Waterhouse,
10 Orsman Street,
London N1 (020 7033 0123).
Meal for two, including wine and service, £90
We may not be able to save the planet by eating bitter chocolate tart, but at least when you order one at Waterhouse you know you won't be causing the planet any harm. And now you will want me to explain why this dessert is so virtuous and I shall, dealing with the most important things first: the light crisp pastry; the smooth, airy cocoa-rich filling which, unlike so many of these tarts, does not make you feel as if you have mainlined five cups of high-grade espresso after you've eaten it; the cooling scoop of spicy and sweet black pepper ice cream on the side.
What makes Waterhouse so impressive - I would even say important - is that all the other virtuous stuff underpinning this chocolate tart, the saving-the-planet stuff, is allowed to sit quietly in the background behind the quality of the food. Nobody should ever go to Waterhouse because they want to feel good about themselves. They should go because they want something to eat. Feeling good about yourself is a by-product.
Waterhouse is the second restaurant from the team behind Acorn House in London's King's Cross, which made its mark a year or two back by combining impeccable eco-credentials with a robust menu of unfussy seasonal food. Working once more with the Shoreditch Trust, a development agency for one of London's most deprived corners, they have launched this place on the Regent's Canal and, if anything, taken the eco-project even further. A complex system of heat transfer that completely baffles me enables them to use the water from the canal to control the restaurant's temperature. All electricity is from renewable sources. There are wormeries and composters to deal with waste and a paperless loo, which could be thrilling if a squirt up the jacksy is your idea of a good night out. They also do not sell mineral water, offering instead filtered tap in both sparkling and still.
Not that you'll see much about this on the menu, save the legend 'Trying to change the world one drop at a time'. This lot do not proselytise. They get their message across by running a rather lovely restaurant. Where Acorn House is all cool white lines and cafeteria chic, this is warmer. There's lots of deep brown wood and sexy downlighters. Along the bar, artfully placed baskets of produce - butter-yellow lemons, say, or knobbly aubergine - spill out as if gagging to show themselves off.
The point they make, that this is an ingredient-led business, is also on the menu and on the plate. The food is not pretty. Their winter salad is a big pile of sweet and bitter leaves including dandelions mixed with chunks of crispy, burnished pancetta, croutons and, to offer up a burst of sweet and sour, deep purple pomegranate seeds. What matters is it tastes good. A plate of burrata di bufala - the practically foetal version of mozzarella - paired its milky sweetness with the salty punch of olives and the pepperiness of crisp green olive oil. Read that description again. Nothing sentient died for that dish and yet I'm still making myself dribble into the keyboard.
Starters loiter around the £8 mark, while main courses nudge the mid-teens. So no, it's not cheap, but the ingredients and execution are top notch. Our main courses ran from the subtle to the brusque. A tranche of sustainable cod - it said so on the menu - was steamed to that point where a tap from the knife was all that was needed to make the pearly flakes release each other. It came with a light beurre blanc and soft pile of bold smoked brandade - salt cod - pounded with garlic, cream and olive oil. The brusque was my slow-roasted shoulder of lamb, served in torn caramelised lumps atop sauteed potatoes with a dribble of mint sauce. A picture of that dish would serve very well as the definition for the word 'dinner' in the dictionary.
Then that chocolate tart and a scoop each of their home-made caramel ice cream and their pear sorbet. The ices came topped with the sort of domed sugar latticework that I haven't seen on a dessert for a good 15 years, made by spinning hot sugar on to the back of an oiled ladle. It was an almost self-consciously cheffy gesture for a restaurant which could be mistaken for being anything but. To me it felt like a slash of post-feminist scarlet lipstick - an understanding that you can have principles and keep to them without having to sacrifice anything in the way of joy.
