39-41 Parkgate road, London SW11 (020 7924 3999).
Meal for two, including wine and service, £80
I will confess that I expected this week's restaurant to be a disappointment. I've long dreamed of a meat-lover's place built around a butcher's shop from which die-hard carnivores could choose their dinner, but I knew the idea was so simple, so straightforward, that most restaurateurs would be unable to resist the temptation to bugger it up. I just wish the newly opened Butcher & Grill, in London's Battersea, hadn't insisted upon proving me right. It occupies a large space of whitewashed bare brick with, at the back, a wood-floored mezzanine that opens out on to a deck overlooking a canal. At the front is a delicatessen with the butcher's counter carrying an unimpressive stock: pork chops with the most meagre ribbon of fat, small cuts of too-red beef, a little lamb. It didn't make me think, 'Ooh, stoke up the grill, I wants me some dead animal.' It made me think, 'Oh dear.'
On our table was a laminated card describing the species of sheep and cow we would be eating, what it had had for breakfast, how many miles it had driven to be here and who it had last shagged (really, there was loads of information on cross-breeding). The menu, when it arrived - it was more than 15 minutes before anyone came to our table - was a less compelling read. While prices appeared reasonable, about £8 to £10 for various cuts of beef, lamb or pork, that was because they were offered in weights of rarely more than 8oz.
This is not merely greed speaking. To cook a steak properly it needs to be thick and to be thick it must boast a reasonable weight. There was a 20oz T-bone at £25 that my companion, Simon, gallantly offered to try. Naturally, the one proper cut on offer at this thrilling new meat restaurant wasn't available. It's that sort of place. We asked whether we could have a larger piece of one of the other steaks than those listed. After all, at the bottom of the menu, we were invited to choose our dinner from the butcher's counter if we wanted. No, she said, they could only serve the weights on the card. We quickly found out why. By 8.45pm the counter was being closed up, at which point, presumably, the restaurant reverted to the one-word name 'Grill'. What is the point of a shiny new concept if, early in the evening, you close the one part of the operation which gives the restaurant its distinctiveness?
I ordered the Barnsley chop and said I would like it rare. 'I'm afraid we can't serve pork less than medium,' she said. I pointed out that a Barnsley chop is lamb. Her mouth formed an 'ooh' of genuine surprise. First, though, starters. Mine, dry-cured bacon with broad beans and pecorino cheese, was a nice assembly, and I admired the thickness of the bacon. My companion's starter, though, a heap of duck rillette, was dismal. Rillette should have texture. This was mush, like it had been pre-chewed by gumming pensioners before being pushed through a sieve.
My Barnsley chop was a good piece of meat, served rare as requested. Sides of chips, green beans and garlic-fried field mushrooms, all at £2.50, were fine. One other pleasing element was a long list of sauces, offered free, from which we tried a very good hollandaise and bearnaise, a passable sauce vierge and an unimpressive salsa verde which was heavy on the oil. None of these helped improve my friend's Keira Knightley-thin rib-eye steak. He had asked for it charred outside, rare within. 'Black and blue?' our Canadian waitress had asked knowledgeably. Yes, he said. And it was indeed rare inside. But outside, it was the grey of an English winter's sky. There was not a single grill mark on it. It looked like it had been fried off in a pan. So that was the other half of the restaurant's name dispatched.
We finished with an overly crumbly chocolate and cardamom cheesecake and,
for me, a slice of dry orange and greengage cake. I recalled that it was supposed to be served with a tarragon syrup. The waitress denied this. I asked to see the menu. She returned with the menu and agreed I was right but, she said, 'It's not been served with it since we opened.' She got me some, so I can now tell you that oranges, greengages, cake and tarragon are never going to be the biggest of pals.
The restaurant's supporters will say they had been open for just two weeks. No matter. They were charging full prices. Plus they had a number of opportunities at which to make amends for the sake of goodwill - they could have comped the disastrous starter, or withdrawn the service charge, or thrown themselves to the floor and begged for a lashing with a cat-o'-nine-tails as punishment - but they did nothing bar mouth the word 'sorry'. If it had been my money, I wouldn't be going back. As it happens it wasn't my money. And I still won't be going back.
