Stem, 5 Princes Street, London W1B 2LF (020 7629 9283). Meal for two, including drinks and service, £100
All you ever want to know is that everything’s going to be OK. You want to know that deciding to spend your money in a particular restaurant is not a gross, humiliating error of judgment. It could be the flashing white teeth of an engaged welcome that reassures you. Perhaps it’s the immediate offer of a drink, rather than treatment designed to inflame abandonment issues. It could be the writing of the menu, which suggests a kitchen with good taste and a modicum of basic literacy. A misplaced apostrophe can put me right off my roasted beetroot’s.
Stem on Princes Street, just off Regent Street, is far too small for the first welcome ever to be easy. There’s nothing wrong with the way it’s done; the staff are a delight and appear to have all their own teeth. It’s just that you walk through the door right into the middle of the room and quickly become the subject of uninterested gazes from the other diners, momentarily distracted from their conversation about how Brexit has all the charm of a self-administered colonoscopy, or the weirdness of the Waitrose essentials range, or how odd it is that Jo Malone knew what fig smells like when no one else has ever had a clue. This is what the British middle-classes talk about in restaurants. Trust me. I know. I listen.
The menu is in good clean English, and full of the language of nowness, mentioning enoki mushrooms and buttermilk, samphire and fermentation. The only apostrophe is in the right place. But the words don’t quite tell you the story. At this point all I have is the lineage, like you have when trying to get into that band everyone else already likes via their third album.
Stem is the latest venture from the chef Mark Jarvis, who trained at Le Manoir, and cooked at Texture, the Blueprint Café and the Bingham in Richmond before opening the much-lauded Anglo in Farringdon. He then opened Neo Bistro at the Bond Street end of Oxford Street. But again, all this only suggests promise because I’ve been to neither. I’m still looking for the reassurance.
It comes with an amuse-bouche: a tiny, exceedingly crisp tart filled with a deep chive emulsion, all onion kick and adoration, then piled with the tiniest dice of lightly dressed, crunchy green beans. It’s an extraordinary amount of attention to detail for a single mouthful, but it’s attention that pays off. I now trust this kitchen completely. They can do to me and with me as they wish. It helps that they also bake killer sourdough, with the kind of lightly charred crust that has me dredging at the salty whipped butter like there might soon be a shortage of dairy products because of some monumentally stupid act of political folly. Which is obviously a ludicrous idea, but the bread is that good.
As is everything here. Some of you may prefer it when I have a horrible time and weep bitter tears of frustration into my violated crème brûlée. Some might prefer to read about the bad instead of the good. In which case, turn away now. Under the leadership of the chef Sam Ashton-Booth, formerly head chef at Story, Stem is very good indeed. It serves classy modern food, which occasionally sounds a little odd but always makes perfect sense on the plate.
Shelled Cornish mussels, a deep rust orange, come on a rich meaty reduction with slices of raw cauliflower and soft buttery cabbage. Mussels and gravy should definitely be a thing. I’m declaring it a thing. A frothy white onion soup is intense and velvety, and full of more caramel tones than a toffee shop. In the middle are tidy petals of chargrilled onion for crunch. Next to it is a piece of toasted sourdough, piped with whorls of soft, warm Winchester cheese, all lactic funk and power, and topped with finely chopped spring onions. It’s cheese on toast as imagined by the Borgias after they got bored of the orgies and narcotics and wanted some other, more understated way to express their decadence. A sip of soup. A crunch of cheesy toast. And a slow, gentle nod.
Chicken is presented as rectangles of luscious thigh – two of my favourite words when squeezed together – full of brown meat, flavour and depth. The skin is crisped and salty. There is a piece of poached breast, some chargrilled baby leeks, and various purees and lubricants to move it all along. A risotto is made with pearl barley cooked so it still has bite and hasn’t tumbled off into the misery of the jellied. It’s piled with mushrooms which have first been lightly fermented to give a burst of natural acidity. There are hefty shavings of parmesan. For an extra £8 they’ll cover it with Australian black truffle. The dish doesn’t need them. We have a side dish of green beans with “my mum’s favourite dressing” which turns out to involve capers and anchovies. His mum has taste.
Desserts are overshadowed by the pre-dessert: a brisk lime leaf granita, which sits atop whipped, sweetened cream cheese and a shattered biscuit crumb. It’s not exactly a deconstructed cheesecake; it’s just three spoons full of loveliness. After that there are squares of soft carrot cake, with a fragrant ginger ice-cream; a “Stem mess” is various takes on strawberry, meringue, cream, mint and summer. At the end they bring tiny madeleines.
It’s all precise without being tweezered and nerdy. But what’s most striking is the price. We are in Mayfair, in a Georgian townhouse. There are unexpected little tasters, the usual outriders of constipated fine dining and a bill that will rob your kids of their inheritance. But three courses here will come in at just under £30. Starters are about £7.50 and mains in the mid-teens. I’m not going to repeat the lesson about cheapness and value being different things. The hard of thinking will gawp at the numbers whatever I say. The rest of you just need to know that for this quality of cooking in this location, the price point is enough to restore your faith in humanity.
You could spend more. For £60, they’ll serve you a 10-course tasting menu. Another £40 will get you the wine pairings, and suddenly you’ve made it to £100 a head. Well done. But with a bottle of wine from the lower reaches of the list, we don’t break £100 between us. That’s called good news. More importantly, we have been fed delightfully.
News bites
Stem reminded me of Picture, just up the road on Great Portland Street. The room is smart but essentially a blank canvas. The thoughtful cooking is left to speak for itself. Crisp pressed pork comes with watermelon and pickled red onion. Grilled chicken turns up on a delightful mess of sweetcorn and trompette mushrooms. Desserts are various creamy things (picturerestaurant.co.uk).
Eat17, which made its name producing stupidly moreish bacon jam, before expanding into chilli bacon jam and chorizo jam, has a new product. Chinese bacon jam is made with five spice, soy and sesame oil. And, y’know, bacon. Because bacon improves everything (eat17.co.uk).
Angela Hartnett’s Murano in Mayfair is celebrating its 10th anniversary. To mark the milestone, they are holding a series of guest chef dinners, beginning on 11 September with Mitch Tonks from the Seahorse in Dartmouth and Mark Hix from his eponymous group. Both restaurants are also celebrating their 10th birthdays. Tickets are £75 (020 7495 1127).
Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk or follow him on Twitter @jayrayner1
