Richard Godwin fails to find any artistic merit at the Serpentine’s Chucs

It will not do: Chucs
Kilian O'Sullivan/VIEW
Richard Godwin10 May 2018

Ambience: 3/5

Food: 2/5

As you cross the Serpentine from Kensington Gardens into Hyde Park — that lawless, Diana-themed borderland of bored nannies and bewildered expatriates — a strange creature looms into view.

It’s white, it’s wibbly and it appears to be feasting upon the Sackler extension of the Serpentine Gallery. The Magazine is a piece of starchitecture by the late Zaha Hadid. For the past half decade, its roof sheltered artsy diners at The Magazine restaurant, while its fallopian struts gave guests something to talk about should the art-chat dry up. Approaching it this time, I had a vision of those terrifying mutant starfishes that advance across coral reefs in Blue Planet, draining all the biodiversity.

The dreaded starfish of compromise and mediocrity, remorseless in its appetite… Argh! Suddenly I was ordering an Americano in a nautical-themed Italian chain restaurant. Chucs — I’m assuming you pronounce as if in a Lancastrian tea room (‘Ey up, chooks!’) as opposed to a New Jersey diner (‘Would you like to see our Chuck’s specials?’) — is a much safer proposition (pizzas, steak, croissants) than The Magazine but avant-garde in its own way. It began as a luxe swimwear shop in Mayfair selling shorts for £145. The attached restaurant went for a Portofino marina vibe to amuse people missing their superyachts. Evidently there are plenty of them as Chucs spawned in Westbourne Grove and Harrods and now has pretensions to institutional status: it’s not a burger, but a Chucs burger; not a tiramisu but a Chucs tiramisu. ‘Not an Americano coffee but an Americanococktail,’ I specified to the waiter — since that excellent aperitivo is what I’d order if I were in Portofino.

I wanted an Americano cocktail. I ended up with Campari-scented San Pellegrino and a Negroni-sized bill

Or Carluccio’s. ‘Would you like milk with that?’ he enquired. After two consultations, we established that Americano-the-cocktail is a bit like a Negroni, but with sparkling water instead of gin. I ended up with Campari-scented San Pellegrino and a Negroni-sized bill. This Chucs is a little cheaper than the Mayfair version in deference to the fact that parks are public places as opposed to mechanisms of capital extraction. Still, you can imagine the famished tourist, confused about English pricing, anxiously eyeing mother, children, tutor and mistress, and asking: ‘Will this do?’ And ‘will this do?’ was a running theme. I wondered how they’d manage the west London orthorexic crowd, so ordered the super green salad. A will-this-do bowl of Tesco Metro-grade cos and irregularly chopped avocado arrived; the sort of thing you offer a rabbit that unexpectedly turns up for dinner. Yellowfin tartare tasted like someone had raided an all-youcan- eat poké bar — last week. We then waited for 40 minutes for dishes that take five minutes to cook. Flash-fried sea bream with broad bean purée was ‘outstandingly mediocre’, said my companion; the lack of clam shells on my tagliatelle vongole suggested frozen. Chucs tiramisu, it turns out, is like normal tiramisu but meh.

Richard Godwin
COMMISSIONED WORK

The writer Venkatesh Rao coined the term ‘premium mediocre’ to describe that late-capitalist phenomenon of paying premium prices for a mediocre experience. Premium mediocrity thrives in museums, galleries and parks where there is a large captive audience but no real competition (all effort goes into winning the contract in the first place). Chucs aims at a more rarefied niche: luxe desultory. You’ll know it if you’ve ever found yourself stranded in a remote business hotel with only a £31 room service carpaccio for solace. The strategic depths of London’s blandest, richest park is the perfect location for luxe desultory. And so the starfish continues its implacable march. Will this do? It will not!

Chucs Serpentine

1 Yellowfin tuna tartare £12.95

1 Super green salad £9

1 Pan-fried sea bream £17

1 Tagliatelle with clams £16

1 Tiramisu £6

2 Espressos £4.40

1 Glass of Fiano Mandrarossa £11

1 San Pellegrino £4

2 Cocktails £24

Total £104.35

West Carriage Drive, Hyde Park, W2, (020 7298 7552; chucsrestaurants.com)

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