Rating: 9.25/10
Telephone: 020-7349 0202
Address: 27 Cale Street, London SW3
Open: All week, 7.30am-midnight (1am, Fri & Sat)
Price: Three-course meal with wine, £35-£50 a head.
As someone who once, after a New Year's Eve pot plant accident, slung a garden spade over his shoulder, sang a snatch of Hi Ho, Hi Ho, It's Off To Work We Go, and then spoke the words, "I feel just like one of the seven dwarves", to a woman of 3ft 6in, I'm no stranger to the cripplingly embarrassing faux pas. Even so, the one I committed at some restaurant awards a few years ago makes it into the top five, wake-up-at-4.27am-sweating-and-shaking all-time shockers.
Having been introduced to a very shy young chef called Tom Aikens, and convinced that the moment needed leavening, I facetiously asked if he was one of those chefs who likes to whack his kitchen staff with a frying pan or whether he prefers to brand them instead. The metaphorical wind blew the spectral leaves through the imaginary graveyard, the phantasmal sound of church bells arose and a fellow judge steered me hurriedly from the scene. "You do know how he came to leave Pied à Terre, don't you?" she hissed.
"Oh God no, please not the frying pan?" I mumbled.
"No," she said, "the branding iron."
Weird things happen in frantic kitchens, of course, and anyway, it's ancient history now. Since that setback, a calmer Aikens has known nothing but success, winning various awards and a couple of Michelin stars for his eponymous place in Chelsea. Now he's turned his mind to a type of branding that's potentially even more dangerous to a chefly reputation (Gary Rhodes is the classic template; the jury's still deliberating Gordon Ramsay's frenzied expansionism) by opening a second restaurant named after himself.
Although a short walk from the first, which despite its owner's technical brilliance is too fussy for my taste, his newborn Tom's Kitchen is as different as could be. Here, in a rural canteen of a room that, with its white-tiled walls and studied plainness, is reminiscent of St John, Aikens doesn't so much embrace simplicity as bear hug it half to death. The result will be spectacular.
I use the future tense only because the day we went, he (and his twin Robert, who has joined him here) had been open less than a week and the usual teething problems had left them with a truncated menu and wine list. Even so, there was enough evidence to see that a formula of decently priced, huge-flavoured, brasserie-style Anglo-French dishes with Italian and American influences (pastas and burgers), served by smiley, hip young staff in an uncluttered room (a few food photographs above a long marble bar and glass panes in the floor to give a view over a wine- and cheese-tasting room below), will be a triumph.
A rich, salty chicken consommé with vermicelli and herby dumplings was "a soup that stops you talking mid-sentence, it's so wonderful", as my wife put it. A goat's cheese salad was immaculate, and goujons of sole with tartare salt weren't just crispy and greaseless, but "the freshest fish I've tasted since I went to a Tokyo fish market at 5am".
She also adored her main course, two slabs of exquisite, pan-fried foie gras served with a pair of fried duck's eggs and loads of crispy bacon, but my seven-hour confit of lamb was something else. It was possibly the finest single dish I've tasted in two years, the red-winey richness and incredible tenderness of the meat, accompanied by shallots and delicately laced with balsamic vinegar, verged on the indecent. My saliva glands are going berserk at the memory. Side dishes of fluffy mash and crisp Savoy cabbage with smoky bacon were also great, and although profiteroles were a bit lifeless, homemade vanilla yogurt with churros (deep-fried Spanish doughnuts) was "unspeakably good".
We've known for a while that Tom Aikens, who is about to add to the menu a range of casseroles brought to the table in metal pots with ladles (can you imagine anything more alluring in deep winter?), is a stunningly good cook. To find him eschewing the over-elaborate poncery that makes Michelin-land such a sterile, overpriced bore makes me hope and suspect that this reformed firebrand has matured into one of the most positive and important influences on British cooking today.
