Life&Style bars and bites

Thursday, March 27, 2014 METRO 65

Seriously, keep it simple

RESTAURANT REVIEWS SIXTYONE RESTAURANT HHHII

LONDON BARS MUSTS & MAYBES

MUST
Knowhere Special, 296 Kentish Town Road, NW5. facebook.com/ knowherespecial Rock up to this K-Town den for apricot gin and Darjeeling Rosy Lee. Try smoked vodka sour served with salmon pancakes. Order Lost in Alaska and lose the plot in one of KSs teeny vaults, made for getting messy with mates.

HEFS over complicate things. There are exceptions but most of them need a good 20 years to get all the uncalled-for elaboration and whimsy out of their system. Being a chef is about acquiring knowledge and perfecting techniques, especially if youre like Sixtyone restaurants Arnaud Stevens, who previously headed up the kitchen at Maze and has worked for the likes of Pierre Koffmann and Gary Rhodes. The temptation to show off all that assiduously gathered skill is often too much to resist and the result is dishes such as Stevenss signature mussels, bread soup and pork belly. Sounds good, doesnt it? And for the most part it is the mussels have been beautifully cooked and are tender and delicious, the little cube of pork meat equally so and the bread soup, poured over the ingredients at the table, is velvety smooth and eminently quaffable. Theres just one problem: a quenelle of white chocolate ganache that appears to have wandered over from the dessert menu by mistake. Its supersickly sweet and clashes horribly with the rest of the dish. Imagine dipping a Milkybar into your Cup-a-Soup and youre close to recreating the experience. No one in their right minds would ever do such a thing. Rabbit bolognese is as salty as a Chubby Brown routine and could be made with Soylent Green, so anonymous is the flavour of the meat. Replacing pasta

MAYBE

The Finborough Arms, 118 Finborough Road, SW10. www.finborough arms.co.uk Rescued from developers, this landmark theatre pub has simple, cheery decor and 14 draught craft ales and ciders Portobello Market Porter and Camden Town Flue Faker are two good reasons to support your new local, K&C peeps! Keith Barker-Main Beige palace: Chef Arnaud Stevenss deconstructed dining room
with a skein of carefully twirled salsify ribbons is a recherch move that robs the dish of texture. Swapping Parmesan for ground almonds that taste of precisely nothing just makes me want to march into the kitchen and shout: Stop it! Happily, these dishes seem to be aberrations. Thinly sliced discs of octopus carpaccio, colourfully scattered with tiny dice of confit red pepper and green blobs of sorrel pure, has excellent flavour and looks as pretty as a picture by Italian artist Vittore Carpaccio, after whom the dish is named. Stevens proves he does know the meaning of restraint, relying on the complex and deep flavour of sliced roast Herdwick mutton loin to speak for itself with the wonderfully seasonal accompaniment of a wild garlic broth and the very first Jersey Pearls (pebble-sized Jersey Royal potatoes) of the year. According to its website, Sixtyone offers deconstructed fine dining. No one loves a smart alec, so Im not going to ask how a chef applies Derridas method of philosophical and literary analysis or a popular postmodern architectural style to cooking someones tea. So lets assume by deconstruction they mean the removal of table linen in the none-morebeige dining room. The waiters are casually dressed and so chummy and upbeat they could get a job in a Jamies Italian, if making delicious mushroom consomm amuse-bouches table side doesnt work out for them. Dining at Sixtyone is an enjoyable experience, despite the kitchen being too clever by half. But once theyve exorcised the spectre of complexity and embraced simplicity, it will be hard to beat for a serious foodie night out. Andy Lynes

29TH & 30TH MARCH

BORDON MILITARY CAMP, HAMPSHIRE (1 HOUR FROM LONDON)

LAST CHANCE TO BUY TICKETS

A meal for two, with wine, water and service, costs about 115. 61 Upper Berkeley Street, W1. sixtyonerestaurant.co.uk

THIS IS NO ORDINARY OBSTACLE COURSE...

Traverse a punching wall. Cross the Newtons cradle. Take on the big balls. Conquer the Travelator. Get revenge on pigeons. 10k or 10miles. You decide!

COMPAGNIE DES VINS SURNATURELS HHHHI

A 7ft waiter combined with lowslung seating made Compagnie Des Vins a somewhat surreal experience. Tall waiters aside, almost everything else about this wine bar from the team behind the Experimental Cocktail Club, an offshoot of the hip Parisian cocktail outpost of the same name thats spawned a small international empire (theyve opened in New York), demands to be taken seriously. Not least the wine list, which is aimed at oenophiles, actual and aspiring. The compact menu of small plates is equally accomplished. Lentil and bacon soup from the daily specials is rich and earthy, the way only the freshest specimens do. The choux pastry on a chocolate clair, gilded with mandarin and PX sherry, is superb; even better is the delicate, perfumed elegance of bergamot cake with caramelised apples and toffee. But is being tucked away in Neals Yard near the new La Compagnie Delicatessen the right place for this kind of sophistication? Joe Warwick Mountain Chicken (aka frogs legs) comes with a crisp buttermilk batter, and a helping of burrata bursts in the mouth A meal for two, with wine, water and service, costs about 100. 8-10 Neals Yard, WC2. www.cvssevendials.com

To buy tickets & for more event info visit:

RoughRunner.com
The Princes Trust registered charity numbers 1079675 and SC041198