The Grocer on Warwick, 21 Warwick Street, London W1 (020 7437 7776).
Meal for two, including wine and service, £60
Recently in London I have felt like I should chuck out the knife and fork and make do with the twigs. Pan-Asian is this year's thing. Last week was Cocoon. The Gordon Ramsay outfit has just launched Pengelley's and is soon opening Maze, which is (I'm told) going to be the French food gene spliced with the DNA of Asia. Or something. My instinct is to make like a grumpy old git and mutter about how tiresome it all is and, based on my experience at Cocoon, I could be forgiven for doing so. Then along comes a place like the Grocer on Warwick, just across London's Regent Street from Cocoon, and it quickly becomes clear that it's never the concept that's the problem. It's always the execution.
The Grocer is on the site of what was once the Sugar Club, which was in the vanguard of the fusion-cooking movement. Not long ago, the Sugar Club's founders set up a deli in west London called the Grocer on Elgin, which specialises in ready-to-eat dishes sold in vac-packed pouches. The front area of this central London branch has shelves of these and some, I must confess, seem a bit silly. Red duck curry at £6.95 or duck confit at £4.95 is fair enough. But just how slack do you need to be to buy a pouch of ready-made mash for £2.95?
No matter. At the back is the restaurant area, with an open kitchen and smart, solid-looking tables of charcoal-coloured wood. The concise menu is broken up into nine categories ranging from raw - sashimis and the like - through steamed and rotisserie, to wok and BBQ. Where Cocoon generally attempts to do dishes you could get elsewhere with results varying from good to, ahem, not, the Grocer provides its own twist, and does so with confidence. So a sashimi of yellow-tail tuna comes with a frisky salsa of yuzu and jalapeno, and where common sense says one should overwhelm the other, it doesn't. You can still taste the fish. Crispy fried squid with lemon was fresh and greaseless. A chicken green curry boasted hunks of sweet potato and some crunchy green beans in a sauce which, for once, was not tooth-achingly sweet.
There is also a rotisserie serving up (non-Asian) cuts of meat, from which we ordered the beef. A few minutes later we were told it was overdone for their liking and would we prefer the chicken or pork? Which is exactly how to deal with a problem like this. We had the pork, and it showed the benefit of a good long turn on the spit. Chicken sate was chunkier than usual on the skewer, and in the sauce. For pudding there is a selection of cakes and tarts, and both a lemon cheesecake and a pear tart were big, masculine affairs. The only things that didn't work for me were an oily fried rice with chorizo-like sausage and the espressos, which weren't hot enough.
I will confess I am getting a little tired of waiters in Pan-Asian gaffs telling me dishes will arrive when the kitchen is ready, rather than in any set order. I can see the benefit for the chefs, but not the customer. Then again, price has something to do with this. If, as at Cocoon, you suspect you will have to go on the game to settle the bill, you don't want to be dictated to by the kitchen. Here, the price point is eminently reasonable. Most dishes are £3 to £6, and there's nothing over £9. Even with wine you could eat very well for £60, which, this close to Piccadilly Circus, is almost miraculous. Of course, it shouldn't be. But that's another debate entirely.
