Seething Lane, London EC3
(020 7977 9500).
Meal for two, including wine and service, £120
A few years ago there was a restaurant in London called Between Six and Eight, which soon went out of business. I'm convinced it suffered because people thought its name meant it was only open in the early evening, rather than what it was actually supposed to convey - that the restaurant was on the seventh floor of the building in which it was located. Currently there is a Turkish restaurant in Marylebone called Ishtar. Its website says the name comes from 'the Babylonian High-Mother Goddess Ishtar who carries the Torch of Heaven and Earth', all of which may be true. The place may serve the best Turkish food this side of the Bosporus. But all I can think of when I see the word Ishtar is that calamitous Eighties movie of the same name starring Dustin Hoffman and Warren Beatty, which tanked at the box office, taking more than $40m of someone else's money with it. This can not be to its advantage.
I do understand that naming restaurants is a tricky business. You can go personality-led: think Restaurant Gordon Ramsay, Chez Bruce, Elena's L'etoile. You can follow the ingredient route: there's Aubergine, Sorrel, the Fat Duck. Or you can try to be a bit Ronseal and make sure it does exactly what it says on the tin: Chinese Experience, Tapas Brindisa, Hotel du Vin. (Though, on this model, there should really be a chain of restaurants across the country called 'House of Culinary Horrors'.)
What you should never try to be is too clever. Clever rarely works. I would, for example, love to have been at the meeting when the marketing boys came up with the name Addendum and then punched the air. To me it sounds vaguely gynaecological, as in, 'I'm now going to examine your addendum.' The dictionary definition doesn't really improve things much either: an addendum - to a book or magazine - is something that has been added after completion. So the new restaurant of the Apex City of London Hotel, by Tower Bridge, is essentially an afterthought, part of the operation they forgot about at the beginning, and decided to throw in later.
I wish I could report that the name does the business a disservice, but I can't really. Behind a glass wall at the front of the building, in what looks like it was once a hotel lounge, is the brasserie - inasmuch as there are rows of tables and chairs. It was deserted when we were there. The restaurant part is out the back, in a low-ceilinged modern box of a room full of dark wood and smears of muted colour, patrolled by equally gloomy front-of-house staff who look like they are counting the hours until their next dose of antidepressants. It is clearly designed for the city-boy crowd - my dining companion represented the only pair of X chromosomes among the punters - except that service was terribly slow, even when there were only five tables in. This could be disastrous for a restaurant trying to serve a clientele eager to return to their desks.
This is a shame, because the accomplished cooking of chef Tom Ilic deserves a wide audience. Not that Ilic is exactly versatile. Some might call it one-note cookery, but as his approach is so complete I think it should be called one-chord cookery, and a big fat one at that. Ilic does meat. He cooks an animal three different ways. He puts the farmyard together on the plate, and caramelises and roasts and sears. It can't be called simple food, because every dish comes with multiple adornments, and it can be deeply satisfying. So sauteed calf's sweetbreads come both as they are, and wrapped in thin rolls of pancetta and alongside some cock's kidneys, the forest flavours of girolles and the sweetness and crunch of almonds, the whole linked by a dark, sticky jus.
On another plate, hunks of braised pig's cheek were accompanied by a pillow of garlicky mash and, as a bridge between the two ingredients, slices of crisp chorizo. And these were only the starters. Main courses were riffs on animals: with lamb it was the rack, roasted the right side of pink, a fibrous and moist lump of braised neck, some more sweetbreads and a potato and turnip gratin. With pork it was fillet, trotter, black pudding, belly (natch) and an apple and rosemary tart, plus a heap of pickled cabbage.
In short, do not come here for a dainty salad and a little grilled fish. This is boys' food. (Though the one pudding we managed between us did display a lighter touch: a crisp tuile basket of unseasonable soft fruits, under a light, slightly caramelised custard.)
It is also at boys' prices. Think at least £10 for a starter and around £20 a main course. The problem is that, when spending that sort of money, I want to go somewhere which understands the notion of the special occasion. Because, whatever the name of the restaurant, dropping £120 on dinner should never be an afterthought.
