Picture Fitzrovia, 110 Great Portland Street, London W1W 6PQ (020 7637 7892). Meal for two including drinks and service: £120
As a restaurant critic, my body is not entirely my own; I sacrifice it weekly in the service of your reading pleasure. And then, through either self-denial or ugly straining in the gym, I declare war on the calories I have just eaten in the restaurants I have just visited so you wouldn’t have to. But what can I do? I am cursed with the sluggish metabolism of a Mitteleuropean peasant designed, by natural selection, to get through a harsh winter on the Russian steppe. It just happens that this peasant has been misplaced to metropolitan London where the only hunger gap I will ever encounter is the one between breakfast and lunch. Such is my privileged life.
It means dinner is far too important a business to be left to chance. I don’t want to waste a meal on lousy calories, given the impact they have upon me. Of course, I like to think that I am spontaneous. I like to think that at any time I might leap from my seat, passport in my back pocket, in search of divine adventure. I like to think this, but it’s not true. I don’t do spontaneous. It is a path to disappointment and self-hate: over your own stupidity, the money wasted, the pointlessly filled stomach.
Sometimes you might get lucky. You might stumble upon a restaurant that surprises you with the fabulous. But most of the time accidental dinners are not happy. They result in badly written menus containing dishes pairing squid with pear, or goat with granola, served on a slate or in a mini-wheelbarrow. That’s why I do the research: to avoid goat with granola in mini-wheelbarrows. It doesn’t always work. Around a fifth of my reviews each year are negative. Imagine how many more there would be if I didn’t put my back into finding places.
And then somewhere like Picture comes along and I am required to celebrate the art of happy accidents. It opened on London’s Great Portland Street about four years ago. I know this now, but only because I looked it up after I’d been there. It’s a collaboration between three chaps who worked together at the much-loved (now closed) Arbutus in Soho. I also know this because I checked afterwards. I was aware of it opening, vaguely, and then of a second popping up in Marylebone a year ago. I cannot recall why I didn’t review. I was busy. Perhaps I was finishing off season two of Game of Thrones. Something like that.
Then one evening a friend suggests we should go there, because a “late tables” app says they have space for two in half an hour and it’s not far away. And suddenly there we are, giddy with our own spontaneity, getting out of a cab in front of a huge, brightly lit picture window of a sort designed to let passers by see what a fabulous time richer people than them are having. Picture is stripped- back smart. There are white tiled walls, with sparse patterns picked out in black. It is a clean utilitarian space, full of arty lightbulbs flashing their filaments at you. The focus is on the food. It is not cheap, but it is exceptionally good.
It starts with a cuboid lamb croquette laid in an insistent garlicky aïoli with a smear of sriracha to send it on its way. It is a small item of food, filled with massive flavours. There is a six-course tasting menu for £45 and, next to that, the suggestion of three courses – starters, fish, meat – with three choices at each, all priced between £10 and £15. We are advised to pick one each from each course; you could get away with two dishes each. Nothing unifies this food except its very restlessness.
A piece of pork belly has been roasted and smoked, to produce a flavour halfway to bacon, without being bullying. There are green beans and then, to cut through the fat, pieces of pineapple and pickled red onion. I know all of these things are involved because it says so on the menu. On your fork, it’s just a bunch of flavours making sense together. It’s gammon and pineapple re-engineered for people eating behind picture windows.
Caramelised onion ravioli in a sweet-sour tomato sauce, with some bitter leaf greens and lots of salty pecorino, is comfort food that doesn’t quite want to give you the full hug. True comfort food lulls you into the rhythm of eating it; this throws in the occasional brassic punch to keep you staring at the plate with pleasure. Of the fish courses, the most soothing is their own salt cod, whipped into mash, with a soft yolked egg, first boiled then breadcrumbed and deep fried, sitting on top. Broccoli is also involved but I barely notice; it’s the merry dance of the leaking yolk and the salt cod potato that detains me.
A narrow piece of cured then charred salmon, a sultry pink, like a flapper’s frock, runs with hot, invigorating oils. There is sweet but also a hit of bitter. And oh, but it’s a looker, dotted with shameless blooms. Beef fillet is laid atop swirls of puréed root veg and a red wine jus, as if caught in its own vortex, and is sprinkled with bone marrow crumb for texture. There are carrots and green leaves.
Roast chicken has the kind of crisp golden skin you want to rip off with your fingers. It comes with a serious jus, the very essence of roasted chicken wing, girolles mushrooms and the sugary hit of seared sweetcorn. It is complex food, but not mannered; it’s the kind of cooking you both want to admire and eat.
I know instinctively, from what we have eaten before, that the desserts will conform to the modern vogue for no pastry work. There will be creamy things in a bowl. And that’s what turns up. They are good creamy things in a bowl, but creamy things nonetheless. Strawberries and cream is a panna cotta under a thin layer of strawberry gel, with slivers of meringue; a quenelle of white chocolate mousse sits alongside another based on milk. There is salted caramel underneath, because in 2017 it’s the law.
That’s the point. It’s the kind of thing London does very well right now, at London prices: the service is calm, quiet and understated. The decor is calm, quiet and understated. Every dish, however, calls to you loudly. Which is what I want from a restaurant, whether stumbled into by happy accident or not.
Jay’s news bites
■ Picture Fitzrovia and award-winning Ox Belfast are linked by two things: a controlled culinary ambition, and their huge picture windows. At Ox, they afford a great view of the river but you’ll probably be looking at your plate. At lunch three courses is £25. Have scallop with brandade, tomato and fennel pollen to start, followed by lamb with smoked aubergine. Finish with a dessert of chocolate, cherry and caramel (oxbelfast.com).
■ TV production company Electric Ray is looking for wannabe chefs and restaurateurs for a new BBC business series in which they pitch their restaurant ideas to some of the biggest investors in the field. Successful contestants will get to trial run their proposal in a series of pop-up restaurants. For more info visit electricray.com.
■ Just when you thought we’d had enough of burgers, the US chain Five Guys has reported sales in the UK up 36% from £63m to £86m. Meanwhile the company is reporting that one of their Paris outlets, on the Champs-Elysées, is now averaging €303,000 a week.
Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk or follow him on Twitter @jayrayner1
