Four restaurants of note, two on each side of the English Channel. Above, the kitchen at Passerini in Paris.
The past week has shown the flexibility as well as the vastly different influences of a single piece of paper: the menu.
This is a subject that has been dear to my heart since early 1981 when I designed the layout for the first menu I was responsible for, that of L’Escargot restaurant on Soho’s Greek Street. It was to be a single sheet of toughened paper. Once the chef Martin Lam and I had agreed on the contents, we would sit manager Grahame Edwards down and ask him to write a fair copy in his beautiful copperplate handwriting. This would then be whisked round to the printers round the corner, chequebook in hand, and a couple of hours later, 100 would be returned, just in time for the first relevant service.
Today, restaurateurs face no such dramas. The possibility of in-house printing means that the whole process takes minutes. There is no question of waiting for the ink to dry, and all menus look neat and tidy with that day’s date printed clearly at the top. This brings with it two major disappointments for restaurant customers: they all look strikingly similar and there is a severe absence of colour. Very few menus today have the exuberance of the Taillevent menu, or that of Charlie Bird in New York, or the wine list of The Ambassador’s Hotel in Los Angeles (see On The Menu published by Unbound in 2016). And the exhortation of the late Mark Birley (of the Birley Clubs Annabel’s, Harry’s Bar and George and others) that restaurateurs employ colour in the occasional descriptor to break up an otherwise sea of black ink is, unfortunately, lost. For this, the arrival of COVID-19 must take responsibility, along with restaurateurs’ insistence on cutting costs.
But here are four menus, all of which I greedily enjoyed last week, each very different in their composition, in their style and in their purpose.
64 Goodge Street, London W1 OK, this is from the small group of restaurants which our son co-owns, but this was for a special dinner for 40 to mark the occasion of the restaurant’s first birthday, the first time I have ever attended such an occasion anywhere.
The affair was typically unassuming: there were no speeches and no effusive praise for the chef Stuart Andrew and his hardworking team. Instead the focus was entirely on the food and the wines, allowing for easy conversation. Below, for instance, are the tartelettes.
As Andrew explained in a subsequent email, ‘Monday was a celebration of 64GS’s first year of existence. I’m very proud of what we have achieved to date but I’m in no way complacent of our need to keep pursuing excellence and perhaps more importantly in a congested marketplace, to create a strong identity. The menu was an attempt to re-engender the sensibilities of the restaurant, playfully utilising various tropes and themes of French cookery. A little kitsch perhaps, even nostalgic, but hopefully executed with a degree of flair, precision and modernity that is indicative of the day-to-day restaurant’, and on Monday delivered a celebratory and delicious dinner, with the lobster perfectly prepared – no wrestling!
An example of a menu with a definite purpose, below.
Chez Bruce, Wandsworth, London SW17 As soon as the four of us walked into this restaurant, our eyes were drawn to one dish. Second on the inviting list of starters was the incongruous looking ‘ox cheek rendang with tamarind, lime, peanuts, chilli and mint’ shown below. My friend asked me whether I had any idea why it was here and my response was that there was probably an Indonesian sous chef in the kitchen who had proposed the dish.
Nothing could have been further from the truth. As Bruce Poole, the chef/proprietor explained later in an email, ‘We don’t have an Indonesian in the kitchen! We have always played around with the occasional non-European dish. I used to 20 years ago when I ran the kitchen and Matt Christmas continues the trend, but he does a better job! We occasionally do Indian- or Thai-inspired things – our version thereof at least. So, no human story behind the rendang I’m afraid.’
I recalled the dish of tandoori mackerel with coconut dahl, apple relish, onion crisps and coriander on my last visit with great pleasure.
Here is a menu that is definitely an expression of the chef’s distinctive likes: always a good route to follow, I have found. I enjoyed the rendang as a first course very much: JR ordered it for her main course.
Juveniles, Paris, 1st arrondissement Management has now firmly passed from Tim Johnston, known to many oenophiles, to his daughter Margaux and husband Romain Roudeau. She is hospitality personified, warm and solicitous. He is a hugely talented chef in a restaurant where the tables and chairs seem almost incidental, wedged in somehow between wooden wine cases, as well as a place in the back for their small dog.
Ever since I first heard JR expound her theory that men and women read menus differently (men read them the way they are written, protein first and from left to right, and many women, she maintains, read them as she does, from right to left, the accompaniment first and then the protein), I have looked at menus from a different point of view. At Juveniles, both sides of Roudeau’s menu appeal equally.
A thick corn soup is enhanced with mussels, leeks and peppers; wild mushrooms are sautéed then wrapped around a fried egg with shallots, balsamic vinegar and parmesan; a burrata from Puglia is served with a fennel salad, fresh figs and halved hazelnuts. Roudeau also knows when to leave well alone; their foie gras with toast is simply delicious.
We three chose the same main course: lamb, from a specialist farm in Burgundy, served with gnocchi, courgettes and sage butter with lemon. To finish, I broke a promise to myself and ordered the rice pudding despite its being served cold, and scraped the small pot of salted caramel sauce clean. In a city still in thrall to natural wines we thoroughly enjoyed a bottle of 2021 Fleurie, La Madone from Guillaume Chanudet for €34, bringing my bill for three to €188.
Passerini, Paris, 12th arrondissement Giovanni Passerini is a highly talented Roman-born chef whose restaurant occupies a delightful corner site on the rue Traversière near the Gare de Lyon. The sunshine poured through the tall windows and cast light on an exciting interior and onto an open kitchen in which five chefs worked hard to service a plethora of wooden tables around a central pillar. The interior is patrolled by Justine Passerini with a smile and an attentive eye.
Here he writes a menu that requires concentration to understand and to get the best of. It begins with the various options for a first course and pasta at €34, or a first course, pasta, main course, cheese or dessert for €52. It then lists two dishes to share in two different services: a pigeon served initially with fettuccine and then the body with fennel (€55 for two) or a lobster, first the tail with lots of beans then the claws with a bisque (€90 for two). Difficult decisions!
Then comes Passerini’s curve ball. He lists four first courses – tripe, mushrooms, a confit of haddock and a quail with squash – before the pasta course which here is served not as a first course but as the main course. There were three pasta dishes last Friday: ravioli stuffed with spinach; bigoli with a squid ragout; and tagliatelle with a pig’s head sauce. The two non-pasta main courses were line-caught albacore tuna with Swiss chard and a shoulder of lamb with aubergines.
The layout of Passerini’s menu initially shocked me before I ordered trippa alla romana and the ravioli as my main course. The tripe was delicious, soft and unctuous, with just the right amount of parmesan on top; the ravioli slightly disappointingly predictable but made up for by the excellent baba au rhum as dessert. We drank a bottle of Henri Chauvet’s 2022 Côtes d’Auvergne Gamay that did not lack acidity. The four of us ate extremely well.
64 Goodge Street 64 Goodge St, London W1T 4NF; tel: +44 (0)20 3747 6364
Chez Bruce 2 Bellevue Rd, Wandsworth Common, London SW17 7EG; tel: +44 (0)20 8672 0114
Juveniles 47 rue du Richelieu, 75001 Paris, France; tel: +33 (0)1 42 97 46 49
Passerini 65 rue Traversière, 75012 Paris, France; tel: +33 (0)1 43 42 27 56
Every Sunday, Nick writes about restaurants. To stay abreast of his reviews, sign up for our weekly newsletter.