Louie Louie, 347 Walworth Road, London SE17 2AL (020 7450 3223). Full meal for two without wine £60- £80; with wine £100 - £120
There is nothing manicured about south London’s Walworth Road. To paraphrase Spike Milligan’s line about the Kilburn High Road it runs for a good few miles, which is why it’s so knackered by the time it gets there. The Walworth Road is a street where people buy real things they need. And there, on a corner opposite a branch of Iceland, is a café by day, restaurant by night, where they can get things they really should want.
To judge by the video used to promote last year’s successful crowdfunding campaign, Louie Louie is named after the 1955 R&B tune by Richard Berry. And why the hell not? It’s a good record. In that video the founders, who are also involved in the nearby Fowlds café, describe their ambition to launch another place for coffee, breakfast and lunch. The result is a white-out of a space given over during the day to manchego, honey and rocket sandwiches and butch salads of spiced aubergine and cucumber. They also say they will “curate” a fast-changing roster of cooks for the evenings. We will overlook the use of the word “curate” (just remember, it’s not a synonym for “choose”). The one they’ve got in there now is an absolute corker. What’s more it looks like he’ll be staying a while.
Oded Oren began cooking in his native Tel Aviv before further training in Paris and California. He moved to London in 2011 and set up his own private catering business. Now he’s cooking here, demonstrating a lightness of touch, and a clear understanding that more isn’t always more. We are familiar with the food of modern Israel; with dishes deep rooted in the spice mixes and culinary imperatives of the Middle East, without necessarily being beholden to them. Ottolenghi marked out the territory first, followed by Honey and Co and, more recently, Palomar.
Oren is completely of a piece with all that, but gets extra marks for keeping it clear and simple. The old gag about having to buy an air ticket to find the ingredients for an Ottolenghi recipe does not apply here. And yet the food makes its point and at a reasonable price. The most expensive dish, a sizeable ox-cheek braised to a luscious wobble, is £17, with most of the rest around a tenner. (Though on value, they do manage an impressive act of self-sabotage; I’ll deal with that later.) Then again, this is very much a café. We eat at a high communal counter, on the sort of stools older readers will wince at, to the rumble and push of heavy bass lines. There’s also the small print. I mean this literally. The type on the menu is so tiny I have to photograph it on my phone so I can expand it to readability with a weary stretch of thumb and forefinger. I make a casual joke about being the oldest person in the room. Once again I realise this is so. It’s nice I was allowed in.
The changing menu is short. A puffed and crisp-crusted flatbread described as a focaccia, for being made with olive oil and baked directly on coals, arrives hot with more peppery olive oil, and an intense, fresh tomato concasse. The flesh has been skinned, deseeded and drained until it is concentrated to more than itself. We tear and dredge and dredge again. Generous slices of cured salmon are piled high with a tiny dice of acidulated cucumber with the light aniseed kick of chervil. The latter is just £5.
From the bigger dishes, lamb sweetbreads come skewered and grilled over charcoal. There is a wedge of lemon to squeeze over them and a tidy pile of za’atar, that instantly recognisable mix of Middle Eastern herbs. It makes the whole dish smell and taste like a wander through a market place at the eastern end of the Mediterranean; a dribble of lemon and a drag through the za’atar.
Meaty fillets of mackerel are piled with a punchy tapenade and laid on leaves of cavolo nero with a little thick yogurt to send them on their way. We argue over the virtues of a dish of roasted cauliflower. The vegetable is cut into hulking steaks, chargrilled then dribbled with tahini and more of the tomato. Last week’s take on this was undercooked. These are slightly overcooked. It has never before occurred to me that the perfect cooking point of cauliflower might occupy a tricky Goldilocks zone.
Honour is regained by the ox cheek – a dark, deeply glazed thing of beauty, lying on whorls of hummus whipped and whipped again. I can’t pretend. Hummus has generally been something I’ve always tolerated rather than loved, like Ed Sheeran and the Wimbledon shopping centre. But substituting mounds of mash with this is verging on genius. We practically lick the plate clean.
There are just two desserts: a pressed chocolate cake, full of depth and sweetness and intensity which is crying out for the dollop of thick soured cream that it gets; and a cardamom panna cotta. Too often panna cotta is a poorly executed cliché. This one makes an argument for the dish: the wobble is perfect, the flavouring on point. It is both light and indulgent. Quietly I declare myself in love.
So, great food and great value. Or it would be were it not for that act of self-sabotage, which happens to be on the wine list. One glance at the label of the bottle I have chosen, at the tiresome faux primitive design, and I know it’s a bloody natural wine. All of their wines are “natural”, apparently. I direct you to previous reviews for my position on this abuse of language. At Louie Louie, to find one that doesn’t taste like it’s been strained through the arse end of a cow, we make do with a fine if unremarkable Sauvignon Blanc at a whacking £35.
It makes no sense. Look at the age of your clientele. They’re the 20-somethings fighting against the capital’s hideous rents, the ones with limited expendable income. You’ve created a terrific restaurant they can afford. And then, in the name of some disfigured obsession with the word “natural”, you’ve written a wine list short on choice, heavy on price and occasionally cratered by the noxious and foul. Have some so-called natural wines if you must, but add a few other things besides. It would be a crying shame if people were priced out of enjoying Oren’s joyous cooking purely in the name of ideology.
Jay’s news bites
Wright’s Food Emporium, in Llanarthne, Wales, is another café by day which on Friday and Saturday nights becomes a restaurant. Run by former AA Guide editor Simon Wright and his partner and son, the Italian-accented menu is big on comfort food. Go for arancini boosted with spicy ’nduja or Cardigan Bay crab linguini (wrightsfood.co.uk).
The brilliant Harrogate restaurant Norse, which operates out of Baltzersen’s, a Scandi café by day, is launching a crowdfunding campaign to move to new premises. There’s a launch party tonight. Details of that and the general call for funds can be found at norserestaurant.co.uk.
In August Frankie & Benny’s announced it was closing 33 branches. It hasn’t solved the parent company’s problems. The Restaurant Group, which also owns Chiquito and Garfunkel’s, saw a sharp fall in sales. The company says it needs to make ‘significant price and proposition changes’. Or, in straight English, it needs to be better.
Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk or follow him on Twitter @jayrayner1
