17-18 Tooks Court, Cursitor Street, London EC4
(020 7404 1818)
Meal for two, including wine and service, £70 TO £100
I am not entirely convinced by the name of this week's restaurant. I accept that Dine has a certain Ronseal simplicity. If you go to a place with that word above the door you can be sure it won't be to have your bunions treated; food will be involved somehow. But, beyond that, it doesn't say much does it: Dine? On what? And is that an order? It speaks of hours of furious debate over the naming of the new venture, until the candles burned low and the wine in the bottles was lower still. And then somebody shouted: 'Sod it! I need my bed. Let's call it Dine.' And everybody agreed and went home.
What most intrigues me is the complete absence of personality or individual character in the name, given that it is attached to a restaurant which has so much of both. For example, at the back of the place, just behind the long wooden bar, is a football table. Apparently it was a major feature here when it was merely a wine bar, doing food at lunchtimes, and though the whole operation has now moved up five gears since then, the football table remains. Chef Thomas Han, who used to cook at Roussillon in London's Pimlico, likes a game between services, I was told, so the table stayed.
The restaurant, which seats only a couple of dozen, is located in a gussied-up alley off Holborn and is a simple affair. There are dark-wood floors, a few bits of floaty fabric, and some unworrying pieces of art on the walls. The menu descriptions have the same simplicity and, for once, what it says is what you get. Too often these days - particularly in London - a dish will be described by a single word. It will say 'pig', but what will come is a bit of belly and some loin. And some trotter. And a curl of tail. And something previously unimagined with a porcine eyebrow. And a witty little foam made from the spleen. I have come to assume that the simpler the menu description, the more complex the dish will be.
Not at Dine. Three courses from the main menu here is £30, with a couple of other dishes - scallops say, or beef (the menu changes regularly) - offered at a supplement. From that menu my companion chose a dish listed as 'Alain Ducasse's chestnut veloute, wild mushroom ravioli and glazed chestnuts'. (Curiously, this dish, named after a revered French chef, comes from the part of the menu listed as 'UK appetisers'. No idea why.) What arrived were two small, round ravioli and two chestnuts, arranged side by side in a dry bowl, like punctuation marks. Then a second waitress arrived with a hot copper pan of the soup. Three ingredients on the menu and three ingredients in the bowl. It was very good, particularly when the soft, smooth flavours of the veloute were combined with the denser texture of the whole chestnuts and the richness of the pureed mushrooms in the ravioli.
Thomas Han likes his wild mushrooms, because they turned up in my starter and main course, both chosen from the daily lunch menu. At £16 for two courses and £19 for three this is a serious bargain. Usually these menus are dominated by ingredients from the cheap end of town: it's the place to find salmon or chicken or guinea fowl (which sounds more exotic than chicken but isn't really). Here, though, the starter was an open ravioli of Lake District hare, long braised until the fibres had given up the will to cling to each other, with sauteed mushrooms between thin layers of very good pasta.
My main course displayed the same keen interest in dark winter flavours. There was a generous slab of sauteed calf's sweetbread with one luscious pearly langoustine and two slices of cep. A slick of meaty jus and that was it. It takes real self-confidence to plate up so little and make so much from it. The same instinct for simplicity was shown in the other main course, a thick boned-out steak of sea bass, cut through the fish (rather than as a fillet), with spears of chicory cooked until they were falling apart.
The only misfire in our meal was a rhubarb cheesecake. The biscuit base was crisp and the filling had a distinct cheesiness which, despite the dish's name, is so rare, but the rhubarb puree, though a fantastic shade of pink, was under-sweetened. All it brought to the dish was sourness. I did much better with a luscious brick of a crisp and chewy iced praline beneath a blanket of dark, shiny chocolate sauce.
In short, a fine meal available at a reasonable price - particularly if you choose the lunch menu. One quibble: they charge £1.50 for bread, though they plonk it on the table without mentioning this. They should simply bump the price of the menu up a little. Nobody will complain when the cooking is this accomplished. Plus, there's always the opportunity for a free game of table football.
· Jay Rayner has just won the British Press Awards Critic of the Year. Email him at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk
