Philip Howard, who runs a much-praised Mayfair restaurant, the Square, entered a television affable antagonism this summer with a adorable aureate pie fabricated from venison, rabbit, partridge, pheasant and added bold birds, which he alleged "a wholesome, hospitable, apprehensive and actual English dish." But aback I apprenticed him for dining tips, he responded, "English aliment in London restaurants is basically a minefield."
That's my experience, too. English aliment has had its champions in contempo decades, including the comestible writers Jane Grigson and Clarissa Dickson-Wright (one of the "Two Fat Ladies") and a host of television gurus. But dishes they applaud, like abridged shrimp and Lancashire hot pot and Welsh rabbit, accept had boxy activity adjoin the added all-embracing "modern British" and "modern French" creations of Mr. Howard, Gordon Ramsay, Tom Aikens, Marcus Wareing and added setters of London trends.
THE accepted cynosure of English affable is a affable chef alleged Fergus Henderson, who wears Corbusier-style glasses. (He accomplished as an artist afore axis to the stove.) His restaurant St. John is direct to the point of starkness, and so is his food. Instead of block the latest fads, he has alternate to the bold half-forgotten dishes of his childhood, adorning them to accompany out their best but afraid prettifying them. In the process, he has becoming himself accolades and acolytes about the comestible world.
Mr. Henderson's affection for bits and his aptitude for affable it apperceive no bounds. Deviled kidneys, blah (with chickpeas and bacon), ox hearts, calf's accuracy and pig's alarmist (in the anatomy of meatballs alleged faggots, served with breach peas) acquisition places on his menu. He garnishes his potato soup with chunks of absurd pork aback fat.
His broiled bottom bones, delivered accomplished and bleared to the table, claiming any booth to dig the soft, agreeable abundance from their center. Alone already in our lives accept my wife, Betsey, and I tasted their equal, in a alehouse in Budapest.
You can eat aerial at St. John, feasting on foie gras or crayfish or the added deficient built-in oysters, or you can eat low, tucking into algid broken beef or dogie cheeks or pork belly. Aback you accept bankrupt your bowl - and you will, accept me - there are English desserts as a reward: a trifle, aflame treacle pudding or Eccles block with Lancashire cheese.
"This is the ultimate," exclaimed Mr. Hopkinson, now retired from the kitchen, as he pored over the card at St. John one arctic bounce night. "You can't get abundant added English than this."
You never apperceive area Mr. Henderson's access will appearance up. Take the Butlers Wharf Chop House, a about big, buzzy access from the Terence Conran stable. With an direct board attic and a wine account brindled with acclaimed names (Jermann, Guigal, Dagueneau, Tollot-Beaut), it is evocative of an upmarket American steakhouse. But alongside memorably compact crabs, inch-thick slabs of buzz beef and crackling-clad buzz pork, it serves gray accumulate - legs braised; loin captivated in bacon; livers, kidneys and abdomen meat in a puff-pastry case.
There he goes again, I can apprehend you say. Forget it, Mr. Mangetout. But I approved the squirrel, atramentous as I begin the idea. Scented with garlic, it was fork-tender, no added gamy than a guinea hen and absolutely adorable in its juniper-flavored gravy.
"We get the animals from a supplier in the West Country, and the accessible acknowledgment has absolutely been absolutely positive," the chef, Craig James, told me. "They're attempt primarily to assure accuser eggs. Their furs go to be fabricated into hats and gloves."
The dining apartment in some of London's grandest hotels accept stood alpine for attitude for abounding decades. Although the aboriginal chef at the Savoy auberge was the acclaimed Auguste Escoffier, its restaurants, the Grill in particular, accept consistently featured a assertive affectionate of English cooking, with waiters in apron coats confined steak-and-kidney pie to pinstriped gents (Winston Churchill and Evelyn Waugh amidst them) who followed their commons with bazooka-size cigars.
In the aftermost few years about aggregate at the Grill has changed: the allowance has been absolutely redecorated, Mr. Wareing has been installed as chef, the allegorical Angelo Maresca has accommodated as maître d'hôtel, the dress cipher has been airy and the North American Fairmont alternation has bought the hotel. The Spectator complained that the Savoy's new administration "do not accord a abuse about annihilation which smacks of tradition."
The accidental acclimatized abreast aliment doesn't alive up to the hotel's approximate affirmation that it "reflects avant-garde Europe in all its glory." But you can still adjustment added than able steak-and-kidney pudding (now with oysters), Cumberland sausages with Guinness gravy and the aboveboard affluent omelet Arnold Bennett, fabricated with smoked haddock and alleged for the biographer who wrote "Imperial Palace" while blockage at the Savoy. The aftermost time I checked, you could adjustment kippers for breakfast.
At the Goring, a quieter, family-owned auberge abreast Buckingham Palace, ancestry is added consistently celebrated. One eats appropriately in a dining allowance afresh immaculately redecorated by Viscount Linley, a nephew of the Queen, in attenuate shades of biscuit and cream, with walnut columns and Swarovski clear chandeliers. At night, a pianist plays Noël Coward and Ivor Novello.
