The Ninth, Fitzrovia

For as long as I've been writing this blog, and a good deal of time before that as well, major life landmarks - birthdays, house moves, graduations, separations and reunions - have been celebrated with a hearty meal. Depending on circumstance and budget these have been anything from a mixed grill at Tayyabs to a 3 Michelin-starred tasting menu on the Costa Brava but they all have one thing in common; out of the ridiculous number of different restaurants I visit in any given year I can only find time to revisit the very best, and so it's world-beating spots like Quality Chop House, Trishna and Goodman that I will gather my nearest and dearest to enjoy/suffer with me.

Ten years ago, when I was turning thirty, my favourite high-end restaurant was Pearl, in the Renaissance Chancery Court hotel in Holborn. You may be more familiar with the site now as being occupied by the Holborn Dining Room, and the Rosewood hotel, but back then this grand space was home to chef Jun Tanaka who served a Mediterranean menu of reimagined classics like ratatouille and leek terrine alongside delicate handmade pasta and fancy schmancy desserts. It was all thrilling stuff, and made a fantastic birthday venue - slick service, a great cheeseboard, and nice toilets.

Subject to the usual drifts and currents of the London restaurant world, Pearl eventually closed, and Jun Tanaka became better known for a street food venture called Street Kitchen which dotted about the place during the London Restaurant Festival, and of course his regular appearances on BBC1's Saturday Kitchen. Then finally in 2016, he got back in a real kitchen and opened the Ninth on Charlotte Street. Which brings us to today.

There are plenty of things about the way Tanaka is going about things at the Ninth that I remember from all those years ago in Holborn. There's the confident pasta section, involving ingredients you'd actually want to eat like langoustine and rabbit. There's the attitude of things like sea bass with Datterini tomatoes and cockles, or veal tongue tonnato, playing with Italian traditions but very much in his own style. But most importantly, there's that sense of excitement and fun, in everything from the food to the service, that just makes you want to work through every item on the menu and then come back for more.

We started with oysters, because we could, and everytime we can start with oysters, we do. They were lean and fresh, with an interesting vaguely Asian ginger vinaigrette, and though they didn't really need the crisp shallots on top it didn't do any harm either.

Flamed mackerel also had an international feel - dill, cucumbers and capers are recognisably Northern European but the way the fish was presented, sliced into bitesize strips and with a spatula to serve, felt like the kind of thing they'd do in Chinatown. It tasted great as well, the mackerel being just smoked enough from the grill and the flesh irresistibly plump.

Equally great was beef cheek with oxtail consommé, the beef so tender and ribboned with fat it was almost sausagey, and the consommé rich and complex, speaking of a broad knowledge of classical French techniques learned from people like Marco Pierre White and Phil Howard. Even the most skilled home cook would struggle to make a consommé like this; and why would you bother with all that anyway when there's someone ready to make it for you for a nominal £11.50 fee?

From here on, with Tanaka's authority over fine dining firmly re-established, the Ninth could do little wrong. The pasta courses were mini symphonies of flavour, firstly agnolotti of rabbit with livers (is there any more beautiful phrase than "rabbit with livers"?), studded with girolles and boasting pasta so silky and smooth it was almost ethereal.

Similarly these striking parcels of langoustine, jet-black with (presumably) squid ink and slick with a deeply satisfying Datterini tomato sauce. I don't care how spoiled you are for great pasta after braving the queues at Padella or the noisy tables at Fat Tony's, great pasta is great pasta and is always enough to make me smile.

Main course was a whole grilled seabass, skin crisp and flesh moist, surrounded by more of those punchy Datterini and a liberal scattering of plump cockles. Tanaka's background in classical techniques was again on show here, the dressing on the seabass in its own way just as impressive as the earlier beef consommé but a completely different style performing a completely different function. I guess the French do know something about food, after all.

Had the meal ended there the Ninth would have been heading for something approaching a perfect score, and yet sadly just a couple of sides and a dessert weren't quite up to the standard of what had come before. I still can't quite believe something called "Black truffle polenta, Comté and egg yolk" could somehow conspire to be disappointing but this needed a lot more cheese, a lot more truffle, a lot more flavour...

...pickled baby artichokes were nothing more than fine, with even the shaved parmesan being oddly muted...

