Oxford Food Symposium 2010

Cured, Fermented and Smoked Foods at St Catherine's College

The Symposium hasn't really kicked off yet - the opening feast though was fun - the five long tables in the Dining Hall at St Catherine's College each had a braised salted Middle White Pig for them - loin, leg, saddle, ribs etc. They were cooked by Jeremy Lee of the Blue Print Cafe with half a dozen helpers. Pigs were kindly donated by Richard Vaughn of Huntsham Court Farm In Herefordshire - they are quite flavourful and fat infused - in other words, absolutely hog-whimperingly delicious. I now know why some people prefer them to Gloucester Old Spots.

This was the first course - Salt Cod, vegetables and aioli (courtesy of Brindisa, who also provided plateloads of Parma to eat in the garden.

However, the pig was stupendous - a very warming feeling when there are plates and plates being handed around with no hope of eating it all. And the white beans with parsley sauce and fat helped keep it real too.

More on the symposium tomorrow....

Viajante: the next big thing or the last hurrah?

Viajante: the modernist interior

Bethnal Green is famed for many things, such as its Mad House, boxing traditions and early slums. Jack the Ripper got his start in life here, along with the fraudster Horatio Bottomley and the Kray twins. Other illustrious people, such as the Grade brothers, and a number of contemporary pop stars quickly moved out and thrived elsewhere. In recent times, it has achieved fame for its loony left council and even George Galloway, the iconoclastic former MP, called it a Rotten Borough. Nowadays, any publicity it has garnered is more to do with Viajante, the new restaurant inside the Edwardian Town Hall.

This creation of Nuno Mendes has received rave reviews for its cutting edge culinary style, which perhaps could be described as Fat Duck Lite or El Bulli Bold. Nuno spent his formative years at the latter and later worked at Bacchus before starting a series of Pop-Ups, ending with impressive supper clubs at his Loft Project (http://theloftproject.co.uk), which is a mile or so away in Shoreditch. (He has just announced a series of hands on demonstrations there in July on how to prepare meat, which should be worth attending if you have a spare £175). It has been a runaway success with most dinners fully booked for weeks and lunches are not easy to bag.

What is the style of the food? I think it is best described as laboratory cuisine, with tweezers being the most visible implements in the kitchen. It can be intriguing, but pleasurable it ain’t. The atmosphere in the restaurant when I was there a day or so ago was “humble reverential” or perhaps “séance” best describes it. I never heard a single syllable from another diner, let alone word – and it was more or less packed. You felt that everyone should have been wearing white coats. At least at the Fat Duck, there is quite a lot of bonhomie from the Bridge and Tunnel crowd joyously calling up their mates on their mobiles to boast “You’ll never guess what I just ate”. The handful of kitchen staff worked with considerable deftness off what looked like mortuary slabs. They had the concentration and dedication one would expect of experienced Old Master restorers at the National Gallery – everything was done with a very specific and painstaking purpose in mind. Rather than heralding the beginning of “the next big thing” as one critic called it, I fear it is “the last old one”. To me, these experiments with contrapuntal ingredients, or plants plucked from abandoned houses, are doomed to end up in a culinary cul de sac. El  Bulli will be seen as a some sort of molecular high water mark and I suspect that the tide will soon turn quite sharply against it.

The best that can be achieved is a smile at the improbability of some technique or juxtaposition but the problem is that to further impress, Nuno will have to find yet another out of the box sensation- and then something more weird after that, until we all end up sniffing test tubes while wearing iPods. (Perhaps he won't go as far as my old friend Gay Bilson, who proposed to siphon off several litres of her own blood and then cook sausages for the assembled guests at a Canberra food symposium - Health and Safety pulled the needle out before she could get started.)  I think the nearest generic cuisine style to Nuno is the more avant garde pintxos places in the old town of San Sebastian (though Nuno is Portuguese rather than Basque) but their flavours have more depth and are not quite so twelve tone.

