Bruno Delamare @ The Art Room Restaurant, 6 Market Place, Margate (01843 295603).
Meal for two, including wine and service, £120
Think of this review as one of those blues numbers in which the verse delivers up a litany of woe, but the chorus repeats a determined mantra. In this case it would be: but the food's really good and I don't want them to close.
There are so many silly things about this week's restaurant that I wondered whether they had taken an HND in shooting themselves in the foot. The problems start with location. This is a restaurant of ambition. There are beautiful stained-glass windows in the claret dining room, and thick carpets and squishy sofas. Worryingly, all this is in Margate, a fine town in many ways, but one which has had its economic troubles. A fantastic £7m Turner Centre is expected to revitalise the town, but work has barely started. There will be a long wait before the hungry crowds come.
Then there is the name: Bruno Delamare @ The Art Room. Slapping your own name on a restaurant when nobody has ever heard of you and cares little where you happen to be redefines pretentious. Gordon Ramsay had two Michelin stars before his name went anywhere near the hoardings. It is possible that Bruno of-the-sea thought his name a cute joke in a town whose name means gate to the sea. Except that I met the chef and I don't think he does jokes. Still, the food's really good and I don't want them to close.
Many other things jar: there's the pompous announcement on the menu that jeans and sports shoes are not allowed. There are the clumsy translations - Fleur de Sel does translate, literally, as sea flower, but sea salt would have been nearer the mark. There's the use of silver cloches: cloches were invented to keep food warm on the long journey from kitchen to dining room in grand country houses, not for the 20ft from kitchen to table here. And there is the charming waitress, who delivering a glass of house white insists it is a Merlot, which is theoretically possible but bloody unlikely. It is a Sauvignon.
Most of all there is the price: £30 for two courses, £35 for three, plus supplements. Delamare said he will soon be forced to put on a £25 lunch menu, and sounded peeved about it. He should be doing three courses at lunch for at least £5 less, or they really will close. He could reduce portion size. He could pull back on the luxury ingredients ... but somehow I don't think he will.
Still, the food is great: a ripe autumnal fricassee of snails and wild mushrooms to start was dressed with a rich buttery sauce of garlic and parsley; a tasting of duck, boasting a fine terrine and an expertly seared piece of liver, came with a slightly less impressive duck pastilla, lacking the sugar these Middle Eastern meaty pastries should have. Roast partridge with cranberries was gamey and tender and came with 'my grandmother's endive', cooked with ham and cheese, and it had a touching and homely taste. Turbot was coated in chestnut flour, seared and presented with clams in a beurre blanc, given body with veal jus. Apple tart was spot on, and a pudding of juicy roast pineapple with mint sorbet was only slightly let down by the crispness of the meringue on top. It is all unapologetically bourgeois, and succeeds because the chef knows exactly what he's doing - but only in the kitchen.
I think you get the point. The food's really good, and I so don't want them to close.
