Hype by restaurant critics can be very expensive. I know. It once cost me £120. The year was 1994 and we were on holiday just outside Monmouth. Nearby was a pub called the Walnut Tree Inn. I knew all about the Walnut Tree because I'd been reading gushing accounts of it since school days. (Preposterous really. What schoolboy reads restaurant reviews? Answer: a rather round one.) In these reviews this isolated pub, run by an Italian chap called Franco, was a rare repository of stupendous Italian food - a trailblazer that had been setting the pace for all those who would follow with its brand of extraordinarily pungent cooking in unpretentious surroundings.
So now we were staying nearby and we could afford to go there. It was, as you have already guessed, a deeply disappointing meal. The food was at best fine and at worst lacklustre. The only remarkable thing was the bill - £120 for dinner in a dreary pub back room. I concluded that the hype had grown in direct relation to the mileage from London. So many people had made such an effort to get there that they couldn't bare just to shrug their shoulders and say 'So what?'
Cut to 2002. Franco Taruschio has retired from the Walnut Tree (passing it on to the highly regarded Stephen Terry) and he has turned up as the consultant chef at the Phoenix Bar and Grill in Putney, London. It is as different a place from the Walnut Tree as is imaginable. That was a spartan pub. This is a sleek space of white walls and downlighters. It has a garden area, with illuminated foliage which my companion, Andy the horn player, said reminded him of something in Los Angeles. Andy can say these things for he is very glamorous and has eaten in illuminated gardens in LA. The surroundings may have changed, but the menu hasn't. Taruschio has brought with him many of his signature dishes including an exotic-sounding lasagna of wild mushrooms and truffles, based on an 18th-century recipe, called vincisgrassi maceratesi. When I tried it in Wales all that time ago, I found it dry and solid and distinctly unappetising. Well, time changes everything. Here it was outrageously soft and lush and possessed an intense woodland fungus kick. The only problem was that I'd let Andy order it. I offered to let him try some of my pasta so I could try more of his but he declined. 'I think this will prejudice my taste buds,' he said. 'Probably for the rest of my life.'
My pasta was a kind of linguine with sunblushed tomatoes and some greenery much like samphire. It only took off when I made the effort to mix all the ingredients, but when the flavours came together it was an intriguing combination of textures. Still, it remained only a hand-held sparkler compared to the fireworks being enjoyed on the other side of the table. For my main course I had a mixture of shellfish in an intense broth of garlic, chilli and white wine. At £16 it deserved one chunky piece of protein in there somewhere but, even so, it was a great dish. Andy's fillet steak was a very fine piece of meat, perfectly prepared, and the accompanying risotto rosti was good and crisp and solid.
We finished with a pannacotta for me and, for Andy, what was called a spumone amaretto, a rich almond cream with a refreshingly tart edge. We disagreed on these; both of us thought the other was better, though the fact is that they were both good. We felt our arteries hardening nicely to the touch. All in all then, a fine meal which laid to rest some of the ghosts of the Welsh Marches. I have only one quibble and, as so often these days, it is the price. We had only one glass of wine each and the bill still came in just north of £94. Taruschio's dishes are good. Some of them are great. But I'm not convinced they are £94 great, whether they be served in Wales or London.
