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Delicious, unpretentious food at a reasonable price in a decent setting … Medlar is as good as it gets
438 King's Road, London SW10 (020 7349 1900). Lunch for two, including wine and service £90
Sitting a little way down the banquette from me at Medlar was a man eating lunch by himself. I do not know what he ate or drank, but that doesn't alter the fact that I envied him.
Any life in which there is the time and wherewithal for a solo lunch at Medlar has to be a good one. After the past few weeks of Marmite-sautéed potatoes, I'll-be-anything-you-want-me-to-be casino menus, and restaurants so overconceptualised you want to put your fist through the next artfully distressed, mirrored bar frontage, Medlar feels like a place of safety. It recalls the Chelsea joke about the Peter Jones department store being where you should go in the case of nuclear attack because nothing bad can ever happen there. The fact that Medlar is down the other end of the King's Road from Peter Jones might have something to do with it. Even on its scruffier edges, Chelsea wants to show you a good time.
The cliché now would be to big up the simplicity of the operation, against the contrivance of so many others that fail. In the case of the service, led by David O'Connor, formerly at The Square, that is true. Nobody here will try to explain the concept of the menu. They won't interrupt your best filthy anecdote just before the punchline by asking, with a rictus grin, how everything is. They'll just look after you. The design doesn't try too hard, either. There are grey walls, olive-green banquettes and a sense that, if there is a best table, it is only ever going to be in the eye of the person who happens to be sitting at it.
The food, though, is not simple. That doesn't mean it's mannered. They don't serve stuff on lumps of slate or plop things into the bowls of Chinese ceramic spoons. Instead, there is a thoughtful complexity; the man leading the kitchen, Joe Mercer Nairne, who used to be at Chez Bruce, can cook. Take a starter described as a duck-egg tart. There is a disc of pressed and glazed puff pastry, spread with a turnip purée that has been worked to a luscious smoothness. On top is a perfect fried duck egg, like something from a children's book. There are crisp lardons around the outside, a sauce that is the meaty reduction of both animal and a cracking bottle of red and, as an honour guard, duck hearts flash-fried so they are still the colour of the sauce at the eye.
Turnips and duck hearts – that's humble in four words. But out of it comes something powerful that could make a lesser man than me a little teary. The ingredients in a big fat crab raviolo surrounded by nutty brown shrimps, samphire and a bisque that is the very essence of the best bits of a fishmonger's slab are hardly humble, but that doesn't mean producing something that works is easy. It reminded me of a brilliant crab raviolo I ate at Gordon Ramsay's Aubergine in 1994, when he still cared.
Unusually, main courses do not pull back; there is a deep understanding of the importance of texture. Soft, sweet pieces of veal come with violet artichokes and a smoky aubergine caviar, but also with crisp croquettes of calf's brain and a scattering of deep-fried spätzle – those misshapen Austrian noodles. Skate comes with gnocchi, toasted almonds and a classic sauce matelote, the lighter sibling of the sauce with the raviolo.
We finish with hot doughnuts filled with a sprightly plum jam alongside a scoop of ginger ice cream, and eye-widening redcurrant sorbet with two still-warm madeleines. There are great wines by the glass, and a longer list from which half carafes are available.
The price for all this? Just £26 for three courses, rising to £39 at dinner. I won't trouble you with the usual speech about the difference between being cheap and offering value. Just know that Medlar is good, so much so that – should you care about these things – a week after our visit some tyre company gave it a star. It's on a roll. It's doing the thing. Go there.
Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk or visit
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