Telephone: 020 7613 5346
Address: The Eyre Brothers Restaurant, 70 Leonard Street, London EC2.
Dinner for two, including wine and service, £100.
I am sick of sitting in airport lounges circa 1974, with their acres of wood veneer and leather banquettes in shades of chocolate. I don't know who came up with this retro restaurant style (probably somebody with a warehouse full of wood veneer that needed shifting), but its popularity means that sometimes when I am reviewing in London, I feel like I am living a version of Groundhog Day; all that appears to change from one new place to another is the VAT number at the bottom of the bill. This growing ennui is, of course, probably more a result of going to restaurants for a living than any vast deficiency on the part of the style in which they are dressed. Even I can see that there is something clean and attractive about it. Still, enough with the veneer already! How about crimson plush for a change?
It was the grating familiarity of the design of The Eyre Brothers, a new restaurant from David and Rob Eyre, who used to be partners in the übergastro pub The Eagle on London's Farringdon Road, which first encouraged my doubts. Those with more than a 15-minute memory may recall a review a few weeks ago of the new venture from Michael Belben, the other original partner in The Eagle. Where Michael has stuck with The Eagle formula by finding another pub, David has gone the big-ticket restaurant route. Coincidentally, the two new ventures are only about 100m from each other in London's Shoreditch.
I am a huge fan of David's brand of rumbustious Mediterranean cooking, which also draws on his childhood in the once Portuguese colony of Mozambique. It may be that I am simply wallowing in nostalgia for the old Eagle days, but here it feels as if, like a hairy-arsed biker trying to disguise his true nature by wearing a pinstripe suit, the food has been shoe-horned into a style that doesn't quite fit. Then again, the problem may be more basic than that: they have attempted the glossy restaurant thing but not yet got it to shine.
Two of the five dishes my companion and I tried were very good indeed and I would go back to have them again, but two were just OK and one was a catastrophe. At The Eagle - and the food really isn't hugely refined here from what it was there - you did not begrudge the occasional deficiency because you were paying no more than £15 for two courses, and usually less. Here, starters are £7.50; and mains come in at £15 to £20. That does increase expectations.
Added to this, the service can be perfunctory and distracted. When we arrived, for example, the waiter wandered off down the restaurant to scope out a table without telling us whether we should follow or stay where we were, so that we ended up neither here nor there, loitering without intent in the middle of the dining room. It's not the sort of welcome you expect from a place that is about to slip a rounded 50 quid out of your bank account per person.
But let's start with the good stuff: a bowl of fine, salty olives and some lovely crusty bread, plus a ripe olive oil to dip it in to. We ordered a couple of glasses of a gorgeous fino sherry at £3.50 each while we considered the menu. For my starter, I went for wild mushrooms and eggs on toast because it sounded like high-class comfort food - and, by God, it was. The toast was a hunk of the same crusty bread, grilled and drizzled with olive oil, overlaid with perfect scrambled eggs which were soft but not runny, all piled with sauteéd but not frazzled mushrooms. This I would go back for time and time again.
My companion, Gerry, was less fortunate. He ordered a grilled artichoke salad with pecorino Romano, sundried tomatoes and olives. He took one mouthful and was suddenly choking. I am used to my dining companions wrinkling their noses at things they don't like or saying, apologetically, 'not my type of thing, I think'. And sometimes it is just a matter of taste. But when they start to go into spasm, when the reaction is literally visceral, you know there's a problem. Here, it was vinegar overload. The chargrilled artichokes had first been marinated, and how. I'm not sure whether there was extra vinegar in the dressing, but it definitely hit the back of the throat. Not a good dish.
He was much luckier with his main course: roast monkfish with caramelised butter and sage and braised black cabbage. As Gerry said, it is very easy to ruin a good piece of monkfish by cooking it for just a few seconds too long. This was perfect and the cabbage - crisp, lemony, salty - was a grand accompaniment. My main course - grilled leg of lamb with borlotti beans and butternut squash purée - was fine but no more than that. To finish, we shared a plum and almond tart from a list which did not beg for attention, and it, too, was workmanlike.
The wine list is not overly long but, admirably, has no fewer than 15 choices available by the glass. From it, we chose a soft, rounded Chilean Merlot, which was served at a perfect temperature - when it arrived. We had asked for a little more time to choose the wine and our waiter simply forgot to come back and ask us what we wanted. As a result, it didn't turn up until our starters were already on the table. Again, not smart or clever.
If it sounds like I am saying all this more in sorrow than in anger then that's absolutely right. As I explained, I love this kind of cooking, but the operation needs serious fine tuning. A lot of wood veneer does not a grand restaurant make.
Contact Jay Rayner at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk.
