Mere, restaurant review: Classic artistry from a master chef

Monica Galetti and husband David Galetti have opened a grown-up place with a menu and a wine list the chef rightly and refreshingly describes as “pretty straightforward”
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Nick Curtis @nickcurtis21 November 2017

It gladdens my heart whenever a talented female chef leaves the empire of a kitchen autocrat — think of Angela Hartnett and Gordon Ramsay — and strikes out successfully on her own. Samoan-born New Zealander Monica Galetti worked at the Michelin-starred Le Gavroche for 16 years under Michel Roux Jr, who I’ve always considered a bit of a cold fish, and followed him into the MasterChef world, where she proved a stern but warm judge and rocked a peroxide crop.

Now she’s opened her own restaurant with her husband David Galetti, the former Gavroche sommelier, with backing from Alastair Storey, chair of hospitality giant WSH.

Mere, at the less hectic northern end of Charlotte Street, is a grown-up place with a menu and a wine list the chef rightly and refreshingly describes as “pretty straightforward”. The food is sophisticated but unpretentious and expertly executed. Altogether, it’s friendly and consummately professional, if a little lacking in wow factor for the price.

But first things first — that name. Mere is French for mother but also apparently Samoan for Mary, Galetti’s mum’s name, and it’s supposed to be pronounced “mary” not “mare”. But the staff pronounce it “meer”, as in lake or as in “Pah, milord, ’tis a mere restaurant”. Meer, mare, Mary?

I’d say uncertainty over pronunciation would bar a swathe of the population from making a telephone booking. But that’s why we’ve got the internet. I also can’t help feeling Galetti could have paid tribute to her heritage and worked in an Oliver Twist pun about second helpings: “Please sir, can I have Samoa?”

On the ground floor, behind a lightwell looking down into the basement dining room, is a bar with dark blue-grey walls, royal blue sofas and a fairly hideous artwork, a circular rutted swirl studded with metal champagne cork caps.

A waitress, elegant and slender as a blade, served us a Tom Collins updated with a splash of St Germain, and the restaurant’s signature champagne cocktail with mango liqueur, sweet on the nose and tart on the tongue. A beautiful staircase of rough concrete and curved plywood leads you down.

Double act: Mere’s owners David and Monica Galetti in their new restaurant, with Samoan artwork on the walls
Matt Writtle

The room is long, buzzy without being over-loud, with a geometrically decorated Samoan siapo cloth and other island artworks by Galetti’s cousin, Solomon Daniel, on the walls. There seemed to be a lot of very fat English and American people in it the night we visited, but that’s by the by.

The menu has just six options for each course, dictated by seasonality and market availability, if those aren’t the same things. I like the way classic dishes with quite a lot of artistry behind them are bluntly offered up as Beef, Cod and Chicken.

We started with grilled octopus and with mushroom and Marmite because, well, why would you resist a cheeky offering like that? The tentacle came nicely caramelised on the outside and giving within, with a hint of spice from ’nduja and paprika-sprinkled fennel, and also an unusual fruitiness from the accompanying caper and raisin condiment. There was a Moroccan sweetness too in the reduced wild mushrooms that surrounded three nuttily al dente tortellini. Marmite butter gave this subtle and delightful assembly of flavours and textures a lovely savoury afterglow.

From the mains, 30-day-aged sirloin of beef came in pretty, evenly pink, butter-soft roundels, with a wittily light sweet onion beignet and tarragon crème fraîche. Perfectly nice, but it lacked something. Five minutes in an apologetic waiter supplied it: a sticky chunk of glazed beef cheek that the kitchen had forgotten to plate up, and which made the whole thing more glossy and rich. 1.

Nick's week in food

1. For a chilly weekday lunch, the last of the previous evening’s head-clearing Hot and Sour soup, adapted from Nigella Lawson’s recipe and using homemade chicken stock.

2. A sausage bap with Colman’s mustard snatched from the Giggly Pig stall at Oval Farmers’ Market before a historical tour of Vauxhall Park.

3. Pan-fried sea bass — again from the farmers’ market — with paprika cauliflower and carrots in vermouth, eaten while watching Catastrophe on catch-up.

4.After a 6km walk along the Thames to Wandsworth, luxuriant baked ham (pictured) followed by deliciously sharp grapefruit sorbet with biscotti, a raucous Sunday lunch at our friend Sally’s in Southfields.

5. Shakshuka — eggs baked in a rich sauce of onion, pepper, and chopped tomato with garlic, cumin, coriander and parsley. A simple and pretty Sunday supper

Still, I won the main course by going for squab, which came in the shape of two small lozenges of soft pink breast with a rhubarb glaze (again, that unexpected but delightful sweetness). Crunch was supplied by a ras el hanout pastilla, like a highly worked, delicately spicy spring roll. Cabbage and chard complemented it all nicely.

I didn’t win the pudding course: my poached pear with pecan crumble and spiced pear ice cream was perfectly nice, if over-saccharine, and easily trounced by a lovely, light, blood orange pudding. This amalgam of mousse, yoghurt sorbet and meringue threw up new explosions of taste with each mouthful, culminating in torn chunks of orange and grapefruit at the bottom. The rhubarb and crème fraîche dessert, which we watched with envy land on a neighbouring table, has already been touted on Twitter as London’s prettiest desert.

Staff are efficient and agreeable, not least the affably stubbled David Galetti, who explained the principle behind the restaurant’s Coravin system. Looking like a glorified Rabbit corkscrew, this enables him to extract small glasses of wine through the cork of expensive bottles without opening them (it pumps argon gas in to replace the liquid, so there is no oxidation).

Thus I was able to enjoy 75ml of Tokaji Aszu 5 Puttonyos 2007 with pudding for £13.50. Very nice it was too. But when most of the succinct wine list is offered in 250ml carafes — a large glass, as far as I’m concerned — at £15-£30 the booze bill can mount, especially over an unhurried meal. Puddings, starters and cocktails are reasonably priced, but with mains north of £30, you might feel you’re paying a lot for a simple menu delivered with unfussy skill. But I think you’d be wrong.

74 Charlotte Street, W1 (mere-restaurant.com). Open Mon-Sat noon to 2pm and 6pm to 10pm, closed Sundays and bank holidays. Price for a meal for two with wine and service charge around £180 (more with cocktails and/or wine from the Coravin system)

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