The £25 pricing of the three course lunch menu is very generous – you actually end up with eight or nine plates if you include the amuse bouche and interim items. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about the wine prices, which are hideously high. For the first time in my entire life, I declined to have any wine with a Western meal. The idea of spending more than £40 for a Bourgogne Aligoté, even from someone I admire, like Aubert de Villaine, is beyond me.

However, I really would urge people to go there and try it, as unlike Chairman Mao, I do believe in the let the hundred flowers bloom principle. It is just that for me, the entire offerings are amuse-bouche rather than dishes. My other grudge against Viajante is that is has no sense of place – it could be dished up in any Western foodie capital in the world – Sydney, San Francisco, Bilbao or Barcelona. I recently dined at Oaxen Krog, a rarefied place on a tiny island south west of Stockholm and was blown away by the local ingredients and the amazing juxtapositions, but not here. Part of the problem is that I don't think Nuno was in the kitchen when we were there, though this should ultimately not matter. Someone as innovative as he is will not stand still, so I will be interested to see what he is up to at the end of the year. I think he is happiest when concocting a dozen different dishes for dinner but from what I hear, they inevitably miss as well as hit. I don't think this style can ever be more than a progression of culinary fireworks, with the same sort of duration before they fade into the void and are replaced by another  burst. There is definitely room in London for such an approach, but I fear that the novelty may well wear  off rather than heralding a new school of cuisine. Nuno has a huge amount of support from serious chefs,  so I will be interested to see how it all pans out. Expect a Michelin star next year but don't hold your breath for more in its present mode.

Here are the dishes offered – I think the descriptions are accurate but it is not really possible to be sure, such are the taste combinations and overlays:

Crostini de romesco and gordal lives, almonds and Jerez: No real blend of flavours here – not in any way unpleasant, just not memorable.

Charred broad beans, pea puree and Sao Jorge cheese: This was quite fun - I enjoyed the intensity of the puree plus the beans.

Thai Explosion 11: I have no idea what this was – perhaps it is another name for this interesting chicken liver wedge which while it didn’t thrill, was still OK.

The baguette was superb, along with the accompanying purees.

Textures of beetroot with crab, green apple and whipped goats curd: To me, the beetroot had zero flavour, though the apple worked well as a contrast. The crab didn’t exactly jump out of its claws either. Goats curd for me is disgusting – all I can say about these ones are that they weren’t as nauseating as what I had as a starter at Mugaritz last year.

Lemon sole, confit egg, asparagus and tapioca: The sole was tasteless and overcooked, the confit egg had the texture of snot (apologies), the asparagus was burnt rather than charred and tapioca has never floated my boat, though this was perhaps the most pleasurable one I have yet tasted, so worth the experience.

Lemon and Thai basil: This worked well, despite a load of other critics trashing it.

Dark Chocolate and water: very charming to look at and intense enough to be rated fairly high, though I couldn’t see the point of the ice component.

Petit Fours: perfectly OK, as was a tiny glass of custard cream and the double espresso.

Reservations:

Patriot Square, Bethnal Green, London, E2 9NF 
Telephone: 020 7871 0461
For lunch: three courses for £25 
Dinner: six courses for £60, nine for £75 or 12 for £85


www,viajante.com

Towpath: A whiff of the Arno on Regent’s Canal

Towpath on the right: no sign of the Ponte Vecchio

There must be something in the water. Late last year, Stevie Parle opened the Dock Kitchen on the edge of the Grand Union Canal in North Kensington and now Lori de Mori starts the Towpath on the connected Regents Canal in Hackney. This is not an especially grand affair, two ten foot spaces carved from an office facade right on the canal, with joggers and cyclists far outnumbering barges and wildfowl. There are a couple of simple benches and garden furnishing to sit on and there are complimentary bottles of water with glasses on its own little table underneath the blackboard menu. The wine list is short but OK.

