Exmouth Grill, 55-57 Exmouth Market, London EC1 (020 7837 0009). Meal for two, including wine and service, £75
I go to restaurants assuming that clever, tasteful people, who have sacrificed everything from their complexion to their marriages to the punishing hours of the kitchen, will have constructed for me platefuls of interesting ingredients. I only want to choose between dishes, not decide every detail of what goes on the plate. If I wanted to do that I'd stay home. For this reason I have always been suspicious of restaurants that claim to offer massive choice, not least because most people do not have the necessary skills with which to make those choices.
At the Fish! chain, for example, you get to choose the type of fish you want to eat, how you'd like it cooked and what sauce you want to accompany it. As a result, some truly terrible things are done to innocent ingredients by people who should know better, but don't.
I was, therefore, terribly troubled by the concept at the newly opened Exmouth Grill in London's Clerkenwell: choose your animal protein, choose your sauce, your salsa, your side dish. Blimey, after all that choosing I wouldn't want dinner; I'd want a long lie down. That the Exmouth Grill isn't a car crash, that it is indeed a rather pleasing and uncomplicated place is, I think, down to the second word in its title. Everything goes on the grill, and is the better for it.
Choices are made from two blackboards. The first, offering two courses for a very reasonable £12, is of standard plated dishes: steamed mussels and clams with garlic parsley and chilli to start, for example, followed by slow-roast pork belly with puy lentils. The second is a list of ingredients: lobster under the heading 'crustacea', tuna or swordfish under 'fish steaks', bass and its ilk under 'filleted fish' through to organic meats: lamb, duck, veal and beef. Again prices seem fair, topping out at £14 for the beef fillet and loitering mostly around £10 to £12.
Beware, though. Extras can push up the bill. The menu offers five types of mash at £2.50 a shot, five salads and five vegetables ditto, four salsas and five chutneys at £1.25. Not all of these sound like a good idea. Pomegranate and sweetcorn salsa, anyone? And when they asked me whether I wanted my lamb brushed with basil, garlic or chilli oil my head did begin to spin. What next? Salad cream with that? Bag on your head?
When it turned up, though, everything made sense. The shellfish starter showed a sympathetic hand in the kitchen and another of chorizo with couscous had a pleasing smokiness. In the main courses the grilled meats - rack of lamb for me, beef fillet for her - were allowed to speak for themselves. Hand-cut chips were crisp, green beans still had bite and though the Dijon mash was too much the fancy-pants pommes puree for my liking, the flavouring was balanced. Only the caramelised shallots didn't score, because they weren't caramelised. Even a creme brulee did not dishonour the name of the dish.
The Exmouth Grill looks like the food it serves. It's solid and functional with a few glamorous touches - velvet and wood booths, dark leather sofas, candles to flatter the saggy-cheeked like me - but with an open kitchen to push home the utilitarian message. There's also an interesting wine list starting at £12.50, with loads by the glass. So that's more choices that need to be made. But when the things to choose from are as sensible as this, even a bolshy swine like me will get with the project.
