Telephone: 020-7928 9898
Address: 36 The Cut, London SE1
Rating: 16/20
Open All week, 12 noon-2.30pm; 6-10.30pm. All major cards.
Ham and figs; cockles; chorizo and chard broth; terrine; monks' cheeks, clams and bacon; beetroot, watercress and horseradish salad; Bath chap and pickled onion; smoked herring and lentils; pumpkin risotto; leg of lamb and flageolet beans; tripe and chips; smoked Old Spot chop and prunes; devilled kidneys and potato cake; plaice, leeks and herbs; grouse; braised venison and red cabbage; cassoulet (for four); green salad; duck fat potato cake; lentils; lemon cake; crème caramel; cheese. I make no apology for quoting the entire menu of the Anchor & Hope, just down the road from the Old Vic in Waterloo. There is not a single dish on it that I would not have eaten cheerfully, and come back for second helpings.
The attractions were all the more seductive because, if we take the grouse at £21.20 out of the equation, nothing cost more than £14 (leg of lamb) and many of the dishes were £10 or less. That, by London standards, makes the Anchor & Hope one of the capital's classier and cheaper eats. True, if I were being really pernickety I would have liked a bit more detail - terrine of what? Grouse how? Plaice, leeks and herbs in what form? - but perhaps such terseness is a virtue in an age of "roasted Sarawak pepper monkfish, smoked tea bisque, 'Parisienne' golden celery, green cabbage, creamy spelt with almonds" and the like.
There was certainly nothing terse about the cooking. It had the full-bore gutsiness and robust attitude that you might expect of graduates of St John by way of the Eagle. On the other hand, the kitchen also shows itself capable of exemplary delicacy. The trembling, melting crème caramel was as fine an example of that pudding as I have eaten in an age, pressing closely on the steady perfection of my mother's version - the standard by which all crème caramels must be judged. The secret lies partly with the exact texture of the custard and, more particularly, the balance between the bitterness and sweetness of the burned sugar and the rich, soothing neutrality of the rest.
Before that had come a roasted teal, off the daily specials board. Teal is one of nature's contributions to portion control. Like a poussin and a partridge, one per person is perfect but, being small, the roasting is difficult to get right. Too long in the oven and you might as well play tennis with it. Too little and if, like me, you are prone to faint at the sight of blood, you'll have to grip the edge of the table and close your eyes. This teal had perfect manners. The meat was tender, with that ringing sensuality that you get from wild duck. The sanguinary flow was mercifully sparse and quickly lost in the frisky red cabbage that came with it. The dish was fleshed out, as it were, by a delightful faggot, crumbly and not too livery. It was a perfect dish for an autumn day.
Tucker weighed into a grouse with the same vigour that I had gone about my teal. Grouse, being larger, does not present the same technical challenge to the cook as a teal. Its quality is defined by the length of time it has been hung. It has a tendency to rank gaminess and bitterness if it spends so much as 24 hours too many before being plucked. It should have a wild, blackberry-like sweetness and a melting delicacy. And this one did. By the time Tucker had finished, the carcass gleamed on the plate, stripped bare of all flesh, while the game chips and the bread sauce that accompanied it had long gone.
And so we come back to where we started - he with ham and figs, I with smoked herring and lentils. To be truthful, I had already had a bowl of the cockles to wile away the time until Tucker turned up. Ham and figs are a test of a chef's buying power rather than culinary wizardry. The ham was good and the figs were fresh. It's a very satisfying combination, and that's about all there is to be said on that matter. Smoked herring and lentil gets a bit more out of the kitchen. You wouldn't call it a sophisticated dish, though. It was more like one of those benches made out of logs - hefty, big-flavoured, rudely rustic. It had a bit of biff and bash about it, and there's nothing wrong with that.
Cockles I love. They're so much nicer, fatter, plumper, sweeter than chewy bits of clam, I always think. You have to be careful with them, though. They need to be thoroughly washed and checked or they will be gritty with sand. Most of mine, cooked in white wine and onion, were all those things you want cockles to be. Unfortunately, one was full of mud, not flesh, and the fallout contaminated those in the immediate vicinity.
From the outside, the Anchor & Hope does not look much - a kind of infilling on a straggling bit of urban development. Inside, it is plain and basic, with plain chairs, tables and walls, but there is space and airiness to its no-nonsense airs. There was no nonsense about the bill, either. It read: "Bar £20.50, food £62.80. Total £83.30." That seems a bit more than the bargain-basement claim I made at the beginning of this review but, as I said, I was tempted from the straight and narrow path of financial rectitude by the seductions of the menu. And you might be hard pressed not to follow suit.