The food press has mentioned how it has become “one of the hottest new openings in London” (www.forkmagazine.com) which is curious. Yes, I was happy with what we ate and the atmosphere was charming, but speaking in Michelinese, it is not really a “worth a journey” sort of experience. I am not trying to berate it but the whole point of it is that is is a local hangout rather than a culinary destination, serving snacks rather than meals. It would also be fun to walk to it along the canal from the Angel.

The blackboard offerings when we turned up were Polenta, grilled courgettes and mint; broad bean rocket and Parmesan salad; Parma ham and tomato toast; grilled cheese sarnie and cheese plate. Puddings were either Gooseberry fool or rhubarb and almond tart.

That was it, so if you were anything approaching famished, it really didn’t work. Perhaps it is the basic nature of the kitchen, but I would have thought it would benefit enormously by having at least one “dish of the day”. The other issue is that because of the shortage of space, it probably only holds 20 at any time, she probably couldn’t fit them in. Lori also has a policy of not providing coffee to curious passerbys, which I think is a good thing as she is trying to create a local hangout, not a takeaway joint.

Because of this desire to have more than a snack, I ordered the polenta, which was good as polenta goes but for me, needed something more substantial than courgettes to really set it off – OK, not expecting hare or venison, but something more robust.

The Parma ham and tomato was faultless with an intensity and freshness that did make it an Arno-like experience. American-born Lori lived near Florence for a couple of decades and has written for Gourmet, plus a couple of useful Italian food books. Her husband is the photographer Jason Lowe, who is currently in Spain shooting a new book with Claudia Roden.

Lori gets most of her ingredients in the neighbourhood, such as from St Johns Bread & Wine and Leila’s in nearby Arnold Circus. She also imports some stuff straight from Tuscany, including her coffee from Piansa in Florence.

It seems to be already something of a local hang out – there were a group of film people on the main table discussing the prospects of getting a script off the ground, though one problem is that Lori is not a fan of Wi-Fi, so that rather puts a limit on a certain type of media guest. Also, I didn’t notice any papers or magazines strewn around, though there is a notice board with local events and even a Teach In advertised.

The Hanoi Cafe's Pho Bo

They also arrange local events with one coming up in mid-July that will feature paella. Although I was pleased that we made the effort to try it, it really is not a proper meal sort of experience and I found myself wandering off down nearby Kingsland Road to one of the excellent Vietnamese restaurants – in this case, the Hanoi Café (98 Kingsland Rd), for an invigorating bowl of Pho Bo (beef with rice noodle soup).

The Towpath 42 De Beauvoir Crescent

London N1 (Closed Monday – Tues/Wed 0800 to 1700; Thurs/Sun 0900 to dusk, with Sunday opening at 1000)

Stevie Parle's new cookbook

Stevie in the Dock

I recently went to the launch party for Stevie Parle’s new cookery book Real Food from Near and Far, held on the roof terrace next to the Dock Kitchen (www.dockkitchen.co.uk), his establishment in North Kensington (The most popular snacks were half portions of tandoori quail, made while you waited).

This is the first in an interesting new series of Quadrille cookbooks (www.quadrille.co.uk) “New Voices in Food” and is accompanied by another title by Alice Hart called Alice’s Cook Book. Even before we get to the actual recipes, both these books are thrilling to touch, hold and open. There is the old-fashioned notebook appearance, with canvas cloth along the spine and the covers, which appear to be some form of industrial cardboard. Inside, the flaps open up to reveal 24 shots on a glossier background of his favourite dishes, while the rear folders show glamour shots of Stevie in situ, which means all over the globe.

In style it reminds me of The Independent Cook, the brilliant debut of Jeremy Round, the exuberant first food writer for The Independent before he expired from overindulgence in a bath in Hong Kong. (I recall having doubts at his survivability when I saw him at the 1989 Oxford Food Symposium, with his neck oozing over the top of his Hawaiian shirt). Both books progress through the seasons on a calendar basis. Stevie kicks off with Chapatis and Chana Masala, which he first ate in Manali, where I first met the Dalai Lama more than 30 years ago, etc etc  (Stop these Old Hack reminisces …Basta! Ed.)

