As a squalid youth I used to drink under age in a Hampstead pub called the Wells. It was rougher than most of the pubs in the area, which, as the area was Hampstead, meant the ale-soaked regulars had only read, say, Lawrence and Waugh rather than Joyce. Recently, the Wells was given the gastropub makeover, but I didn't go. I didn't wish to be reminded of my carelessly mislaid youth. And this despite my interest in the chef there, Derek Creagh.
All good chefs carry the imprint of the kitchens in which they have worked, like so many high-tide marks. In Creagh's case it is the mark of Heston Blumenthal and the Fat Duck in Bray, and Blumenthal's second venture, the Riverside Brasserie, which he opened. Creagh does not cook like Blumenthal. There are no savoury ice creams on his menus, or disconcerting caviar-and-white-chocolate food combinations. It is there more in the technique: the fabulous triple-cooked chips, the low-temperature cooking of meats, the best lemon tart on the planet.
A few weeks ago the same team opened a new venture, the Ebury in Pimlico, with Creagh in the kitchen again. The Ebury was also once a pub, but it doesn't suit the term gastropub now. They may pull pints at the bar, but they also mix spectacular cocktails. Downstairs is a brasserie with a seafood bar, from which you can get three kinds of oysters or fresh prawns with aioli. There is Scottish langoustine, fried in rosemary butter and served with crispy pork belly for a tenner. There is leeky Welsh rarebit and scrambled eggs on toast with chorizo, triple-cooked chips and charcuterie, and even lobster thermidor. It reads well. You could eat here for £20 a head.
Upstairs is the (very) quiet dining room, with its scrubbed floors and queenie red-glass chandeliers. It's not an unattractive space, but I do wonder how they will attract people to spend £29.50 on three courses when there is so much else going on down below. The night I went there were just four tables filled, out of about 20. The draw is the food, which is, for the most part, very good and Blumenthal in so many ways. Quail breasts had been low-temperature cooked, leaving them tender and pink and flavourful enough to cope with the lightly acidic reduction with which they had been lubricated. A rich, soupy stew of smoked haddock with creamed leaks and a single soft egg yolk also contained tomatoes, clearly dried under the pass lights, a trick of Blumenthal's.
Our main courses were replicas of dishes I've eaten at the Riverside Brasserie. Rump steak came with a sauce bordelaise - stock, red wine, silky nuggets of bone marrow - and triple-cooked chips, and while it was not the best piece of beef, it was a pleasure to eat the dish again. Pork belly, braised for days to a melting unctuousness, came with Savoy cabbage and chorizo, garden peas and broad beans - which was how I remembered it. And then the lemon tart, so light it was a wonder it stayed on the plate, and an arse-kicking chocolate and pistachio tart.
The wines are well chosen and start at just above £10, as they do down below in the brasserie. And that's the point. An argument for the upstairs dining room has not yet been made. Nevertheless, if you don't want to revisit my beery youth at the Wells, and if you don't want to drag yourself out to Bray, the Ebury is the place to go.
· The Ebury, 11 Pimlico Road, London SW1 (020 7730 6784). Meal for two, including wine and service, £50-90.
