le relais de venise l'entrecôte, canary wharf - review

A jack of all trades, or a master of one; the latter has always been a draw for me. A person or place that can do one thing very well is an attractive quality, be that whittling wood, playing an instrument or a restaurant serving up little else but steak and chips with a closely-guarded and very secret sauce.

Sure, they could tells us what makes up the brown-green gravy lacquered over the meat, but they would almost certainly have to kill us.

Some would argue the international chain of Le Relais de Venise L’Entrecôte was ahead of its time, fashionable beyond its years. Before it was on-trend for restaurants to specialise in a singular food offering (noticeably burgers, hot dogs and fried chicken these days), l’Entrecote Porte-Maillot - the inaugural opening by founder Paul Gineste de Saurs in what was an Italian restaurant he purchased near Porte-Maillot in Paris, called Le Relais de Venise - was offering just that when it opened in 1959.  

A green salad with walnuts dressed with mustard vinaigrette, followed by steak frites. And that is the full range of the main menu’s intent. Oh, and some sliced baguette.

Almost 60 years later, and with an expansion that’s reached London and New York, the intention for the additional branches has been for all aspects of the original Parisian dining experience to be faithfully maintained; from the classic French brasserie interiors and paintings of Venetian market scenes, to mirrored walls and the closely spaced tables that help lend to the romantic idyll of a bustling French bistro.

‘Faithfully maintained’ could be an understatement. At the request of two staples at any French table - butter for the bread and mayonnaise for the frites - we were told they don’t serve these and that the dijon mustard provided was a very good substitute for chip-dipping. Not in the original Paris restaurant? Then don’t expect it here. We cried 'sacré bleu!' in our best French accents when packets of butter were delivered with the crackers on the cheese plate at dessert. But whatever.

The only question you'll be asked prior to dessert is how you like your steak. Medium-rare? Medium-well? Forget it - this dining experience is not a democracy. You’ll have your steak blue, rare, medium or well done - with no deviations - and you'll be grateful for any choice at all. Want to make a reservation? They were ahead of their time on this too - queue up (at peak times) and wait until a table becomes free. Want sides? Tough, there are none.

Dictatorship jibes aside, the food is simple, solid and very easy to clear. And at £23 for the salad and steak frites combination, it’s easy to see why the three London branches (Marylebone, The City and Canary Wharf) are packed each evening.

Salad leaves are crisp and well-dressed. Beef is British, grass fed and aged for a minimum of four weeks. The frites are hand-chipped each day to the exact dimensions of the original Parisian format. Both the chips and steak are delivered in two servings - half a portion each time - to ensure you’re eating it hot and as freshly cooked as possible; clever, I thought. The meat was glorious - a spot-on medium pink, yielding, and a real pleasure between the molars.

The sauce is really something. It’s herby, likely with more than one - perhaps thyme, parsley and tarragon. The base is probably a bearnaise with egg yolks and a lot of butter. There’s likely green peppercorns to give that chartreuse tinge, dijon mustard, probably some garlic. Some speak of chicken livers. The truth is, no one really knows. But what most can agree on is it’s very good and would probably be bottled and sold if it wasn’t a requirement to list the ingredients.

You can ask (as we did), but no one in the restaurants know what's in it - the sauce is supplied to the branches directly from the Godillot family. It's a lucrative mystery that no doubt helps pack out the branches.

Whether it’s an attempt to compensate for the absence of choice in the first half of the meal, or to showcase the in-house patisserie skills, the dessert options fill a whole page and range from £5 - £7. There’s gâteau and cheese platters, ice creams and tartelettes, and the profiteroles, chocolate sauce, crème brûlée and meringues are made on-site. We were many, and so most of the list was ordered with a criss-cross of outstretched arms dipping spoons across the table. My favourite, the profiteroles with light choux and the wanton pool of thick chocolate sauce they sat in (£5.95).

L’Entrecote appeals to me greatly. Inexpensive places where consistency is guaranteed - that don't require the gift of foresight to secure a table, serve really good house reds by the glass, carafe or bottle (Le Relais de Venise - Cotes de Bordeaux), and leave you feeling full - are what busy lives in busy cities need more often than we probably realise.

I'll be back, when the week has been long and the need to make a decision feels like too much hard work.

Liked lots: quality beef cooked to the exact specification; secret sauce; the fact dinner is delivered in two sittings to ensure it's hot and fresh; the wonderful heavily-accented staff in their French maid uniforms and red lipstick; no opportunity for 'food envy'; no need to begrudgingly allow dining companions to sample your dish - you're all eating the same
Liked less: not having butter or mayonnaise is a bit extreme
Good for: spontaneous eating; value dining; when you fancy a nice bit of beef; testing the palate to decipher the secrets of the sauce - good luck.

