Telephone: 020-7359 2888
Address: Camden Passage, London N1
Open: Mon-Sat. Lunch, 12 noon-2.30pm; dinner, 5.45-11.30pm.
Price: Lunch, £20; dinner, £30-35 per person (plus wine).
Wheelchair access (staff will assist if necessary); disabled WC available (but only via York pub next door).
Eating out in Britain can be a grim experience, with jaded food pumped full of cheap additives being served to equally jaded customers pumped full of cheap muzak. Restaurateurs tell me that they only play monotonous background music to create an "atmosphere", but if that's the case, then why don't they become a little more adventurous, ditch the Clayderman and the Gypsy Kings, and give us some really atmospheric sounds instead? Think of the thrill of wandering into an empty restaurant and hearing the roar of an animated crowd of Belgian football supporters, sipping your soup to the sound of a dentist's drill, or drinking your coffee while listening to two iguanas copulating. Who knows - it might even distract you from the terrible food.
I've eaten in scores of third-rate restaurants where imaginative sound effect CDs would have been a blessed distraction from what was on my plate, but they're certainly not required at Frederick's. The faultless cuisine here deserves one's undivided attention and respect, and anyway, if you lunch alfresco in the patio garden (as I did late last summer), a panoply of natural sounds is already included in the service charge. A straw poll conducted among my fellow diners confirmed that the distant trill of local schoolchildren was vastly preferable to muzak, and I have to admit that I adored it, too. Indeed, I even thought about taking a walk in the park afterwards, so I could listen to the kiddies shouting and screaming and running around in all directions. Well, as I always say, how can they know I'm only firing blanks?
Frederick's, which celebrates its 35th anniversary this month, is a veritable Tardis of a restaurant. As you approach it from Upper Street, it seems no bigger than a police box, but once you're inside it opens up exponentially (so much so that you almost have to ask for a table near a waiter) and, thanks to its glass vaulted roof, it becomes airy and bright. The interior design is as inspired as the modern European cuisine developed by chef Andrew Jeffs, which impressed me right from the amuse-bouche that at first glance resembled the classic tapas habas con jamón (wooden toothpicks and all), but on closer inspection turned out to contain no jamón, just a delicious blend of broad beans in olive oil with mint and lemon juice. And why not? The are millions of non-carnivores in this country, yet too many chefs include meat in every amuse-bouche, as if to say, "Huh, vegetarian are you? Then sod off back to Vegetaria."
Although Frederick's is by no means a vegetarian restaurant, there are plenty of meat-free dishes on the menu, including my very grown-up starter, roast cauliflower cheese soup, which was as rich and as thick as David Beckham. I was dining with two old muckers from Yorkshire, one of whom had chicken liver and foie gras parfait with toasted walnut bread and grape chutney ("The dog's bollocks ... cock on," was his blunt yet appreciative verdict), while the other declared that his smoked eel with bacon, striped beetroot and horseradish was "perfectly combined". We'll have to take his word for that, mark you, because I've never been able to stand the thought of eating any member of the Anguilla family. Sorry, but they're the achilles eel of this food critic, so much so that I would consider ingesting one only if my plane crashed on a remote island and the alternative was devouring my fellow passengers. And even then I wouldn't touch it until we first-class travellers had eaten everyone in economy.
Our main courses were equally superb (try the raviolo of wild mushrooms with artichoke - it's a perennial here), and even though my honeyroast bacon with piccalilli arrived as a fish, due to an oversight, I couldn't complain. Especially not to such polite and attentive staff, who solved the problem with speed and efficiency. Moreover, they didn't hover around throughout lunch, trying to force more wine on us, and gave you the agreeable feeling (as Yorkshireman 1 put it) "that you're becoming one of them ... that you've ceased to be a client". Yorkshireman 2, meanwhile, was engrossed in his tarte Tatin with calvados, and surprisingly proved to be an expert in this dish. "It should be precisely the colour it is," he declared. "Brown approaching black, well caramelised - many are not - and it must be butterscotchy. This is spot on."
What made me glad to be here? What didn't? Not least, I've seldom encountered a better wine list, and from well over 200 entries we chose a light, lemony Trimbach Riesling d'Alsace 2002 followed by an Antinori Peppoli Chianti Classico 2000 that was fruit-driven, elegant and great with food. It was pretty good without food, too, as we discovered while finishing the bottle. As we left, engulfed in a pleasant fug of gastronomic and alcoholic excellence, I spotted somebody lurking around outside the door armed with a bunch of flowers. How glad I was that the restaurant hadn't let them inside. I hate it when people come right up to your table and try to sell you roses. I mean, you don't go into a florist and expect someone to sell you a pork pie, do you?