The card offers a bout of the English counties and their comestible specialties: asparagus from the albino Suffolk flatlands, Lancashire atramentous pudding (blood sausage), smoked eel from Somerset, lamb's kidneys from Devon. Each day of the anniversary brings a lunchtime buzz carved at tableside from a absolute argent trolley: loin of pork, leg of lamb and abnormally beef, rib on Thursday, and ruddy, dank sirloin on Sunday, with horseradish and chestnut Yorkshire puddings shaped like tiny chefs' hats.
There are binding allowances as well. An all-English cheese trolley. An agitative wine account abounding of well-aged bottles from France at arrangement prices. In October and November, lots of built-in game, including grouse, supplied by Allen & Company, a 175-year-old boner boutique in Mayfair. And in the warmest months, my admired English dessert, summer pudding, overflowing with raspberries and currants, slathered with clotted cream.
Another temple of aerial English aftertaste is Wiltons on Jermyn Street, area milord can eat lunch, served with aggressiveness by nanny-waitresses in white uniforms, afterwards acclimation shoes at Lobb or shirts at Harvie & Hudson, and area anyone who can pay the predictably aloof prices is fabricated to feel thoroughly welcome. The buttery appearance and the criminally affluent bread-and-butter pudding accomplish ideal foils for the fat Colchester oysters and the grilled-to-a-turn Dover sole. In autumn, bickering attempt amidst the altitude heather of Scotland and afraid afore baking until it alcove absolute accomplishment perfumes the allowance and thrills bold lovers like me with its agrarian acreage flavor.
YOU'RE in the nation of Drake and Nelson, but London is not absolutely ample in acceptable seafood restaurants. Aback I formed in Fleet Artery years ago, my admired solo-lunch atom was the bar at the century-old Sweetings, and it is still in business, still age-old in looks and style, doling out herring roe on toast, absurd whitebait and absurd fillets of plaice, the cautiously flavored flatfish admired in Scandinavia but too generally disdained elsewhere. But my accepted angle collective of best is J. Sheekey, a reborn alehouse tucked abroad on a theater-district ancillary street.
The walls of Sheekey's tidy little apartment are covered with black-and-white photos of date and blur luminaries. (Me: "Is that Deborah Kerr over your larboard shoulder?" Betsey: "I anticipate so, and that's John Mortimer in the beef over there.")
Otherwise the blueprint could not be added straightforward: scintillatingly beginning angle and shellfish, beautifully algid or anxiously cooked. Slightly alien items appearance up from time to time, like griddled tiger prawns with chili and coriander dressing. But the big draws are accepted favorites like gull's eggs, Irish bedrock oysters, dressed crab, char-grilled razor clams, aflame Scottish halibut on the cartilage and auto sole meunière. One backing day in bounce Betsey and I aerial our alcohol with a accomplished broiled Cornish turbot with béarnaise sauce, as amazing a affair as you're anytime acceptable to see on a platter, with brittle amber bark and snow-white beef - absolutely delectable, too.
A sister restaurant of Sheekey, the Ivy, has been a show-biz alliance back the postwar era, with an album card that offers both New England lobster bloom and blast blast chicken. But at its amount are affluence of ancient English treats. Abridged shrimps, of course, which for the apprenticed are tiny above crustaceans preserved below a cap of mace-flavored butter, a affectionate of ambiguous confit. Hearty apricot angle cakes with amber sauce, unimaginably bigger than the tinned cod cakes my mother affected aloft me. Above corned beef (salt beef in English English) with carrots. Shepherd's pie. And adhesive toffee pudding, a aphotic arch of butterscotch body crowned with a award of blubbery ivory cream.
When we crave article a bit added avant-garde but still in blow with English tradition, Betsey and I sometimes arch to Kensington Place, the area of one of the best able chefs in Britain, Rowley Leigh, who additionally writes a account affable cavalcade for The Financial Times. The allowance has the feel of a 21st-century ocean liner, with automated lighting, astronomic plate-glass windows and blithely brave plywood chairs. It was there, abounding years ago, that I abstruse how abundant I was missing by refusing, like best Americans, to eat smoked eel.
On a appointment in May, we gobbled up white asparagus down-covered with appropriately lemony hollandaise booze and supersweet strawberries of a adolescent array alleged Gariguette. Joys of the division both. I additionally sneaked in a chaw of agitating hot amber pudding with cloudburst custard, of which the commonly self-demeaning Mr. Leigh said, "I acquisition it actual boring, but aback I took it off, some of my barter drew up a petition."
The day's adumbration was a accept of veal, from a acreage in Yorkshire that slaughters alone two animals a week. Painstakingly apathetic baking angry this angular and able-bodied cut of meat into article meltingly clammy and tender, and the accession of braised onions and beginning morels - a third melancholia joy - produced a ambrosial dish, abounding of farmyard goodness.
"What is English cooking," Mr. Leigh asked as we were leaving, "if not melancholia bounded ingredients, artlessly prepared?"
