CAFE BELOW
ST MARY-LE-BOW,
CHEAPSIDE,
LONDON EC2
(020 7329 0789).
MEAL FOR TWO, WITH WINE AND SERVICE, £60
For one friend it was the smell of liver and onions at the Skanda Grill in the Merrion Centre, Leeds. For another, while heavily pregnant, it was the sight of cooked chicken in the fridge at midnight. But for most lapsed vegetarians I know it was always the same item that destroyed their resolve: the bacon sandwich. And so it was for Bill Sewell, who for two decades had been a vegetarian restaurateur. Pretty much overnight he decided that it would be hypocritical not to offer his customers the omnivorous diet he was now enjoying. I make no comment other than: All Hail The Pig!
Sewell runs three cafés in church crypts, the original of which is the newly renamed Café Below in the church of St Mary-le-Bow, home to the famed Bow Bells, in whose sound my mother would have been born if only it hadn't been for the traffic. A week or two back, in tandem with the change of menu, they started opening in the evenings. We were there just a few days into their first week – and a lovely spot it is, too. I have often described myself as a diehard atheist with a soft spot for English churches, and this ancient crypt, all butter-yellow stone and nook, guttering candlelight and the waft of Kind of Blue on the sound system, was only ever going to nurture my affection. There is nothing showy going on here, just an attempt to create a quiet space where City workers, exhausted after a day of raping and pillaging the economies of developing nations – sorry, I mean prudently undertaking investments on our behalf – can relax.
The menu is essentially half-vegetarian to carnivorous. It's curious that the one truly weak dish should have come from the more practised vegetarian side. We ate stonkingly good Gordal olives, the size of squash balls, and found nothing to criticise about a vegetarian plate of smoky baba ganoush, soft roasted peppers and grilled halloumi cheese, the latter arriving within the 90 seconds after cooking before it begins to seize up. (Cold grilled halloumi is the devil's work, as any atheist will tell you.) The dud dish was a gratin of new potatoes, peppers and goat's cheese. It simply lacked the fat that a gratin promises.
No such complaints on the other side of the menu. River Farm smoked salmon was served the right side of fridge cold, generously cut, and simply – with leaves, their impressive homemade bread and a little dill cream cheese. A soothing stew of beef and mushrooms long-braised in London stout came with a pillow of impeccable mash. At the end we both lucked out with soft, sweet, vanilla-roasted plums with a scoop of vanilla ice cream, and a very accomplished upside-down pear and ginger cake with ginger ice cream. No main course is over £9.50, and the wine list is full of solid, quaffable things with screw tops at less than £20. A thrilling place to eat? Absolutely not. But exactly the kind of restaurant any hectic city needs.
