Telephone: 020-7439 7474
Address: 48 Greek Street, London W1
Rating: 17.5/20
I hadn't been to L'Escargot for years. It has a sacred place in my gastronomic memory, going way back to epicurean lunches in the dear, dead days of the 1970s. But in more recent years, there have been many comings and goings at L'Escargot, and I got rather confused about who was doing what and to whom. And now Marco Pierre White has stuck his moniker on the outside.
To be truthful, it wasn't the great man's name that caused me to book a table in the Picasso Room, but the fact that the name on the kitchen door is Jeff Galvin, brother of Chris, who at the Orrery has proved himself one of the great kitchen craftsmen. There aren't too many brothers who are equally culinarily gifted - I can think of the Roux brothers, and no others, although I am sure there are more. Anyway, it was enough to drag me in off the street, past the sunny, suave ground-floor dining room which has a separate chef, kitchen and menu (with cheaper prices), and up the stairs to the civilised intimacy of the Picasso Room, where that protean artist's work is on show, disciplined by refined good taste. Still, however much anyone tries to discipline Picasso, a certain vulgar, earthy, not to say priapic energy breaks through.
There is nothing vulgar or priapic about Jeff Galvin's cooking. It is classic and cultured and French - but then, that's what you expect when MPW is about: none of his restaurants seem to stray far from the well-researched territory of la cuisine française. Having said that, MPW has resisted the temptation to turn the menu into a memorial to the dishes he made famous, as he did at the Oak Room when Robert Reid took over. Sure, there is the odd MPW-influenced dish, but, as far as I could make out, we got the authentic Jeff Galvin in the form of pithivier of wood pigeon with roast chestnuts; mosaic of rabbit and foie gras with spring vegetables à la Grecque; roast Pyrenean lamb à la Niçoise; pigeonneau de Landes en vessie, perfume of cepes and root vegetables; followed by cheese for both (the reasons for which I will explain later).
I am fond of pithivier, the French answer to the pasty. It is rather more suave and sophisticated than the original, and this version was very suave indeed: wonderful, rich, delicate pastry encasing a rich, delicate mousse encasing pigeon breasts that were neither rich nor delicate, but bosky and virile. A very fine, slightly sweet (as in Madeira) reduction, bolstered with truffle, lubricated each mouthful.
The lamb, meanwhile, could have seen a minute or so more of the inside of the oven, but the meat had a grassy sweetness, tenderness, succulence and considerable class. I never take the Niçoise appellation seriously, because so often it gets applied with cheery disregard for meaning - it's a kind of catch-all name for a sauce combining olive oil, olives, garlic, tomatoes and various herbs in some form or other. In this case, however, the ingredients were used with discretion and went well with the lamb. Much more interesting, and delicious, was the surprise package under the meat - tiny French beans swaddled in a light aïoli. That was real class.
I was concerned that Almeric's infant pigeon had also been undercooked, but he assured me that this was not the case. In fact, as he popped the last morsel into his mouth after as effective a demolition job as I have seen in some time, he said it was absolutely spot on, dainty to the tooth, tasted terrific and anything else you care to mention. On further probing, I learned that the sweetness of the root vegetables played nicely off the light muskiness of the meat, with the cepes sauce providing a happy medium to link them both.
The mosaic of rabbit and foie gras that had gone before ate as handsomely as it had looked, and it looked very handsome indeed, a true mosaic of meats, each of which had been cooked to respect their individual textures, the richness of the foie gras acting as a foil for the dainty radiance of the rabbit.
And then there was the cheese. Well, the cheese came about because, so deeply had we become immersed in conversation, that I had absent-mindedly ordered a second bottle of a disarmingly good Rhône. You know how it is: mid-conversation, you spy the sommelier squeezing the last few drops into your glass, and you say, "Another one of those, please - now, as I was saying . . . " Then it arrives, and you suddenly realise that you've got a whole other bottle to get through, and nothing to drink it against. Hence the cheese - though that was no bad thing, because it was a good selection, mostly French, with a little leavening of English, not large, but well chosen and very well kept and served with enthusiasm by our maître d'hôtel.
We did eventually finish that second bottle, which helped swell the bill to £132.50. Roughly half of that - okay, £65 to be exact - went on the liquid side of things, the rest on grub, which was split between the à la carte menu that's fixed at £42 for three courses, and the menu du jour (on which were the pithivier and the lamb), which was £25.50 - a notable saving for some serious and very accomplished cooking. Jeff Galvin has some distance to go before he matches his brother's masterly creations, but it looks as if he might be on his way.
· Open Mon-Fri, 12.15-2.15pm; Mon-Sat, 6-11.30pm. Menus: Lunch, £20 for two courses, £25.50 for three; ¿ la carte, lunch and dinner, £42 for three courses. All major credit cards.