Telephone: 020 7619 0348
Address: 44 Barnsbury Street, London N1
Dinner for two, including wine and service, £90.
Let me confess. About half way into my meal at the Draper's Arms I realised that the nagging feeling in the pit of my stomach was not dismay at the food or the service but something far more profound: disappointment. I was disappointed because, for the previous hour I had been desperately searching for reasons to hate the place, and now I had to concede that there was none. And the only reason I wanted to hate it was its location, in Islington, a place where being self-satisfied is a spectator sport.
Last week's 'neighbourhood restaurant', Numidie in Crystal Palace, was small, self-contained and modest of price. The Draper's Arms - glossy pub downstairs, glossier dining room upstairs - is likewise a neighbourhood restaurant but catering for a six-figure salary neighbourhood.
Here, in this laid-back pub, dinner costs £45 a head because it can. No one thinks about credit-card bills; they think only of property values and positive equity. Service is brisk. Food is modish without being over-wrought. Some of the dishes are even just straight knock-offs of standards at the Ivy. God I was jealous. I wanted this to be my neighbourhood, and I wanted the six-figure salary to go with it.
The only dish I could take issue with was the salad of seared squid, chorizo and artichoke, ordered as a starter by my writer friend Jon, who makes a living pursuing conspiracy theorists. The leaf element of the salad was provided by frisee, the dumb blonde of the salad world.
It may look like pretty, green pubic hair, but it has nothing to say for itself. I could point out that the type of chorizo used was wrong, but I would only be trying to show off, because it worked well. My warm asparagus with smoked eel and lemon butter was a great combination. The soft, oily eel and grass-fresh asparagus were made for each other. My linguine with crab - one of those Ivy dishes again - was better than the original for being a more generous portion of equally well-executed pasta: there was lots of crab meat and the seasoning was robust. Jon's roast loin of tuna was spot on. Seared tuna, served pink, has become such a cliché it's easy to forget how hard it is to do well, as this was. The accompanying stew of peppers with caper berries, was good and pokey.
I finished with another Ivy dish, frozen berries with a white-chocolate sauce which solidifies into a soft caramel consistency when it hits the icy fruit. It was as good here as at the other place. A hunk of baked vanilla cheese cake, meanwhile, was dense and luscious.
Jon claimed an allergy to wine and instead drank only Pimms, which felt like a very Islington thing to do; anywhere else you'd probably get laughed out of the bar but here it looked like a lifestyle statement.
I was left to order wines by the glass because there are no half bottles, which always ends up costing much more. Perhaps the wine by the glass thing is a restaurateur's conspiracy. Perhaps Jon should investigate.
At the end of the evening I headed back to south London, wishing that the Draper's Arms was around the corner from my house or that my house was around the corner from the Draper's Arms and that, either way, I could afford eating there on a regular basis, which I can't.
That's the thing about the neighbourhood gastro pub. It's such a sexy proposition. And so a quick advert: the lease on the pub around the corner from me has just come up. Could anybody who fancies doing a Draper's Arms only at two-thirds of the cost get in touch for details? I need something down here to make the self-satisfied denizens of Islington jealous of Herne Hill and I need it fast.
