‘The whole thing – look, menu, shtick – is a touch too neatly scaleable and roll-outable. I’m sure we all thought the first ever Cafe Rouge was similarly enchanting’
Exmouth Market in London must be one of the UK’s finest food streets. Every second shopfront is a restaurant, cafe or foodstore pouting invitingly at you as you stroll along its cobbles. And at lunchtime, the outdoor food market kicks in, fragrancing the length of the street with smoke and spice. Round the corner is The Quality Chop House, contender for one of my favourite restaurants in the capital; their confit potatoes (thinly, so thinly sliced, baked slowly with dripping, then cut into fat, chip-like blocks and fried again in light oil until they’re multi-layered, golden batons of sheerest evil crunchy joy) are so extraordinarily, dangerously delicious, they should probably be illegal.
And now, swelling the street’s ranks, here’s Café Pistou, nestling pretty as a pistachio-coloured picture on a prominent corner site. This new arrival, we’re told, “reinterprets Provençal cuisine for an urban audience, featuring an imaginative range of sunshine food full of fresh, bold flavours”. I’m not sure what this means, other than “We can serve less of it for more money”. In real terms, there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of reinterpreting going on here, unless you count crowning chickpea and lentil-laced ratatouille with fried filo pastry and calling it a Provençal shepherd’s pie (the veggie pal loves this, but your poor, deprived veggie is generally quite easily pleased), or drowning lemon sorbet in a healthy swig of Grey Goose citron vodka so it ends up like an X-rated sgroppino.
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