...and most oddly of all, a tarte tatin was slightly sour and underpowered, needing far more sugar to reach that heavenly caramelised taste of the finest examples. Perhaps this was a deliberate decision by the Ninth; all I can say is I like my tarte tatins to contain so much sugar I'm at risk of getting Type 2 diabetes just being in the same room as one, and this was... well, it was disappointing to say the least. Looked pretty enough, though.

And all said and done, the odd mis-step aside (and I realise for tarte tatin fans one of those was quite a large mis-step), there's more than enough reason to spend your dinner money at the Ninth. As he did in Pearl a decade ago, Jun Tanaka infuses his menus with so much love, so many intriguing ingredients and impressive techniques, that it's almost impossible there won't be something on the menu that would have the same effect on you that the beef cheek consommé or the flame-grilled mackerel had on us. Namely, that as soon as it was all done, we wanted to come back as soon as possible and do it all again. And there's hardly any higher compliment than that.

8/10

I was invited to the Ninth and didn't see a bill. From a quick calculation it would have come to about £80/head including more than enough booze.

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Bell's Diner, Bristol

Whenever I have a great meal at a restaurant with basic décor - somewhere fun but functional like the Apollo Banana Leaf, perhaps, or the communal tables and strip-lighting of Silk Road - I think how utterly unimportant things like interior design are, and what a waste of time and money. Just give me a plate of home style cabbage and lamb skewers and who cares how comfy the chairs are or the state the toilets are in. It's all about the food, surely?

And then, whenever I have a great meal at a restaurant with lovely décor, I think how utterly essential the correct ambience is to the overall success of a meal, and how interior design is as crucial as skilled and knowledgable front of house in the resulting level of hospitality.

So the first thing to say about Bell's Diner in Bristol is that it's probably one of the most charming and attractive dining rooms in the city, and given that Bristol is about as charming as attractive as cities can be, that's really saying something. Cozy and ramshackle with that 18th-century pirate vibe that Bristol does so well, the tables are nicely spaced and intelligently located, so that I don't think there's a single one that you wouldn't want to sit at. There's just the right amount of interesting bric-a-brac hung on the walls and filling window spaces, and some lovely touches of vegetation to soften the hard lines. It's not plush - there's no starched tablecloths or hanging chandeliers - but in its own quirky way is just as comfortable a place to settle in and have your dinner as any gilded temple of gastronomy.

Would I be going on about the décor if the food wasn't also up to scratch? Probably not, but it does mean than when the food did start to arrive we were more than in the mood to make the most of it. House pickles had a good crunch and a good balance of sweet & sour, and Iberico salami were soft and salty with a healthy marbling of all-important fat.

This little pot of genius is something called "jamon butter" - soft, gently nutty ham (Iberico again I presume though don't hold me to that) mixed with butter. Spread on the house sourdough it's a fantastic way to kick off a meal, to the extent I'm surprised I've never come across anything like it before. It didn't last long.

Morcilla (black pudding) with chorizo Iberico was another classic Spanish nod; clearly someone in the kitchens at Bell's has an affinity for the Iberian peninsula. Soft, loosely-textured pudding with a nice crust, topped with tangy, oily chorizo, it's hardly a revolutionary combination of ingredients and is one you may have enjoyed before if you've ever eaten at a Spanish restaurant, but that's hardly reason to dismiss it.

Chargrilled prawns with tzatziki were perhaps a touch on the overdone side, but not so much as to render them unenjoyable. At the best of times grilled prawns can be tricky things to get right - undercook and they're gloopy and transluscent, overdo it and they go soily and wooden. Chargrilling adds an extra level of difficulty as if they cook too quickly all you'll end up with is the bitter taste of burned tendril. So all things considered, this was a fairly impressive plate of seafood.

Quail is far more forgiving with the application of direct heat - the chargrilling here had left a lovely dark crust and a slightly pink interior, with a scattering of fresh herbs to lift it. Polenta I can take or leave in most instances, but at least wasn't too much of a distraction here, and the grapes roasted on the vine were a nice touch.

Finally, lamb breast, rolled and (again) carefully chargrilled, dressed in a nice summery, oily dressing of artichokes and broad beans. I love lamb prepared in this way; the contrast between the crunch of the outside and the soft folds inside is quite something when done properly (which it only occasionally is). We ate this with a fruity Turkish red, Pasaeli 6N, recommended by the waitress. In a place like this, you're happy to let the front of house do whatever they think is right.