My rating: 3.5/5

Afiyet olsun.

Note: I was invited as a guest to review this restaurant.

pipsdish, covent garden - review

From where I’m seated, my surroundings are that of homely familiarity. I have a view into the kitchen with a duck-egg blue Smeg fridge, double porcelain sinks, coffee mugs dangling from hooks, and cookbooks stacked up by the window. There are rows of empty shelved kilner jars waiting for preserve, and the remaining half of a recently shattered crusty loaf left on a chopping board. Heavy hooked-back drapes keep out the chill, and a stately wardrobe stands fast in the corner. There are film posters on the wall and the general nick-nacks of life scattered about the room. Any other place and I’d be seated in the dining area of someone’s home. Not so here; I am in fact in a restaurant in Covent Garden.

PipsDish is a venture that has taken the supper club experience into a more commercial setting; its intention is to make you feel like you’re at home when you are in fact, out. The man behind the enterprise is Philip Dundas - food writer, author, cook, member of the Guild of Food Writers committee and all round culinary dynamo. The idea of PipsDish was conceived back in 2011, first starting in Philip’s apartment and then moving to a disused Citroen Garage in Upper Street where, along with his friend Mary Doherty, hungry patrons were fed from this pop-up for almost two years. When the garage closed, PipsDish moved to Hoxton Square running a small one-table restaurant from the basement of the British Standard kitchen designers showroom. That lasted for nine months and was followed by the opening of the Covent Garden dining experience in October 2013, all six quaint tables of it. The concept is different to other restaurants in almost every way. There is first the most obvious distinction of environment - effort is made to keep any evidence of commercial activity hidden so as not to effect the unique am-I-in-fact-in-someone’s-home experience. The real kitchen where the food is cooked is out the back and down the stairs and the till system is concealed in that massive wardrobe.

Then there is the food; it stays true to the honest, unfussed, home-cooked fare so often found in the homes of supper clubs (and I’ve been to a few). And like a supper club but unlike a restaurant, there is no menu. Food served during a day is based on what Philip and team procure that morning. Their meat is from Gill Wing Farm in Sussex, the fish is landed from day boats in Cornwall using sustainable methods, they use artisanal producers they know. They work with what is seasonal and fresh and essentially, available. So how was the food? Hot and generous and served in heavy Le Creuset vessels with astrantias (one of my favourite flowers) furnishing every table. A chunky piquant tapenade - fruity with olive oil and served on bread (which would have been better toasted) - started the evening. Heirloom tomatoes tossed with roasted onions, a touch of chilli and cooling goat's curd was simple and splendid. An oven dish of flaky slow-roast pork butt, brimming bowls of creamed greens with garlic and lemon, charred aubergine flesh with yoghurt and pine nuts, and roasted potatoes sprinkled with parmesan are the exact sort of things you want to be presented with to accompany the bottle of wine and raucous laughter shared between friends. Dessert were silky pots of tongue-tackingly tart lemon cream topped with fresh raspberries and crisp shortbread rounds that crumbled and then softened in the mouth. 

Every scrap of our dinner was cleared with great enthusiasm.

A plentiful three course meal in the evening as above is £32.50. Smaller seasonal plates are available from £6 - £10. A carafe of house wine is £12.50, a full litre £22, a glass £5. They open Tues - Sat from 12pm - close. There is little I don’t like about this place - the no-menu BMF concept that will always draw me (sit down, order something to drink, allow them to feed you), and that it feels like a secret bolt-hole in the middle of one of London’s busiest districts only you and the few others dining around you know of. My experience at PipsDish is a blueprint of how an evening would feel if a friend invited me over for dinner and asked me to bring the red. And there is little that can ever be wrong with that. Liked lots: the feeling of exclusivity with such few tables; unique at-home experience when dining out; the obvious effort made to achieve this; everything eaten; dog-friendly; despite its small size it still had the buzz of chat and conviviality familiar to any good restaurant
Liked less: a couple without a reservation did end up sharing a table with another - be aware of this possibility, or just book in advance
Good for: romantic date; small parties up to four - although there is an area for an additional eight at the back; an honest meal you can't be bothered to make at home; an oasis of calm in the tourist-crazed madness that can be London

My rating: 4/5

Afiyet olsun.

Note: I was invited as a guest to this restaurant.