.


Having scoffed the pig in a happy few seconds, I took a portion of chicken wings with me for the walk back to the office. Marinated overnight, skewered on a rotisserie for slow-roasting then finished above direct flames for crisping up, these were also as close to perfect as I can imagine. The marinade was smoky and rich with a complex mixture of herbs and spices that brought to mind a Mediterranean barbecue, and they came not only with more of that lovely slaw but a huge chunk of fresh grilled bread - from Wild Caper bakery in Brixton I was told. The best bit I found was the very tips of the ends of the wings, which had blackened and caramelised into a kind of chicken scratching.


As I was on my own this lunchtime there was only so much I could put back, and I'm afraid I can't tell you about the brisket, though it certainly looked the part, or even the ribs which appear on the menu only from 4pm daily. But on a previous flying visit, too brief to sample food but determined to try something, I ordered a "pickleback" - a chaser of rye whiskey and a shot of home made pickle juice. If you think that sounds challenging or unusual, then you haven't tried it - something about washing back a mouthful of fire water with sharp, softly sugary pickle just absolutely works and is, as far as I'm aware, unique (at least in this country) to this cheerfully experimental and idiosyncratic little venture. It is the pickleback, in fact, which acts as the easiest shorthand to the whole approach that Pitt cue Co. take - fun without being careless, obsessive about the details but not at the expense of taste, everything I ate or drank was perfectly judged and perfectly delicious. Did I mention they sell Brewdog beers by the can? Oh, stop reading and just go. Go now.

9/10

Read equally glowing reports of the Pitt Cue Co. here, here and here.