What is rather wonderful about the Stevie book is the way it includes useful information, like a colour illustration of how to properly cut a fresh mango or a simple page of drawings about how to prepare an artichoke for execution. The book engages you and either evokes tiresome repetitions of past travels from Old Farts like me, or stimulates you to wander beyond Europe for culinary inspiration.

Not that closer to home is ignored – there are excellent accounts of remembering a weekend in Portugal or “A Ligurian supper for some friends who would all prefer to be on holiday but have instead to work”. I must try and get this old buffer to join the Travellers or the Beefsteak - he sounds just the travelling ticket. But no, this author is not a clapped out nomadic sot but instead he just turned 25.

The Dock by Night

So, this is merely the first offering of a chef who is bound to be as influential in his time as Ruthie Rogers and Rose Gray of the River Café (where he started working as a 17 year-old). He then took off with his girlfriend and ended up in India, Sri Lanka, Japan and the States. After a stint running Pop-Ups, he ended up founding the Dock Kitchen, a former showroom for Tom Dixon’s furniture, next to the old Virgin Recording Studios on the Grand Union Canal. I wrote about it here earlier this year (www.gastroenophile.com/2010/01/dock-kitchen-londons-best-pop-down.html) It still has that late industrial revolution feel, with jetties and trapped pools for barges and has a wonderful open terrace right next to the restaurant. Just like at the River Café, they have neighbour issues and can only serve food outside until nine at night. However Stevie is thinking of holding outdoor markets there at weekends and has plans to expand the place to nearly double its size. The main offerings are a la carte lunches from Tuesday to Sunday with Supper Clubs at night with such tempting titles as Beach Food, Lulu’s Provencal Table and Scandinavian Island Cooking. Stevie is a reformed Pop-Upper – those surprising places that appear in the most unlikely venue for a couple of nights and then vanish. My recent piece in the Wall Street Journal Europe explores these aspects of new trends more fully (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB127741387831610403.html).It all becomes a bit tedious to run Pop-Ups after a while, so inevitably, successful Pop-Ups moor themselves to dry land and then reinvent themselves – something that Stevie is doing with extraordinary style. What makes this concept work so well in London is the way he grabs ideas from all major culinary zones without in any way trying to be tricksy or a victim of "confusion cuisine" - he is happy to go with the original point of the recipes. 

If you don’t feel like shelling out £35 a head for the supper club events, at least buy this new book so you can see what the fuss is all about.

Real Food from Near and Far

By Stevie Parle (Quadrille)

£14.99

Egg – or lemon tart – over Heston's face?

Heston Blumenthal is not just a superchef – he’s a brand – and a very lucrative one too. No Sunday newspaper morning is complete without him stepping out of a freezer; dressing up as a carrot or offering a new take on some culinary truism or other. Although he has made his name as a Three Star Michelin taste trickster, he seems determined to also become an instantly recognisable "personality". Why do otherwise serious people crave recognition from the masses? Perhaps he desires the money rather than mere fame. One of the more profitable lines Heston has is a deal with Waitrose, where he and Delia Smith promote Waitrose products through recipes, which gives the reader useful information plus the welcome sound of a ringing till for Waitrose. He declines to reveal how much he is paid, but it must be quite serious. A piece in The Independent rather fancifully suggested that fruit sales at Waitrose were up a third, purely thanks to Heston’s recipe for lemon tarts. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/tvs-and-lemons-lift-john-lewis-1998367.html

