Garnier - review

A discreet French debut, says Fay Maschler
5 September 2012

Eric Garnier and his brother Didier, despite looking eerily youthful, are old hands at the restaurant game. In fact I run out of fingers on both hands when totting up how often I have seen Eric calmly, studiously running front-of-house in London restaurants. Sometimes it has been at big openings like Terence Conran’s Quaglino’s (1993), Bank Aldwych (1996), Chelsea Brasserie at Sloane Square Hotel (2006) and Koffmann’s at The Berkeley (2010).

In between Bank and Chelsea Brasserie Eric went into partnership with chef Henry Harris to open Racine in Knightsbridge 10 years ago. At the outset it seemed like a marriage made in heaven. Racine was praised by critics and customers alike for deft preparation of French bourgeois cooking and the smooth running of the low-key dining room. At Tatler Restaurant Awards 2005 Henry and Eric received the Most Consistently Excellent Award. In a Winnerish way I even bothered to find out the numbers of the tables I liked best — to right and left of the front door by the window.

Then something went wrong. There was a falling-out. Henry Harris went to work for the Soho House group as executive chef but then returned. Lawyers were involved and although I have heard impassioned justifications from both sides I can’t actually remember anything that was said or what the dispute was about. To cut a story short — partly out of necessity — Henry is back cooking at Racine and Eric with brother Didier, proprietor of Le Colombier brasserie in Chelsea, has opened an eponymous restaurant in Earl’s Court Road.

They opened it as far as I can tell without so much as a peep from a PR or a tweet from Twitter. Suddenly it was there, a good deed in a world of fairly naughty restaurants. Although, as Harden’s website points out, Evans & Peel Detective Agency, a cocktail and American food bar tipping its hat to the era of the speakeasy, has recently opened at 310c and new at 180-184 is Ping Kitchen Bar and Ping Pong Rooms from the people behind Bungalow 8 nightclubs. Somehow I don’t predict much clientele crossover.

Garnier the restaurant is spacious, serious and sedate. Mirrored panels and red velvet banquettes evoke an old-fashioned air of sobriety, but possibly, given Ping etc, that could be excitingly new-fashioned these days. The menu is divided in a way that would be familiar to Escoffier. Chef is Andreas Engberg, who worked at Racine and then at Dover Street Arts Club. Apart from the occasional trill of dill, he seems successfully to have suppressed his Swedish roots.

Each constituent part in the assiette of crudités — beetroot, leeks, artichokes à la barigoule, celeriac remoulade and marinated cucumbers — was carefully, even laboriously prepared but the overall impact lacked the friskiness and crunch you want — well, I want — from crudités. Warm goat’s cheese salad with warm aubergine caviar was worthy and if it was a slightly dull choice, well, you could try blaming she who ordered it. The snails alarmed Reg — he loves snails — because they arrived naked, out of their shells and tossed with chopped radicchio and lardo in a bright green parsley velouté. The thrum of garlic, which somehow validates the creatures, was absent.

Roasted cod with broccoli, bacon and beurre blanc and lamb cutlets (two) with sauce Paloise (Hollandaise flavoured with mint) were fine if rather crisply priced at £18.50 and £18.90 respectively. Calves liver with sauce Soubise (béchamel with onion purée) garnished with fried sage leaves was remarkably well cooked. The chips placed in the centre of the table also deserve special praise — some of the best chips ever. I did wonder if poaching radishes, one of the vegetable gestures with the liver, was a Swedish notion. It doesn’t seem like something a Frog would do.

A tableside guéridon to flambé the crêpes Suzette would have brought a whoosh of excitement into the dining room and more delicate pancakes would have improved the assembly, but nice to see the old girl again. Well-chosen wines not greedily marked up and an unusually wide range of half bottles distinguish the list. Not only are the set-price menus relatively a bargain but the reined-back quality probably works in their favour. Should you want to — or have to — go to Earl’s Court Exhibition Centre, Garnier will be a godsend.

FIVE THINGS FAY ATE THIS WEEK

1. One of my favourite lunches at Fairuz in Blandford Street — hummus, parsley salad, muhammara, falafel, chicken wings, arayes. Crudités and sticky pastries are a given.

2. The best part of dinner with Ian McEwan at Bermondsey’s Antico, a bottle of Morellino di Scansano, described fittingly by Harry Eyres as “a sensualist’s wine, not a conundrum for intellectuals”.

3. Celebrating my sister Beth’s birthday, sensational fillet of beef, part of the buffet by chef Greg Smith at her Well’s Tavern, Hampstead.

4. Duchesse potatoes, a blast from the past but totally right on the Bateaux London Thames lunch cruise. Go for the Elite ticket at £43 — window table, water, coffee, commentary and wine included.

5. Pierre Koffmann has sweetly sent his reissued auto-biographical cookery book, Memories of Gascony. From the beguiling chapter Summer, I roasted duck with peaches.

Garnier, 314 Earl’s Court Road, SW5 (020 3641 8323). Open daily noon-3pm (3.30pm Sun) & 6-10.30pm (10pm Sun). Set price lunch/dinner £16.50/21.50 for two courses. A meal for two with wine about £115 including 12.5 per cent service

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