Address: Levant, London
Something was most definitely up. The place was awash with critics, chefs, distinguished food writers and chroniclers of the social scene. Why, even I was in the company of Blossom, the distinguished restaurant commentator of our sister newspaper, The Observer, his wife, my wife, and two immensely informed eaters from America. I began to wonder if there was anyone dining in Levant that night who was what you might call a non-interested party. We all sat at our tables, wondering how the others were getting on, and how they'd express their experience in print.
The last time I had been to Levant, it hadn't been Levant at all, but Oceana, a restaurant of some ambition, style and substance that never quite hacked it in the public affections. That was then. Levant is now. The basement area has been modified, simplified and made immeasurably sophisticated and elegant. The London passion for things North African has moved on from the colour, swirl and dash of the carpet stalls of the souk to something more reminiscent of the austere beauty of the desert itself.
Food, too, has moved on (if those are the words), to what is claimed is a kind of modified Middle Eastern cooking - the Levant is defined generally as "the eastern Mediterranean and its shores" (Chambers). The chef is definitely British. Having said that, the breads, pickles, moutabal, taramasalata, muhammra and the hummus, which were delivered to our table by a young man of rare charm, could have been distinctly and deliciously straight from a table in Jerusalem.
From there on in it would seem the level of direct inspiration seemed to fluctuate. Clearly, the intention is not to produce "authentic" food of the Levant, which is just as well, as I am not in a position to comment learnedly on matters of authenticity. My grilled sardines, for example, could as well have been multi-purpose Mediterranean as from the coast between Tizi Ouzou and Beirut. They were as large as small herrings and notably well-cooked, but not remotely nationalised by any one culinary culture.
Being six around the table, we gave the menu a pretty good run-through - some squid, coated, the menu said, in almonds, a nice conceit I thought; a ravioli lookalike called manti stuffed with chard and feta; braised spiced lamb with potatoes and chickpeas; roasted sea bass with red pepper and walnut sauce; a poussin ditto; roast kid; lamb kebab; spinach salad; rocket salad; and then, in the pudding department baklava, lemon semolina cake, almond-stuffed dates with clotted cream, and poached dried fruits with vanilla ice cream.
I'd better say right off that it was a fairly disappointing experience, all told. It wasn't that the food was bad, or even badly cooked, but it lacked oomph, it lacked zip and zest, and, above all, it lacked spice. Spice, it seems to me, lies at the heart of Middle Eastern cooking: the dextrous use of turmeric, cumin, cinnamon, saffron, coriander, chilli and all the rest are, in many cases, what distinguishes the Lebanese version of a dish from the Syrian, or the Syrian from the Moroccan. Of the pointed, piquant use of spice there was no trace as far as I was concerned. It may be said, with some fairness, that I was beginning to show the symptoms of the Mother of All Colds, but I patiently questioned my fellows at the table, all of whom have more sensitive palates than I anyway, and they were equally baffled on the spice front.
I have no particular beef with the reinvention of the cooking of whatever country, just so long as the finished article cries "Eat me!" in a commanding fashion. The food at Levant did not. For instance, my stew of lamb and chickpeas was a pleasant enough proto-peasant stew, but without distinguishing characteristics. The sea bream and the grilled poussin came in for a similar low level of enthusiasm. The manti were decent enough, but the pasta envelope was of the heavy-duty variety.
While some dishes could have done with a touch more of the warm south, others could have done with less. If you are going to make a virtue of non-authenticity, then you have the excuse to trim a little fat off the roast kid. Obviously, if you are beside a wadi in the desert such refinements of butchery may get overlooked. You're not going to waste a good chunk of nice, wholesome fat under those circumstances. In Marylebone, London, it is another matter, however. The amount of fat was excessive. (To be fair, the majestic Jonathan Meades, dining at another table, embraced the notion of fat wholeheartedly. The kid had been fatty, he agreed, "but it was very good fat".) And the blanched spinach salad with pine kernels was simply inedible - bitter, claggy and beastly.
The puddings were greeted with a little more praise, and so they should be, but they weren't enough in themselves to restore the sense of well-being that good dining should generate. This sense of blighted hope was intensified by a bill that reached £293, but it turned out that that was all our own fault. Two bottles of imperious Chteau Musar at £28.50 each, two bottles of an impish Cassis at £26.00 each, plus another £35 on sundry other tipples before and during meant that booze accounted for roughly half the bill - £144.50 (and before you get huffy about the sum spent on that front, I'd remind you that we were entertaining eminent guests). So that left £148.86 on food, or a shade under £25 a head, which isn't nearly as bad as the original total suggests. Indeed, by London standards, it would be more than reasonable if only the food had been as assured and as soothing as the service and decor.