Heston’s recipe (www.waitrose.com/recipe/Heston's_Lemon_Tart.aspx) received an “average customer rating” of five stars, which is as good as it gets. Underneath this ringing endorsement, Heston says he loves seasonal and local shopping, though he then adds that the lemons come all the way from South Africa (perhaps the lucky chap is at the World Cup). This is followed by a customer comment, which rather confirms the five star rating: "Thought this was an utterly delicious tart which I shall be making frequently."
- fidiggory (12/06/10)

Hang on – how does these ratings work? There are far more complaints than compliments on the website. The main difficulty seems to be that the tart mix doesn’t set properly or that “it leaked all over my fridge”. Others say that without adding cornflower it is more like a lemon meringue and that the instruction to simmer the lemon mixture for five seconds must be a typo. Another sharp eyed viewer says that the online recipe differs from the one published in the Waitrose ad.

When I checked the site just now, there were 30 comments and of these, only five gave it unqualified praise. According to Waitrose, the five out of five star rating is based on 292 opinions. However, if you base it purely on the 30 published comments, in my statistical book, that means an approval ratio of one in six. Surely, that means zero stars rather than five?

Pop-Ups and Supper Clubs: The London restaurant revolution

James Lowe popping up at the Loft Project

By Bruce Palling

Something strange is happening on the London food scene. New locations are emerging in the most unlikely neighbourhoods where paying guests turn up to eat in someone’s private dining room. Elsewhere, established chefs cook large no-choice meals for 30 guests for one or two nights and then disappear. A recent event was above the Violet Cake shop (www.violetcakes.com) in a nondescript office block in East London. Here, nearly 30 people recently ate a specially created meal from Chris Lee, one of the former stars of Chez Panisse, California’s most influential restaurant. “I bake cakes all day long,” explained Claire Ptak, formerly pastry chef at Chez Panisse, “and I missed the interaction you get by working with great chefs, so I arranged for a series of Pop Up dinners, starting with Chris and then Joseph Trivelli from the River Café”.

Several miles away, a chef known only as “Miss Marmite Lover” (http://marmitelover.blogspot.com/) prepares a five-course “pescatarian” meal for £40 in her Victorian garden flat in the unlikely location of Kilburn. Specialising in what she calls “imaginative creative home cooking” on her Aga stove, she regularly cooks for nearly 30 people. The next event, A Midsummer’s night’s Dinner also promises service from “teenage Goth and girls in vintage French aprons”. Welcome to the world of Pop Ups and Supper Clubs.

There is no universally accepted theory about why this culinary trend began last year. But it is assumed the economic recession played a part. Another reason for the growth of the pop-up and supper-club movement is social networking. Most of the regular ones have Facebook and Twitter sites, which means a chef can instantly spread the word on an impending event. As an indication of how mainstream the concept has become, Taste of London, the leading London food fair, recently boasted that it was “London’s first and largest Pop Up festival.” 

The concept is not new—for years, private kitchens have “popped up” in Hong Kong but as Grant Thatcher, head of Luxe Guides said: “The three things they all have in common is they are  illegal, don’t have a liquor licence and are run by people passionate about food - although this doesn't mean they can cook.” One of the chief considerations is safety – who wants to risk being burnt to death or mortally poisoned in a six floor walk-up with no fire exit in Wanchai? Thatcher confesses that “In truth, I've had lots of dinners in private kitchens, but most are eminently forgettable though one that was fabulous recently was Liberty Private Works, which is just going public and moving into huge new premises in Causeway Bay.” (Others that have successfully gone mainstream include Bo Innovation, Xi Yan and Da Ping Huo.)

However, London is now the centre of the pop-up world. Pop Up restaurants are ipso facto, temporary phenomena, with the two most influential ones already out of the game although their spirit lives on with regular supper club events, which are the multi-coursed no choice meals that are served to everyone in the restaurant. Stevie Parle, the talented young chef at The Dock Kitchen, (www.dockkitchen.co.uk) on the Grand Union Canal in North Kensington, started his Moveable Kitchen in 2009 with events like a truffle dinner at a rowing club in Hammersmith or a homage to Elizabeth David in a warehouse in Shoreditch. “I think the transience is what makes it more exciting - you get great freedom by being temporary, which is why people go for it.” However, there are downsides to them too. “They were incredibly hard work because you were in a completely new environment every night and have to make a kitchen out of nothing.” Perhaps this explains why he has now moved to a permanent location above a fashionable shop owned by designer Tom Dixon. 

