'The food is great. Really up there… Liberated, unstarchy, affordable and fun'
We all have our irrational prejudices. One of mine might be called le style Gordon Ramsay– I can't be doing with the whole soulless but oh-so-slick shtick that he and his stable churn out. I'm also inclined to mistrust a chef with tentacles spreading all over the nouveau riche territories of Asia. And (a lonely voice, this) I don't love Ramsay alumnus Jason Atherton's Pollen Street Social. So you'll forgive me if I approach Social Eating House, his third London outpost, with a face like a Les Dawson battle-axe.
Initial impressions suggest that it's stacking up nicely for a good seeing-to. The place may be beautiful – burnished and softly glittery – but, with its Minetta Tavern-ish air of having been round for ever, it's brazenly derivative. Shades of Mark Hix with the neon artworks. A hidden downstairs bar called Employees Only (the name a direct steal from a New York bar), which also operates as a chef's kitchen table, just like, er, Kitchen Table. Outside, under an "Optician" sign, there's a secret entry to a "speakeasy" called the Blind Pig (there's one of those in NY, too).
The menu is shrill with 2013 buzz ingredients – cauliflower, cockles, "ash", monk's beard– and a lengthy provenance spiel, complete with food miles, though when these hit 595 for cockles from Barra, I'm not sure what point they're making. And there's gimmickry à gogo: "mushrooms on toast" that tumble, steaming, from their scissored-open polythene bags. Pre-starter "jars to share" – puddles of salt cod brandade, perhaps, glossy with oil and studded with celery salt and vinegar potato crisps, loitering at the bottom of large preserving jars – are an invitation to upselling. All of which is deliciously curdling my milk of human kindness. And then my prejudices threaten to choke me.
Because the food, from Paul Hood, previously Atherton's head chef at Pollen Street and now a partner, is great. Really up there. In ethos, it owes a lot to the French bistronomy movement, where classically trained, haute cuisine chefs run screaming from the yoke of Michelin into something altogether more liberated, unstarchy, affordable and fun.
There's tartare of Angus beef, lightly smoked and hand-chopped, pungent with mustard leaves and horseradish, and soothed by egg yolk. Hood is no slouch when it comes to fish, either: plaice with chewy brown shrimp and the lightest mousseline freshened with cucumber. Or hake, lightly curried and baked, with roast cauliflower, nutty and cheesy: the cleverest of stuff.
Star of the show is a corpulent raviolo of wild boar, the meat gamey, its bite and texture not lost by wrapping it in fine, elastic pasta with curls of Berkswell cheese on top. I can't detect the promised hearts and kidneys until a waiter wields a comedy pepper mill: they're inside, desiccated, and ground to give the dish a subtle dusting with the funk of offal. I love this. Puddings are, simply, stellar.
So I go back. On a Friday night, to the "speakeasy" upstairs, without a reservation – it's a move designed to deliver all the car-crash discomfort a miserable cow could wish for. The place is heaving, but they go out of their way to find us a seat almost immediately. Maybe we can hate on the cocktails: "thermo-nuclear" daiquiri, which glows a toxic, Disney green; or those made with ideas filched from elsewhere – pickle juices or cereal milks; or poured from what look like Benylin bottles into copper beakers. But they're well-mixed, balanced – and potent. We could resort to disliking our loud neighbours, who look like escapees from Made In Chelsea, but they're charming Atherton fanboys. Even bar snacks can't raise a sneer: perfectly crisp, fried chipirones with slivers of green chilli; and pork sliders – cushiony buns, pork with Chinese spicing, fine coleslaw. Grrr.
So there you are. It's a punchbowl of different ingredients that manages to end up being quintessentially Soho, with warm, assured service and wonderful food. You should all go. And I should get over myself.
• Social Eating House 58 Poland Street, London W1, 020-7993 3251. Open Mon-Sat, noon-2.30pm, 5.30-10.30pm. Meal for two with drinks and service, about £120.
Food 8/10
Atmosphere 8/10
Value for money 8/10
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