Pearls of wisdom about the oyster

Andrew Jefford10 April 2012

This review was first published in March 2001

The Great Eastern Hotel, within easy luggage-lugging distance of Liverpool Street Station, celebrated its first birthday in renovated guise last week. With five different restaurant options, this joint venture between the Conran group and the Wyndham hotel group obviously hopes to entice those who combine exceptional greed with a low boredom threshold. My guest and I made, therefore, for Fishmarket, aiming to pick over a few oysters and drink a disconso-late glass of champagne.

Fishmarket is constituted by a room-and-a-half at one end of the hotel. The larger champagne bar is an odd combination: a cheerfully yuppie-ish central oval set into a dark, wood-panelled room of club-library allure. Next door (through a doorless aperture) is the pretty restaurant, screened from a lobby area, whose focal point is an "altar" of crustacea, gloriously illuminated from the rear and from above by stained glass. You pay no more to eat from linen-snowy tables there than you do from bare wood in the bar; the menus and wine lists are the same. In our eschatological mood, we opted for the darker and plainer setting.

You expect a wide range of champagnes in a champagne bar; there are around 33. It's an unimaginative selection, though, stuffed with big names and devoid of the small growers' champagnes which provide the region's greatest interest and value. Even the apparent choice is misleading, since it includes six vintages of Dom Pérignon, three from Krug, and so on; by the time 12.5 per cent service has been added, only two bottles will cost less than £50 and only 11 of the 33 cost less than £100. Choice for the rich, thus, but not for most lunchers and diners. It seems still more culpable to offer a mere four champagnes by the glass. No wine, it is worth pointing out, is easier for a restaurant to offer by the glass than champagne, since they produce their own continuous stream of anti-oxidising CO2, and there are many highly effective champagne stoppers on the market to maintain fizz within. All that's required is the wit to think of it.

There were also six white wines by the glass on offer, and bottled Guinness was available too, so we decided on the spot to settle the question of what drink truly is the best accompaniment for oysters. I asked manager Tracy Winter for advice about which of the four champagnes would be most apposite. She said they all tasted good to her. We therefore opted for the cheapest (Piper Heidsieck at £8.44 including service for 175ml) and the most expensive (Krug at £20.25 for a mere 125ml). When I then ordered the Guinness and started asking questions about three of the white wines, Tracy realised she had a madman on her hands and sensibly humoured me by bringing small samples of the three so I could choose for myself. Thus it was that we ended with two champagnes, a Guinness, a glass of Chablis ('98 Domaine de St Claire from Brocard at £7.88 for 175ml including service) and a glass of the 1999 Lofthouse Chardonnay from New Zealand (£7.59), stationed in front of oysters of three origins (Rock from Dorset, Irish Cuan and Scottish Loch Fyne).

The result was quite clear: Guinness was the victor. There is something gratifyingly primeval about the combination of oysters (which taste of rock pools and sea breezes) and stout (which tastes of coal dust). In a matter of instants, the entire carboniferous era unfolds on your tongue. The lemon juice with which you make the oysters writhe, moreover, is deftly absorbed by the dark and bitter unction of the beer. Best of the wine combinations, surprisingly, was the New Zealand Chardonnay, whose richness helped foil the lemon. The Chablis wasn't a particularly good example, without the mineral silt which makes this wine under normal circumstances a good oyster match. The Krug was better than the Piper-Hiedsieck, but not a clear three times better, and both seemed almost too pretty for elemental engagement with a raw mollusc. The oysters themselves were well-opened and positioned on the ice, their all-important juices amply retained. The Loch Fyne beasties did taste more complex and more savoury than either of the others; it was almost as if they had secreted a little natural soy about their persons. The Dorset Rock oysters were a bigger and a tastier buy than the more expensive Cuan. It was a shame the bread had not been freshly cut. After that, we coasted downhill with potted shrimps (too much butter and not quite enough shrimp), dressed crab (appropriately plain, but of modest dimensions), and fish cakes.

These were, in fact, balls rather than cakes, bread-crumbed and deep fried; it was nice to see morsels of whole salmon within, though the potato component seemed to have had tomato ketchup mashed into it to unfortunate effect. With a heap of rocket leaves, a bowlful of beans, a bottle of water and a single coffee, the bill came to £109.63.

Fishmarket
Great Eastern Hotel, Liverpool Street, EC2

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