Bell's Diner is, in most respects, the absolute ideal of what a local restaurant should be. Serving reasonably-priced, competently cooked food in gorgeous surroundings, it somehow feels distinctly Bristol despite the menu being a pan-Mediterranean style that probably could do well anywhere in the country. Maybe it's the décor I mentioned earlier; it feels right, here and now in this pretty corner spot in Montpellier, because it's an integral part of the environment it sits in rather than some alien concept trespassing from somewhere else. It's a Bristol restaurant, and in a city with an already mature and fast-developing dining culture, remains popular even as flashy names from that there London (MeatLiquor just down the road, and Spuntino in the new Whapping Wharf development) scramble for local custom. Of course, any Bristolians knew all this anyway; I hope they won't begrudge me too much for shining another spotlight on it. It really is a very special place.

8/10

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May the Fifteenth, Clapham

A hypothetical for you. You're a reasonably successful neighbourhood restaurant with a good few years of solid reviews and solid custom behind you. Business is doing OK, but you need a bit of a brand refresh to get people talking about you again, to bump you up the restaurant charts and remind the local population you're still going, and cooking good food. Do you:

a) Hire a good PR firm to send out a carefully-crafted press-release, put on a keenly-priced lunchtime menu to attract the local daytime custom, and perhaps think about an early evening special or no-corkage Monday to energize the post-work commuter crowd?

OR:

b) Change the name of your restaurant to something completely un-memorable and totally un-Googleable and hope for the best?

Abbeville Kitchen had been going since 2011 and I don't begrudge them at all their need for a bit of a rebrand, but why on earth "May the Fifteenth"? Have you ever tried Googling a restaurant that shares its name with a calendar date? It's fairly pointless, let me tell you. It may be a great name for a governmental advisory body or clandestine revolutionary group, but for somewhere that actually wants its purpose to be known, and crucially be found by the general public, not so much.

Anyway, May the Fifteenth it is, and the good news is, if you can find it (hint: it's at 47 Abbeville Road, in the posh, Tube-less bit of Clapham), not much other than the name has changed. It's still a rustic, gastropubby space with a good wine list, a nice line in martinis (frozen glasses, don't you know, and only £8 a pop) and obliging, efficient staff. I'd start with a portion of house bread (sourdough) and a plate of expertly-chosen charcuterie framing a bowl of grassy-green olive oil.

Watercress and garlic soup was rather underseasoned but had a few interesting chunks of, I think, bottarga floating around in it which added to the interest levels a bit. Even so, if you can't season a bowl of soup properly you can't help wondering if it should be on the menu at all.

So, soups aren't their strong point, but there's plenty else on the menu. Roast quail suffered from not a hint of dryness in the flesh, and had a lovely crisp skin. I wonder whether plonking it on the top of a pile of bland roast vegetables was really the best method of presentation, and I'm still of the opinion apple sauce belongs with roast pork, not poultry. But there was a good big slice of sausage in there which packed a good piggy punch, and all said and done £15 is not a lot to pay for this generous mound of food.

Maybe the way to go at May the Fifteenth is the sharing mains. This extraordinary pig's cheek in n'duja dish was all kinds of wonderful, an incredibly satisfying chilli/tomato sauce livened with fresh herbs in which bobbed five or six sausagey, moist chunks of cheek. It came with chips, because there is nothing that isn't better with a side order of chips - especially not chips as good as these, golden brown with a great crunch and smooth interior. This giant pot, warming, generous (of size and flavour) is reason enough to warrant a trip to Clapham by itself; a real classic.

Oh, and someone knows what they're doing with desserts, too. Rhubarb and lemon meringue had some wonderful strong flavours, especially the (presumably forced) rhubarb, a powerful lemon sorbet and a scattering of gently toasted hazelnuts. The kind of dessert that if you can't enjoy, there's just no hope for you.

Plenty to enjoy, then, overall, and I can see myself making very many return trips now I've got their booking page bookmarked and I don't need to Google it again. It's a stupid name for a restaurant, but then, if the most you have to complain about is their SEO score and underseasoned soup, well, you're still doing better than most joints in town. And for those pig's cheeks in n'duja and that rhubarb lemon meringue, I'd put up with a whole lot worse. I wish them all the best, and hope the locals of Clapham Common know how lucky they are.

7/10

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