The Bouillabaisse supper club at the Dock Kitchen

Parle has now switched to running supper clubs each weekend at the restaurant, where offerings could be anything from Bouillabaisse, Bolito Misto, Scandinvian Island Cooking or Keralan cuisine. (His current one is rather mouth-watering called Some Mediterranean dishes of Chez Panisse)

The other influential chef was Nuno Mendes and his partner Clarise Faria, who opened the Loft Project in Hoxton (www.theloftproject.co.uk) as a weekly supper club. Mendes has since moved on to open Viajantes, his new restaurant in nearby Bethnal Green. However, the space, which used to be his private apartment, continues under the management of Ms Faria, who organises weekly dinners with both chefs from abroad and local ones.  In common with the Dock Kitchen, it is necessary to first push a buzzer to get a heavy security gate to open and then you are in what could simply be an open plan apartment in a semi-industrial location.

Exquisite gulls eggs at the Loft project

The night I attended, James Lowe, the head chef at St John’s Bread & Wine, cooked an assured meal of 10 courses with accompanying wines for £117.50 a person. Most of the other guests were professional and financial people from the nearby City, with the majority of them from Europe. Part of the philosophy of the events is that you are eating a communal meal so that it is a shared experience of the unknown as there are no choices on the menu. Although this pricing is at the higher end of London’s top restaurants, the meal delivered was impressive in its variety and innovation.

Best Bone Marrow

It started with fresh gulls eggs and celery salt and then included baked bone marrow with cider vinegar and wild fennel; pig’s head with carrots, mead and pennywort plus suckling kid, new season’s onions and ramson. Lowe was quite frank about why he was doing it: “The reason is because ultimately I would like to open a no-choice restaurant and I have watched these sort of places and just wondered if the public are ready for them.” 

Superb Suckling Kid

He got the idea for this by observing how his own customers reacted well whenever he had sent them unsolicited some of his own favourite dishes in his restaurant. “Quite often people would come up and tell you later that they were so delighted because they never would have ordered these dishes themselves – it’s quite nice when you can just bang everything out with choosing or worrying about ordering.”

The whole point of the growth of supper clubs and pop ups is the unexpectedness of everything. Late last year, the distinguished chef Pierre Koffmann, who was formerly the chef at London’s former three star Michelin La Tante Claire, hosted a wildly successful Pop Up in a Marquee on the roof of Selfridge’s department store in Oxford Street. Supposed to only run for a fortnight, it had to extend its season to two months, and was still sold out at £75 per head. Looking back, Koffmann told me he didn’t regret doing it as it was a challenge “and I have been out of work for a few years!” He was pleased it was such a success, but he doesn’t wish to repeat the experience because it was such exhausting work. “Besides, my new restaurant (Koffmann’s) will be opening in London on July 15, so it is better that other chefs, perhaps like Ferran Adria (of El Bulli fame) do it, as he will soon be out of a job.”

Another highly successful operation was set up by Rebecca Mascarenha, who operates a number of restaurants, such as The Phoenix in Putney and recently, Kitchen W8 with Philip Howard. She was motivated by the charity possibilities to assist victims of the Haiti earthquake and so launched “13 random days in March”.

“The Phoenix was closed for refurbishment and after the earthquake in Haiti we talked about what we could do, so I could put back the refurb for a month without any great hassle and we decided to have a series of Pop-Up restaurants in the space. Nothing had been taken out so it was a fully functioning space. So it was much much easier than the roof of Selfridge’s which they had to create from scratch.”

