254 Hackney Road, London E2 (020 7739 7393). Meal for two, including drinks and service: £90
If there’s a better lunch to be had in Britain right now than the beef and barley buns with horseradish, the kid goat curry with the fried potatoes and the brown butter and honey tart served at the Marksman pub on the Hackney Road, I want to know about it. I want it brought to me, or, if necessary, I want me brought to it. I won’t hold my breath, because I really doubt there is one. The joy is not simply in the cooking, though it does possess the sort of vigour and attitude that makes properly greedy people swoon. It’s in the simplicity of the offering, the straightforwardness, the resolute lack of tiresome, self-regarding flimflam and hauteur. Their approach comes down to this: we cooked some stuff; we think you might like it.
Oh, but I do.
This doesn’t come as a huge surprise. I visited the pub out of profound irritation with last week’s dreary misunderstanding of Vietnamese cooking at Leicester House. The Marksman is where Tom Harris, the previous chef in that space – both when it was the St John Hotel and 1 Leicester Street – went next, to team up with Jon Rotheram, formerly of Jamie Oliver’s 15. I needed my faith restored and I believed a short trip to London E2 would do so.
For those now wringing their hands over the violation of an old wood-panelled pub, one perhaps pretending to be as streetwise as a public school boy in artfully distressed Doc Martens when in truth it’s actually now just a restaurant, relax. This one really is still a pub. There’s a bar, propped up by blokes who look like they’ve done this sort of heavy lifting in many boozers down the years. There are beers on tap, including local offerings, such as the Bethnal Blonde, a light straw-coloured beer brewed just 300 metres away. There’s a juke box. Mind you, there are also neatly appointed green leather banquettes, none of which are split so the stuffing’s bursting out. Give it time. They’ve only just opened.
The menu is divided between 10 small dishes priced between £4 and £8, and four in the mid-teens. Almost nothing disappoints; much makes us sigh; a few make me dab the moisture from my eyes. Brown shrimp rissoles are more akin to Spanish croquettes, the nutty little darlings set in the lightest of béchamels that must stay together in the hot fat through sheer strength of personality. Don’t pop one of these in your mouth whole or it will be a trip to matron for you. They come with a pokey romesco-like aioli for dredging purposes, which gives spiky corners to the soft, rounded flavours. Devilled mussels on toast are glossy fat meats on a chunk of sourdough toast, the whole bathed in a light broth given attitude and conviction by the application of chilli.
Another piece of toast comes heavily smeared with sweet, crushed peas and piled with a mixture of pea shoots, shaved violet artichokes and grated Bermondsey hard press, a smooth, salty cheese that’s planning to be mates with Gruyère when it grows up. Fresher still is a salad of cos lettuce, with halved radishes, rounds of pickled cucumber and a sharp buttermilk dressing. This is a salad for people suspicious of them. It’s a mound of revitalisation and briskness.
It’s also a necessary foil to the beef and barley bun, a glazed dome of soft bread roll containing a filling of finely diced braised beef. Fresh horseradish is grated over the top, and on the side is a thick puddle of sauce flavoured with more of the same. Think of it as Britain’s answer to the Chinese char siu bun. You tear through the bread to find – puff – a thick filling of meatiness in long-reduced jus. This is a self-mopping stew. It is one of those gloriously simple items, which requires lots of thought, care and precision.
Next, from the bigger dishes, a huge-flavoured curry of young goat. Some might call it oily. I’ll call it luscious. The temptation with these Anglo takes on Caribbean cooking is to chuck in the sugars, be it from palm or granulated. Here, any sweetness comes from the natural caramelisation of the meat, and a buxom dollop of punchy tomato chutney. The rest is fire and spice, and a depth of flavour best measured by sonar. The one duff note was the sourdough roti on the side: one of the toughest, least yielding pieces of bread I have ever come across. Perhaps the glutens had been overworked.
Happily, honour on the carb front was saved by the innocent-sounding fried potatoes with a burnt onion mayonnaise. Gosh. These could be the saviour of the public house, swiftly stopping all closures. Behold: finely sliced potatoes, long cooked in the oven, then pressed and chilled before being cut into 6in planks and deep fried to an umber-tinged golden. Each one is like a dozen of the best chips ever, pressed together. It is the potato raised up high to the status of luxury item or, better still, brought down low to the level of crack. And alongside, because this might not be enough, is that poke-in-the-eye of a mayo full of deep, dark-roasted onion tones. (Credit where it’s due: the Quality Chophouse in Farringdon has served something similar for a while now.)
A few years ago, when I visited the St John Hotel to write about it, Tom Harris leant over the counter of the open kitchen and ordered me to have his custard tart. I did as I was told, and it was indeed a wonder of crisp pastry and deep-filled set custard with just the slightest wobble. Those skills are on display here again in a similar tart of brown butter and honey, sitting alone on the plate unadorned, cut to a perfect point. The pastry snaps. The deep, buttery caramel filling has the wobble and softness of a newborn’s thigh. Naturally it eclipses a scoop or two of buttermilk ice cream with sweet-sour pickled pear and the crunch of oats. But then it would eclipse anything.
And all of this, delivered to the bare wood pub tables with the minimum of fuss, and a soundtrack of 50s jazz from that jukebox. The temptation when one comes across such perfect poise is to blunder into hyperbole, but I never, ever, ever do that. Instead I’ll now follow their lead and do pared back and restrained. Go to the Marksman. It’s good. You might like it.
Jay’s news bites
■ For more top pub food served with the minimum of fuss try the White Swan at Fence in Lancashire, where young chef Tom Parker is knocking out the likes of oxtail cottage pie made with smoked mash and bone marrow, or plaice with roasted garlic potatoes and langoustine sauce. Three courses are £25 (whiteswanatfence.co.uk).
■ Following on from recent fancy hot dog openings in London, comes more searingly hot hotdog news: chef Simon Hulstone of Elephant in Torquay is opening The Kennel (geddit?). The menu includes the Slum Dog (mango chutney, cucumber, yogurt and coriander) and the White Trash (chilli beef, jalapeños and guacamole) all priced at around £6 (the-kennel.co.uk).
■ There’s lots of talk about the virtues of eating insects which is all well and good, but nobody has considered what one should drink with them – until now. On 31 July London’s Natural History Museum is running two insect and wine pairing master classes. Tickets are available online for £30. Go to nhm.ac.uk and click on “visit”, “what’s on” and select “31 July”.
Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk Follow Jay on Twitter @jayrayner1
