Telephone: 020 7627 2468
Address: 14 Clapham Park Road, London SW4
Dinner for two, including wine and service, £75
All big-name chefs have a breakthrough restaurant, a place where everything comes together. For Marco Pierre White it was Harvey's in Wandsworth. For Gordon Ramsay it was Aubergine in Chelsea. For two young, unknown chefs called Adam Byatt and Adam Oates, that restaurant is Thyme in Clapham, south London. Sweet Jesus but it's good. If you are looking for moderate, restrained prose, go elsewhere this week because you won't find it here. Nothing here is hyperbolic. It is all meant. I went with my friend Jerry, a man who's had more hot dinners than I've had hot dinners. Together we could come up with only one criticism: the front door is a bit insubstantial. It was the best we could do.
Thyme occupies an afterthought of a site across from a Sainsbury's car park. The two Adams, who met while working at Claridges, have done little to the white cube of a space, save to install a few wavy sofas opposite the bar at the front and to hang a bold painting of a nude woman who is very blue. The menu has 18 dishes, arranged in groups of three. The first trio costs just £4 and the prices rise by £1 each time to £9 at the top. The idea is that you do away with the standard 'starter/main-course' plan and instead order three or even four of these savoury dishes, each of which is roughly the size of a starter. It immediately appealed to me. All too often I find myself wanting to order lots of starters and grow bored of a main course halfway through. This way nothing would outstay its welcome.
And certainly not with this calibre of cooking. I started with creamed cauliflower soup, a rather modish dish in London restaurants. The cliché is to bulk it with cream, froth it, cappuccino style, and then mound it with spoonfuls of truffle oil. In this case the intense soup was truffle- oil free. Instead, in the centre lay a single, plump tortellini. The moment I broke it with my spoon, butter thickly flecked with lumps of truffle spilled out, giving a depth charge of flavour. It was a fabulous dish. And it was one of those priced at £4. Gosh. Jerry started with a dark-green velouté of parsley that tasted as the flat-leafed variety tastes when you crunch it between your teeth. In the centre was a perfectly poached egg.
For our second course we moved up to £6 dishes. Jerry chose the parfait of foie gras and chicken livers, which could not have been more sparely presented: as a perfect oblong on a white plate. It was one of the best I have ever tasted, unctuous and yet extraordinarily light. It was also served at the ideal temperature. Clearly there was an awful lot going on here. Or as Jerry put it: 'First you've got the inventiveness of the menu, then you've got the simplicity of the presentation. Finally there's the complexity of the flavours.' I wish I'd said that.
The same applied to my next course: oxtail-stuffed baby squid with a saffron risotto. The squid had been deeply seared so that the fishiness was overlaid with dark caramel flavours which chimed with the strands of melting oxtail. The sticky rice added that extra note of earthiness. The confit of duck leg with crushed new potatoes and sweet-potato purée pulled off the same trick by using the sweet potatoes to echo the sweetness of the beautifully crisp meat. There was nothing cloying about this piece of duck. But the star of the meal, at just £8, had to be Jerry's roast fillet of cod with a purée of braised peas. After one mouthful he dropped his knife and said, 'Oh that's absolutely fantastic. That is the best fish I have ever tasted.' And it was. Cod can at times just stand as a background for other ingredients but here, crisp and seared on one side, the delicacy of its flavour shone through. Technically it was a faultless dish.
Of the puddings, all at £5, a warm banana tart had a welcome saltiness to the caramel. A honeycomb nougat parfait with bitter-chocolate sorbet was light and shade on a plate, the sudden dose of unsweetened chocolate pointing up the sweetness of the ludicrously soft parfait. I don't normally separate out charges for food from the bill, but the cost of this spectacular cooking was £47, or £23.50 a head.
One of the Adams told me they are trying to offer 'West End food at suburban prices'. Such great value encourages you to look further up the wine list: we chose a lush rose Sancerre at £27, but the list starts at a reasonable £14.50. As Jerry said, the next time he'll probably go for the cheapest bottle: 'Food like this does not need a helping hand.' As to the service, it is polite, knowledgeable, considerate, and French. And the best thing about Thyme? It's just two miles from my house.
Contact Jay Rayner on jay.rayner@observer.co.uk.