So I contacted some chefs I know, such as Philip Howard at The Square; Bruce Poole from Chez Bruce; Rowley Leigh at Le Café Anglais and Atul Kochhar, founding chef at Tamarind (and now at Benares) They sold out immediately. The most amazing thing was that all the chefs tried to recreate the whole experience of their restaurants by bringing their whole team – front and back of house.” Rebecca has no immediate plans to do another Pop-Up but is not averse to the idea should another cause catch her fancy.

Alexander and Charlotte at the Frontline Club Italian Pop-Up

One newcomer to the Pop Up world is Charlotte Horton, an English winemaker, who lives in her family’s medieval castle in Tuscany (Castello di Potentino www.potentino.com) with its own vineyards and olive groves. Her wines are well regarded but she wanted to showcase them plus her olive oil in a congenial atmosphere along with the local cuisine. Alexander Greene, her business partner and half-brother, suggested she do a Pop Up at the Frontline Club in Paddington, London, a gathering place for war reporters and combat photographers that is normally closed on Sundays. Given the price (£25 a head), the quality of her wines and the produce for the meals, much of which is brought over from their Italian estate, they quickly sold out on her first showing in April. 

This was Charlotte's first rate Sangiovese

“Quite frankly, I was bored with holding these events in restaurants where the quality of the food and oil was not up to scratch.” There was also the sense of occasion, which is generated by it being a communal event, with everyone eating the same dishes and drinking the same wine. “I like the concept of a cuckoo restaurant – it’s also rather fun bringing a place to life on its day off.”

“Miss Marmite” has generally favourable feeling towards the whole experience. Rather than hounding her out of business for being an illegal restaurant, she was actually awarded a prize from the local council for innovation. “The supper club and pop up movement is testament to how enthusiastic Londoners are to new things. Anyone from either here or abroad can go into an ordinary British home and meet other British people – I think that is a fantastic experience to offer.” 


A shorter version of this story has appeared in the Wall Street Journal Europe
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB127741387831610403.html

Do ya stack, or are youse Gentry?

by Bruce Palling

“Sydney Society” may be Barry Humphries favourite ozymoron, but mine would be something like “Brisbane fine dining”. I can’t say that I know a huge amount about Queensland, New South Wales’s friendly giant to the Deep North, except that it was once notorious for being the fiefdom of the bigoted and corrupt Joh Bjelke-Petersen, the nearest thing to Mary Whitehouse in drag. On the one occasion I passed through Brisbane, I understood why it was known as the world’s largest suburb. It was without a single decent second-hand bookshop let alone an interesting restaurant, apart from a place on the river that looked like a boat shed. But that was 25 years ago.

Since then, they have had eight years of Bruno Loubet’s cooking, after he decamped from London with his family, in search of a less pressured lifestyle. “It was very intense when I worked in London in the Nineties. I got my Michelin star and was very successful, but I was working 160 hours a week. In the end the only way to cope was either to drink, take drugs or kill yourself and because I didn’t fancy any of those things, I left and changed my life.” It wouldn’t have worked for me but perhaps I am the only extant Australian who can’t swim and has never drunk a glass of milk in his life. I don’t know why he didn’t venture to either Sydney or Melbourne as he would have flourished in either place, but he also thought Brisbane and the Gold Coast would offer a better lifestyle for his young family.

Things went extraordinarily well – Bruno won all of the culinary awards and had a decent lifestyle, but there were dark clouds even in this arcadia.  “For me, walking in the woods to pick mushrooms or sitting on the side of a river with my family and fishing is a fundamental part of my life. You can’t do that in Australia, because the bush is full of poisonous snakes. And as for fishing, it is all big boats on the ocean with sharks to keep you company.”

