Crinnigan's familiar fare works

10 April 2012

This review was first published in September 2001

Before it became The Crinnigan Rooms in early 2000, the restaurant at 82 High Street Hampstead was called the Cafe des Arts. For more than 20 years this small labyrinth of rather dark, interconnecting dining rooms had been knocking out bistro-style French food to Hampsteadians.

What is it about the good people of Hampstead? Gresslin's has shut. Pierre Khodja has left the kitchens at Base for the greener pastures of Australia. The much-praised New End restaurant is no more ... it seems that serious food and Hampstead don't sit happily together.

They probably wouldn't like to be thought of in this way but the proprietors of The Crinnigan Rooms have come up with a modern reinterpretation of the Cafe des Amis. The restaurant delivers sound-enough, easy eating and, as a consequence, is a busy place.

The dining rooms are light and modern, the old, dark panelling and murky ambience are no more. The tables are well spaced and the chairs comfortable. Service is French/slick - you have to hope that the maitre d's ringing "bon appetit", which accompanies each and every course, is uttered in post-ironic vein.

The menu changes weekly, but the starters may include soup, a scallop dish - good and fresh tasting - and an array of salads. The Caesar salad is very sound, kept from being genuinely good by the use of boquerones (vinegary pickled anchovies) rather than the salty kind which work better.

Crispy duck salad with hoi sin may well be the ultimate easy-eating starter. You get a mound of salad and a clot of shredded duck perched on top that has been bound up with some hoi sin sauce. It is easy to find everything a bit on the sweet side but you can see the appeal of such a dish. Someone in the kitchen is offering diners the flavours of a Chinese restaurant duck in pancakes without all the arduous rolling, smearing and faffing around. No wonder it is wildly successful.

Main courses are good - poached salmon, organic beef burger, baked sea bass (filleted, of course), roast corn-fed chicken. A large lump of Aberdeen Angus fillet comes with home-cut fries and B?arnaise sauce - good and steady stuff. Calf 's liver is served with mash and bacon and a vaguely disappointing, heavily reduced sauce that is dark, dark brown but still lacks real oomph.

Side dishes are reliable - zucchini fritters with basil mayonnaise, buttered French beans. Puds veer from summer pudding to an unsuccessful tarte Tatin of pear - soggy pastry, tasteless pear - by way of cr?me br?l?e with roasted apricots. The people who run The Crinnigan Rooms have their finger on the pulse of Hampstead and prove it by serving uncontentious, familiar and accessible food in a bright, light, friendly place.

This is easy eating, but it has been pulled up just short of terminal blandness and continues to pack them in.

The Crinnigan Rooms
82 Hampstead High Street, NW3

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