Piquet, 92-94 Newman Street, London W1 (020 3826 4500). Meal for two, including drinks and service: £110
I have long said that Tolstoy’s maxim, in the opening lines of Anna Karenina, that “Happy families are all alike” and “Every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way” can be applied equally to restaurants. All good ones are good in the same way: they have tables and chairs and food we want to eat and nice staff. The bad ones all find unique ways in which to be awful.
Piquet is a good restaurant. In a London overrun by concepts and formulas, by places offering small plates and sharing plates and things served on slates or by the 100g or by the bushel and peck, a place like this is quite simply a relief. It has starters, main courses and desserts. It has food cooked by someone who knows what they’re doing but is more interested in serving you lunch than in winning a place in some gastronomic hall of fame. It is the epitome of the bourgeois cosmopolitan restaurant. Obviously, therefore, I adore it.
The soft-accented Francophile name is a bit of a gag. The chef is Allan Pickett, as in fence, who is no more French than Rab C Nesbitt. But with time as head chef at Galvin Bistrot de Luxe and the Orrery to his name (alongside a fair stint with D&D restaurants), he’s armpit deep in the way they do things. He can turn a carrot. He can make a sauce. So here it’s British ingredients given a seeing-to courtesy of modern French classicism. (Incidentally the main backer is a Canadian, Andre Blais. He’s the man responsible for opening Bodean’s, one of the original US barbecue restaurant groups in London, which has quietly continued doing very nicely out of ribs in the face of immense competition. But Blais is getting older and clearly wanted somewhere nice to sit down where he didn’t have to watch reruns of NFL games.)
The location, at the southern end of Newman Street, where it meets the scuzz and cheap knock-off perfume of Oxford Street’s junkier stretch, is hardly delightful, not least because what looks like a prison is currently being built opposite. It explains why the ground floor space was empty the day I went. Everyone was heading for the basement dining room, where there is smooth wood panelling, crème-caramel coloured banquets, and brushed-brass effect details. It’s right out of the 2015 “clubby but stylish” grown-up restaurant design playbook. The seats are comfortable. Going from some of the comments online on these reviews, that is a matter of serious concern to a certain portion of the readership. Like Blais they too need somewhere nice to sit down. Piquet is it.
The food is built for people eager to be fed, without being neurotic about nutritional information. It’s rich and serious. The short list of terrines and rillettes, served with their own pickles, sourdough toast and a selection of mustards, sets out the stall. The country terrine, served close to room temperature so the fats have started to soften, and studded with the jewel-like green of split pistachios, is a beautiful thing, full of all the right compressed meaty bits. I tend to trust a kitchen that can do this sort of stuff well.
Flavours are big and uncompromising, even in a non-meat starter of grilled leeks, golden turnips, pickled radishes and trompette mushrooms, described quite reasonably as an autumn salad. It is full of crunch and the depths of the field. Braised snails are advertised as coming on toast, but the thick slice of sourdough is really just there to give all the other ingredients something into which they can surrender. There is a smooth celeriac purée and a mess of shallots and garlic and, scattered across them, the snails. But most of all there is a careful hand on the seasoning. It is full-on without making you wish you’d chosen otherwise.
Right now the mains are heavy with girolles and cep, chestnuts and quince, toasted barley and braised cabbage. There are lighter, brighter things, too. A soupy casserole of chorizo, haricot beans, herb-infused oil and baby squid is topped with pearly cod cheeks cooked so each flake slips from the other. The word casserole shouts dark and heavy; this is brisk and vital. It’s a casserole to make you feel good about yourself.
One of the pleasures here is the high camp of the carving trolley: pork loin on Mondays, beef sirloin on Wednesdays, honey roast ham on Fridays and so on. The day we are there it’s a pot-roast leg of Herdwick lamb, still properly pink. I don’t need to worry about meat festering on these trolleys. It is served with the appropriate sticky jus and the appropriate theatre. There’s no point to a trolley unless you get old school drama. It comes with boulangère potatoes which have the depth of flavour that comes with having been booked into the baker’s oven for a fortnight’s holiday. The only thing I grumble about are the roast parsnips, which are pallid and dull.
It says much about Piquet that of the mixed dessert plate – a bit of almost everything – it is an apple sorbet that most makes my eyes widen. It just tastes so utterly of the bramleys from which it was made. It’s clean and smooth. It’s sorbet the way you always hope a sorbet will be. There are other pleasures: vanilla shortbread and a scoop of vanilla ice cream with blackcurrant compote; a set chocolate and passion fruit custard with crisp chocolate tuiles; and a squidgy almond cake with Chantilly cream, which always makes everything better.
And now I need to put this happy rave of a review into some sort of sober context. Piquet is terrific, but it’s not some gastronomic palace. It is not attempting to break barriers or change any games, and that’s why I love it. This restaurant is simply trying to feed its customers well. Pricing is fair at this level. Starters are between £6.50 and £9, with mains mostly in the teens. That trolley is £17.50. There’s a lunchtime and early evening menu at £19.50 for three courses. Wines start below £20, with roughly half the list below £40 a bottle. Piquet wants to be that place you keep returning to. Or at the very least, that place which you keep thinking of returning to because you know it’s civilised and does all the right things in the right order. On that score they’ve succeeded, at least with me.
Jay’s news bites
■ For more of the same, follow the Piquet family tree backwards to Galvin Bistrot de Luxe on London’s Baker Street, where Allan Pickett once worked. At Chris and Jeff Galvin’s homage to the classic bistro try steak tartare and snails to start, leg of Herdwick lamb with anchovy and hazelnuts, and to finish, a classic tarte tatin. What’s not to like? (galvinrestaurants.com)
■ Another big restaurant has announced a working hours change, to improve conditions for staff and, in turn, to attract the best. From January, Michel Roux Jr will close Le Gavroche on Mondays, reserving that day for private functions and pop-ups. On 1 February Roux will cook alongside the next generation, his daughter Emily (le-gavroche.co.uk).
■ Think you can guess which is Britain’s best independent Italian restaurant? I certainly couldn’t. Apparently it’s Il Michelangelo in Weston-Super-Mare, awarded the title by the Pasta, Pizza and Italian Food Association. Reports please (ilmichelangelo.restaurant).
Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk
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