Although he still has an adult daughter out there and would ultimately like to spend half the year in God’s Own Country, he admits it had virtually no impact on his cooking development. As tactfully as possible, Bruno says that he did tire of the Banana Bender's obsession with steak, steak and er, more steak. People don’t realise the passion most male Australians have for it. I think it was Barry McKenzie who when asked “How do you like your steak, Sir?” replied, “Just pull off its horns and wipe its arse, and she’ll be right mate.” When I had to visit Darwin to cover the Timor crisis in the mid-Seventies, I recall that the first sticker I saw on the rear window of a “Ute” said “Eat more beef, you bastards.”

Since Bruno’s return to London earlier this year, initially with the idea of opening a country Gastropub and cookery school, he was lured to launch at the Zetter, a postmodern sort of hotel in Clerkenwell. Well, Queensland’s loss is our gain. He has slotted right into the casual dining groove – this delivers classic bistro dishes with a slight modernist touch and should be compared with the likes of Racine, La Petite Maison, the Galvin places and Le Café Anglais. Clerkenwell and its immediate environs is still quite fashionable food wise,  – home of St Johns, Club (and Comptoir) Gascon, Moro and the Quality Chophouse. The Guardian was based here for 20 years and it still has a design/media sort of vibe though recently it has lost out to Shoreditch and Hoxton.

The single sheet menu offers starters like Guinea fowl boudin blanc with leek fondue and chervil sauce or revised Lyonnaise salad and Beaujolais dressing. I saw an ancient lady eagerly tucking into this version of frissé, with a runny egg on top.

One of the day's specials was jellied pigs head with radish and coriander, so that was my choice, much to the relief of the waitress, who said it was not exactly jumping out of the kitchen. It was a beautifully balanced version with the herbs almost having as much flavour as the actual brawn, but I should have factored in that modern diners are not as keen as I am for full-throated offal flavours.

Almost all of the main courses spoke to me in some language or other – confit lamb shoulder, white bean and preserved lemon puree with free harrissa; pan-fried breast of wood pigeon, cauliflower, almond with a quinoa and giblet sauce and daube provencale with mousseiline potatoes.

The most appealing option was the roasted rabbit leg, filled with herbs and grain mustard sauce. This was a triumph. Can’t quite recall when I have ever had rabbit this succulent – a far cry from rabbit with mustard, where it is impossible to identify which portion of the beast you are eating, let along what species.  What added to the pleasure was the fact that one leg came with the bone and the other without. The osso losso was stuffed with the most divine mixed herb farcie imaginable. In my ignorance, I thought it was a Loubet version of salsa verde but in fact it was a homage to one of his mother's recipes for a farcie – a melange of tarragon, parsley, chives, garlic, lard, pancetta and breadcrumbs.

After the rabbit, rather than try the puddings, I decided to see what his fish was like, so ordered a small portion of the cod. This was perfectly executed with a mixture of peppers, tomatoes and shallots with a judicious sprinkling of chervil. The wine list was not as exciting as the food – an OK selection with what could be described as “punchy prices”. There was no music playing during most of the meal but now it was about 3.30pm and on came some Sixties jazz, which sounded like Ornette Coleman – it worked whoever it was.

There were only two hiccoughs – the gratin dauphinois was slightly overcooked and dry and the double espresso had zero depth of flavour, but by this stage I had enough happy memories of the other dishes for it not to bother me.

Bruno has managed to pitch the food and the prices at precisely the right level. Another impressive aspect is the way the food (and bread) is not over-seasoned or salted. You could have everything you wanted here for less than £100 for two. Because it has been full since the day it has opened in the early Spring, there is no set lunch option, which is a pity as I think more people should be exposed to his style of classic cuisine with just the tiniest of twists.

(I nearly forgot to explain the meaning of the headline for this story – it was the response of a maid going for a job in a sheep station in outback Queensland in the Nineteenth Century.)  

Bistrot Bruno Loubet

St John’s Square

88 Clerkenwell Rd London EC1M 5RJ

+44 207 324 4455

www.bistrobrunoloubet.com