Why are the interesting restaurants moving farther and farther out of the centre of London? It doesn’t take a fiscal genius to figure it out: in a city where, according to research by Shelter, only 43 (yes, 43, not 43%) houses were reckoned to be “affordable” for first-time buyers, the same applies to restaurateurs. Even if they wanted to join the stately march of the Mayfair wankpits, they simply couldn’t afford to.
In the centre, even the apparently ramshackle and cool will have big loot lurking in the background. Scratch the surface of those branché Taiwanese bun merchants, and you’ll find backers with a big portfolio and even bigger wallets. So the creative independents are pushed out, to Walthamstow and Peckham and Streatham. The Richmond’s owner, Brett Redman, opened Elliot’s when Borough Market wasn’t today’s oversubscribed tourist magnet, and with this he’s headed east not to the main Shoreditch/Hoxton party axis, but to the tube-free, traffic-heavy Queensbridge Road. Still, if he decided to open at a supermarket forecourt in Penge, I’d keel up, because he’s one of those rare people in the business who always delivers restaurants with “it”.
What’s this “it” when it’s at home? It’s that indefinable feeling, when you walk into a restaurant, that you’re in the only joint in town you want to be in. It’s the thrill when you lift the menu and know you want to order all of it. The notion that affable hospitality is worth more than any amount of tweezering or dehydrating or overblown luxury ingredients. To be told that two of the items we want to order are unavailable – newly opened, the place on an early weekday night is full to bursting – might cause major dyspepsia. (One is a muffin stuffed with crabmeat, one the burger; I know, I know, but the Elliot’s burger is a thing of juicy, beefy wonder.) Instead of shrugging, they offer us a brilliant, extempore mash-up: a thick wodge of butter-sizzled, creamy monkfish in burnished seeded bun, with shredded baby gem and tartare sauce giving it the air of god’s own filet-o-fish. We’re left beaming instead of bitching. That’s how to bloody do it.
They style themselves a “raw bar” (“east London’s first and only”), so fresh seafood it is: a selection of oysters – plump Portland pearls, briny Welsh Menai rocks and meaty, savoury Scottish Cumbraes. They come with herb sauce, mignonette and sharp, fiery homemade “Tabasco” (a neat touch). Raw scallops, sliced thin, are served with ajo blanco (a garlicky, almond-based gazpacho-style soup) and grapes in what looks like a wholly successful tribute to Nuno Mendes’ Chiltern Firehouse prawn dish. A lick of mandarin oil lifts this into the realms of fairies dancing upon tongues.
Cooked dishes are far from also-rans. Red prawns are fried into sweet crispness, to be munched whole, head and all, with a custardy, yellow aïoli. Beetroot, wood-roasted into smoky softness, is swaddled in radicchio leaves, scented with apple and caraway and bundled on to a bed of – of course – goat’s curd. Lamb, savoury with anchovy and humming with garlic, comes with crushed celeriac and charred purple sprouting broccoli: simple, sure, but perfectly realised. Pasta shells bob in a rich tomato sauce bolstered with ’nduja and brimming with seafood: clams, mussels, a muscular octopus tentacle that’s all toasty tenderness. Even incidentals are mighty fine: crisp, hand-cut chips, super-cheesey cauliflower with a wonderfully blistered crust, excellent bread. There’s one duffer, a grouty, greige stew of artichokes, white beans and chard, but then, nobody’s perfect.
Redman’s partner is Margaret Crow, a fashion stylist, which may be why the room looks so good: glossy, Georgian-red paintwork; hand-painted wooden floors; marble-topped bar and – here they are again – panels of ribbed nan-glass, the ne plus ultra of 2015’s restaurant cool signifiers. I love its neon sign, wrapped around the building to read “rich” and “mond”. It’s a far cry from the place’s previous incarnation as LMNT, which looked as if it had been designed by an Aztec pyramid architect during a week-long bender. There are, of course, many beards (not least Redman’s luxuriant specimen), plus negroni on tap. There’s an excellent winelist from natural wine maven Isabelle Legeron. But it all works like a charm. As with so much these days in the capital, the centre’s loss is the fringes’ gain.
• The Richmond 316 Queensbridge Road, London E8, 020-7241 1638. Open all week, Mon-Fri 5pm-midnight, Sat noon-3pm, 5pm-midnight, Sun noon-8pm. About £30 a head, plus drinks and service.
Food 7/10
Atmosphere 8/10
Value for money 7/10
