Romance reviewed: Arbutus

What is it with puree? Puree is what you feed toddlers, no puree is what you try and feed toddlers, but they spit it out in disgust. So why am I sitting at an award-winning restaurant with it glaring up at me from the menu.

Pretentiousness in food is something I despise, and it’s pretentiousness (or perhaps alliteration) that could only explain why anyone would want to serve (or eat) potato puree. At least the stuff babies get is sweet.

Arbutus won the Time Out accolade for Best Restaurant in 2004. Last year the proprietors’ second venture, Wild Honey, took the title, so I gathered I was in for a treat.

Puree aside (I couldn’t bring myself to order it) perhaps my culinary apprehension may have left me with a boring option – meat and potatoes, or steak and potato dauphinoise. I quite like the fact the waitress didn’t bother to ask me how I wanted my £20 steak cooked – there was no option for me (or anyone else) to whimp out and go for medium, or well done, or sin-of-sins or medium rare (medium rare is how heathens and idiots have their steak, it doesn’t exist, there’s no in between).

The steak was rare, whether I liked it or not. Well, I say rare, what I mean is a bit grey and brown, the kind of colour beef goes when you leave it out too long. Still, the potaties were nice.

My vegetarian companion faired much better with the one meat-free option, gnocchi. It’s easy to forget how nice gnocchi can be when it’s not bland or swimming in cheese like a bad fondue, and Abutus ticked both of those boxes.

Still, some vegetables would have been nice.

Dessert was an apple tarte tartin. If you couldn’t tell it was apple because it was so sickeningly sweet that parts of your brain become overloaded with the sugar rush, then perhaps the leftover bits of core and seeds would give it away.

Disappointing.

Food: 4/10
Service: 4/10
Cost: £80, excluding tip

Arbutus
63-64 Frith Street,
London, W1D 3JW