Telephone: 020-7976 1313
Address: 11 Haymarket, London SW1
Rating: 16/20
Remember all that fuss over fusion food? It seems like ancient history now. Perhaps it is, but four or five years ago you couldn't open a paper, watch a cookery programme or read a chef profile without the f-word cropping up. It was the future of cooking. Australian, New Zealand and Californian chefs were going to take over the world. What a load of cobblers most of it was. What a colossal amount of cack-handed cooking it was used to justify.
Few chefs had the talent to pull off the balancing act that snipping ingredients and techniques out of Italian, Thai, French, Japanese, Chinese and Lapland cooking and sticking them all together calls for. I made up that bit about Lapland. Fusion food was to cooking what genetic modification is to the animal and vegetable worlds. Abandoning the time-honoured process of patient refinement, chefs leaped from concept to calamity in one bound.
Anyway, as I say, that was time past. But fusion cooking has not gone away, and neither have the Australians and New Zealanders. The army of talentless wannabes has been dispersed. The chefs that have survived are going about their business more quietly and with greater resolution. One of them is Scott Webster at Osia.
Osia used to be a banking hall. There are few signs that the world is changing for the better, but the discovery that old palaces of finance have been turned into palaces of fun is one. The grandiose self-importance of bloodless men in pinstripe and stiff collars has been buried beneath suave, muted panelling and shades of olive and grey. The high ceiling gives the room a certain airy elegance, the lighting is both clever and kind to even the pouchiest of faces. And the service has the attentiveness and consideration that has long vanished from our banking systems.
Mr Webster's menu is nothing if not intriguing. To emphasise the exoticism of the fusion experience, a glossary explains ingredients such as lilli pilli, warrigal greens, kumera and quandong (very high in vitamin C, apparently) that are esoteric, even by today's global gourmet standards.
However, the menu proper opens with "Food Cocktails & Ceviches", which is not as daft as it sounds. Think of prawn cocktail and you'll be on the right track - king prawn, soba noodle, daikon and tomato cocktail, or sea bass ceviche with spiced pineapple coriander dressing.
Out of curiosity, Tucker and I shared Devonshire white crab with minted cucumber noodle cocktail, and very good it was, too. Cucumber noodle might be a bit of menuspeak legerdemain; in fact, it was julienne of cucumber, but the crab was sweet and generous, the cucumber limp yet crunchy, the mint fresh as toothpaste, and, unannounced on the menu, a dollop of Californian dressing with flying fish roe well spicy. It all added up to a very lively opening number.
Sadly, nothing else quite lived up to the originality and sparkle of that dish. I'm not convinced that plantain, grilled or otherwise, is a suitable match for seared foie gras. The liver itself was impeccable, quite the best I've had for some time, but the plantain was fearsomely leathery and dry, even with a spoonful of cheery date and apple chutney.
Tucker had shaved prosciutto with steamed asparagus and macadamia nut oil, which I think was a bit of a cop out. It can't be said to be much of a test of a chef's skills, but if that's the kind of thing you like, you like that kind of thing; and Tucker did, although he found the nut oil rather greasy without much compensating flavour.
Then it was time for grilled organic salmon with wilted warrigal greens, chilli, tomato and kafir lime sauce for me, and dorrigo herbed rack of lamb, wilted snow pea shoots, kumera mash and veal rosemary jus for Tucker. The salmon was lively, if one dimensional, and the lamb dish was rescued from ordinariness by a very good mash.
At this stage I felt that, with the exception of the crab cocktail, the menu promised more fun than it delivered. The cooking was assured, and technically spot on, but at its heart it was conventional. The effect was not unlike getting into acustomised car with hallucinogenic paintwork, aerofoil spoiler, throbbing exhaust and artful chrome, only to find that it handled like a docile family saloon.
Puddings - chocolate soup with vanilla pepper ice cream, and banana chocolate spring rolls with hot fudge dip brought a welcome return to form, having that desirable balance of hedonism and sophistication. The soup and ice cream combo, in particular, was sensuous and sensational.
We drank a bottle of pretty decent pinot noir from New Zealand, in keeping with the fusion ideal. At £32, it helped to lift the bill to £143.50. To be fair, the drinks (Campari, water, coffee, etc) came to £62.50 in all. This left £81 for food, moving Osia into quite a senior bracket in terms of ambition and cost. Still, I'm much happier giving my money to a restaurant than to a bank.
· Open Lunch, Mon-Fri, 12 noon-2.45pm; dinner, Mon-Sat, 5.30-10.45pm. Menus Lunch and pre-theatre, £19 for two courses, £23 for three. All major credit cards except Diners Club. Wheelchair access.
