Romance reviewed: Amersham Arms

You have to feel sorry for the chef at the Amersham Arms. After eating his home-made pie with hand-cut chips, it was clear that his home must be some giant processed-food factory, and his hands must have been cut off and replaced with square blades in order to slice these potatoes in to perfect 5mmx5mm French fries.

Either that, or someone is telling porkies.

Now, I have nothing against processed food, but when you’ve stepped into a place trying to pass itself off as a gastropub it smarts when you get the cuisine of a local chippy.

Doubly so when you take into account the Amersham has been bought up by those behind the Lock Tavern – a fine gastropub if there was one. As an indie-loving teenager, I remember the Lock when it was a horrid shack of a pub, with a fridge buzzing away in the garden, serving McCoys as it’s daily special. So as it triumphantly serves fat, juicy burger and chips that have actually been hand cut, it’s disappointing that it’s new venture could live up to the reputation that proceeds it.

Food: 5/10
Service: 5/10
Cost: £12, for 1 course, including 2 pints of beer

Amersham Arms
New Cross Road
London, SE14 6TY

Romance reviewed: Pulcinella

Italian is rarely my cuisine of choice when I dine out – it’s easy enough for me to make it at home that I resent handing over a tenner for someone else to do it for me.

So I’m even more annoyed with Pulcinella who took my tenner (and a bit more) and served up some tomato slop.

I should have known better when my companion and I walked into the Italian next door (The Amalfi) and found it heaving, while Pulcinella was half full at best. Another indicator would have been the waitress, who I can only describe as dim, rather than wilfully unhelpful.

After a brief tour of the restaurant, comprising of places we could sit which didn’t involve her serving us (a choice she made, not us) we were finally led to our seats, sandwiched so tightly between two other tables, I managed to treat some other diners to a nice view of my arse as I squeezed past them.

The poor service set the tone for the rest of the evening. The music sounded like a Worst-of of Turkish European Song Contest entries from the last 10 years.

Then there was the food. The Gnocci in tomato and ricotta sauce was so soggy it could have been pre-chewed. Served on a plate that felt like it was fresh from the fridge didn’t help much, neither did the ridiculous sprinkling of parsley. The Bruchetta also displayed attributes of sogginess – perhaps this was a theme I was missing?

Their famed pizzas didn’t seem like much either – they’re so low on toppings they have to list oregano as one.

The wine was generic, the décor beige and, yes, the service was utterly crap.

Food: 3/10
Service: 2/10
Cost: £40, for 1 course, including 2 glasses of wine

Pulcinella
Old Compton Street
London, W1d 5JX

Romance reviewed: Randall and Aubin

It’s takes a pretty special restaurant to make Saturday night in Soho sound like quiet country town. Randall and Aubin is one such place, but only because it’s so loud inside, that once you step to into Brewer Street your hearing has been damaged so much the noises of London’s drunken louts seem positively peaceful.

I know I sound like an old woman: “The music was so loud, when I go out I want to be able to have a conversation, not listen to pounding funky house.”

Randall and Aubin is suffering from a sense of confusion, one part cheesy gay dance club, one part romantic-as-hell couples cubby-hole. I can’t fault the food – my lobster was as sweet as nectar, the crab linguini rich and meaty, but the noise, oh my God the noise…

It was like eating in on of the clubs you’d find down the road in Leicester Square, but instead of bar snacks, I ate oysters and shellfish – soul food, date food, not stodgy, soak-up-the-alcohol nachos.

With two-seater booths around the walls, it looked like it was designed for couples, not gaggling groups of revellers to get bladdered. The wine list was thoughtful and comprehensive and it says a lot that despite, or perhaps because of, the noise the queue was still out the door at 9.30pm.

Even now, trying to define Randall and Aubin is making my head spin – is it the place to go before hitting Soho on a giant binge, if so, is ordering the prawns that good an idea?

Once it sorts out it’s identity crisis, this could be one of London’s finest restaurants.


Food: 9/10
Service: 6/10
Cost: £75, for 2 courses, including a bottle of wine

Randall and Aubin
Brewer Street
London, W1F 0SG

Romance Reviewed: Whighams Wine Cellar

I'd put eating at Whighams down as one of the biggest nights of gluttony I've ever enjoyed.

This Wine Cellar in Edinburgh is a dream of understated decadence. One half is decked out in fairly standard restaurant faire - all Beachwood tables and spot lighting - the other is like a collection of caves, dimly lit with candles and tea lights, like some French Resistance HQ from the 1940s.

The food itself was gout-inducingly rich. We started with Oysters, which tasted as if they were caught about 15 minutes before they were served. The menu was full of seafood staples - dressed crab, a platter that looked so full it could have been responsible for the North Sea over fishing crisis, we settled on fish cakes and a cut of fish I can't remember, because I was enjoying the white rioja a little too much…

But don't let my shortcomings detract from the splendour of Whighams. The service was attentive and knowledgeable, it a little on the slow side. It being a Sunday night and we being one of three tables occupied makes this a little difficult to forgive.

So an aperitif, starter, main, half a pudding and a bottle of wine came to about £80, the price my waistline paid, I shan't tell you.

Food: 9/10
Service: 7/10
Cost: £80, excluding tip

Whighams
Hope Street Lane
Edinburgh EH2 4EL

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

Romance reviewed: Andrew Edmunds

‘Don’t fuck him, don’t fuck him, don’t fuck him.’ It is with this thought that I find myself sitting across the table from my date inside London’s Most Romantic Restaurant.

Andrew Edmunds is the establishment which has won this acclaim. It’s smaller, darker and cheaper than the Ivy, but still serves its food ‘on a bed of’ rather than merely next to its vegetables.

This is our Third Date - The Sex Date, which is probably why I feel the need to keep my knickers clamped on, and maybe why he thought he should bring out the big guns.

Every diner in this tiny French restaurant is a couple – they coo, oooh and ahhh over the food, feeding each other forkfuls of creamy goodness. You’ll either find it sickening, or, well, no it is sickening, but the food does make up for it.

The menu changes daily, which makes me talking about my duck breast feel a little redundant. Generally speaking it’s that old addage, 'good food done well.' There’s chicken and mushrooms if you don’t like you’re food too out there and snails and offal if you do.

The wine list is comprehensive and the service friendly, although they tend to leave you to it, lest they interrupt a moment of rampant footsie.

Food: 9/10
Service: 8/10
Cost: (He paid, I didn't put out)

Andrew Edmunds
Lexington Street
London, W1F 0LW