40 Maltby Street, London SE1 (020 7237 9247). Meal for two, including wine and service: £60
Towards the end of my lunch at 40 Maltby Street a diner stopped by where I was perched, eating off a tidy pile of wooden pallets, and told me that, were I to review it and reveal its joys to the wider public, he would immediately unfollow me on Twitter. So farewell then, dear follower. I'm sorry to lose you but, to be honest, I don't think you'll be missing much bar a few pics of pork belly and some clumsy knob gags. Something as good as this cannot remain unsung.
When the railway arches around Maltby Street, hard by Tower Bridge, were occupied by small food businesses a few years back, it was hailed as the answer to the brutal commercialism of nearby Borough Market. A few years on and Maltby Street is a bit of a damp squib where produce is concerned. The range is tiny and a little sad. In the meantime Borough Market has turned into a vast, shiny, edible bazaar. It is customary to sneer at this, to say it's not what it once was, but that's only partly true.
Borough was always absurd and up itself in a delicious way. I feel about its detractors as I did about those kids at school who, just as I was getting into the Cure, would announce that the band was so last month and Bauhaus was now the thing. I can't see how anybody who is proper greedy could not be thrilled by the offering at Borough. If liking the new market is uncool, I'll wear the badge with pride.
Maltby Street, meanwhile, is better as a place for ad-hoc eateries, of which the premises at number 40 is currently the best. The simply converted railway arch is home to Gergovie Wines, a small business importing idiosyncratic labels from France, Italy and Slovenia. At the front is a bar and kitchen which currently operates only on Wednesday and Thursday evenings, lunch and dinner on Friday and lunch on Saturday. This is a wine business with an ace restaurant attached. It shows in the list, where the mark-up is completely naked. An interesting Cahors, for example, costs £13 to buy and £25 to drink in. The mark-ups get better the higher up the list you go, so a Brunello that retails for £48 and would go in most restaurants at well north of a ton is, here, just £58. They also have a changing selection by the glass.
What makes all this sing is the food they offer with it. The first time I ate there a glazed Yorkshire ham had just emerged from the oven, with meat the colour of a baby's thigh and fat like old piano-key ivory. Better still was a slab of stinky, deep-fried Ardrahan cheese that spilled across just-warm Pink Fir Apple potatoes with cornichon and cubes of apple. It was about as perfect and simple a dish as you could wish for.
It wasn't a one-off. My second meal there began with a deep-fried duck egg, the yolk running into a coarse sweet-onion purée with shreds of lightly bitter sorrel. There were the most grown-up of baked potato skins filled with salt cod and parsley salad in the lightest of vinaigrettes. Best of the starters was a smoked eel broth, with a liquor that was salt and sweet and smoke; it tasted as the sniffed air of a smokehouse smells. All of these are between £6 and £7.
There are only a couple of big plates, at double that. On this particular day it was an expertly seared fillet of pearly brill with the kind of aïoli that leaves its mark on the afternoon, and slices of sweet-soft roast suckling kid, on a broth of chickpeas and black cabbage with lemon zest. It was a dish that makes the world feel like a better place (albeit not for the baby goat).
At the end there was a lemon and prune soufflé, the bronzed surface giving way to something altogether more ripe and lubricious. This is serious, grown-up food, presented with the minimum of fuss on mismatched crockery, which makes me like the place all the more. What can I say? I've lost a Twitter follower. I've gained a new hangout.
Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk. Follow Jay on Twitter @jayrayner1
