10 Greek Street, London W1 (020 7734 4677). Meal for two, including wine and service, £85
An hour after my lunch I was tweeted by someone who had seen me in this week's restaurant and wanted to know if it was any good. "I work round the corner but I'm wary of another expensive tiled eatery," she said. I got her point. It is relatively straightforward to look convincing, and 10 Greek Street has nailed it: walls in neutral colours, banquettes, no tablecloths, blackboard menu, kitchen in a clean, white-tiled space as if somebody decided to cook your lunch in a luxury bathroom. Actually being convincing in this corner of the pared-down, heart-on-sleeve, no-frills market is a tougher proposition.
This Soho newcomer, from a team with the good pedigree of the Wapping Project, is more than convincing. It is, to finally answer my tweeter's question – I refused to be drawn ahead of this review – a bit of a diamond. But then I suspected it would be, courtesy of one word on that blackboard menu: that word was "hare". It takes commitment to cook hare. You have to seriously mean it to let the damn thing into your kitchen. Hare stinks. Wild rabbit is bad enough – and there's a bit of that on the menu, too – a ripe, colon-and-unwashed-animal stench. Hare is all that with added elements of something long dead and fly blown, of the sort an eager Labrador would want to roll in. It is death and earth and decay. Plus it's a bloody mess. Literally. Somebody who has been prepping hare will look like they've been dismembering a hated relative.
But the effort is worth it, as long as you like gameyness. Forget grouse. Ignore woodcock. Laugh in the face of deer. (Not literally; that might be dangerous.) Hare is the real thing: the elegant, refined end notes of all that dirty stuff it smelled of when raw. You have to be a proper grown-up to like it. Here, it comes rare, sliced, with wilted kale, a puddle of soft polenta and a sticky, hare-rich jus. And that's it – an approach that echoes down the entire menu. Indeed, the way the food looks mirrors the appearance of the restaurant. There is nothing showy about how ingredients are brought together. You will not swoon at the originality of anything. There are oceans of technique but it is worn very lightly; so lightly, in fact, that it may only be as you come to the end of the meal that you will recognise how well you have been fed.
But you will be well fed. The kitchen is at the far end, overlooked by a counter, where you can also eat. In recognition of this counter there is a short menu of bar snacks including hunks of long-roasted pork belly with spiced quince. Well, it would have been rude not to. For starters there were butch, chunky pieces of un-boned rabbit, breaded and deep fried with a crunchy caper mayonnaise, and thick slices of smoked eel (sourced from The Upper Scale, a supplier which is committed to sustainability) with cubes of beetroot and a thick smear of horseradish cream. Our other main course was slices of chargrilled Welsh lamb and purple sprouting broccoli with anchovy cream for salt and duck-fat roasted potatoes for shameless indulgence.
The standard kept up through dessert: a light mandarin posset with shards of bittersweet caramel, scoops of an exemplary lemon curd ice cream and a soft quince and almond tart. Yes, three of them, but with each priced at £4 or £5 it seemed churlish not to. Main courses are in the mid-teens and the short wine list, which opens at £16 a bottle, offers most things not just by the glass but also by the half-bottle carafe. By the standards of London restaurants, then, and for this standard quality, it is very good value. One of the reasons, they claim, is that while they take bookings at lunch they don't in the evening. In theory it means tables stay constantly filled, their turnover rises and they keep prices lower. I understand the thinking, but it doesn't stop it being a total pain in the arse. When eating out I don't want to take the chance of having to queue for an age, however good the food. The growing number of no-reservation restaurants is the issue people whine at me about most often. It's infuriating. It smacks of a seller's market. There has to be another way.
Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk or visit theguardian.com/profile/jayrayner for all his reviews in one place
