Lutyens

With a school friend visiting from Australia, I wanted to go somewhere elegant for lunch. You see, we’re ladies now, and our tastes have matured as well. Gone are the days when we use to go to the movies on Tuesdays after school (Tuesdays was, and still is, movie discount day in Sydney) and then head to Pizza Hut for $5 all-you-can-eat pizza afterwards. And besides, we needed a nice venue for somewhere to catch up. School friends are a unique breed – they’ve seen you through all the trials and tribulations of growing up, been there through the first schoolboy crush, picked you up after the first heartbreak (and of course stressed with you through all the exams). So there was much to gossip about as I was desperate to get all the latest on love, work and life in general.

Another school friend who now lives in Bristol joined us, so we were three. I chose Lutyens which is named after Edwin Lutyens, the British architect who designed the building in which the restaurant is housed. Lutyens is the new Conran showpiece on Fleet Street, so if you thought that the great maestro was retiring after selling his dining group to D&D London in 2006, then it’s obvious that this is not the case. Two restaurant openings in one year (the other was Boundary) and he looks like he’s on a mission to take the London dining scene by storm again. But Lutyens is more than just a restaurant which seats 130 people. Opening on Monday 29 June and located in the former Reuters building, it features a bar, a charcuterie counter, a crustacean and sushi bar, a members club and 4 private dining and meeting rooms.

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For our cookery class this week, we paid a visit to White Hart Lane, home to the Tottenham Hotspurs. This might seem an unusual trip for cookery students to make, but a few weeks ago, Stephen Hurley, the head Chef of Kudos Hospitality, the organisation that provides the on-site catering for the Spurs, paid our Cookery School a visit. As a consequence, the gesture was reciprocated to us. Stephen, a Chef with almost 20 years experience, joined Tottenham last year after spending a couple of years as Head Chef at Restaurant Associates. Prior to that he was the Lead Chef for Compass All Leisure at Twickenham Stadium.

I can’t remember the last time I went on a ‘school excursion’, but rest assured, this was a little different. We didn’t have to hold hands and we weren’t made to walk in an orderly fashion. Nor did we get told off for chatting too loudly on the school bus. It was all very civilised, although I was probably a little naughty at certain points of the tour, holding the others up a little bit with my picture taking.

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Foie gras terrine with Pedro Ximénez jelly

Le Café Anglais, an Anglo French restaurant, is situated on the second floor of Whiteleys Shopping Centre in Bayswater, a location that I’ve always thought a little peculiar for an eatery pitched at the higher end of the dining scale. For the ‘geographically disorientated’ like me, I traipsed my way, floor by floor, through the shopping centre to get to the restaurant. But readers who want to go should take heart, for there is a lift that takes you directly to the restaurant from Porchester Gardens, and which I only discovered as I was leaving (doh!).

The restaurant is an enormous 7,000 square feet, but it isn’t so much the floor space as the height space that is impressive. It’s tall, tall, tall, and there are gorgeous art deco windows that run along the height of the walls and which are dressed in lush red curtains. There is an open kitchen situated towards one end of the room, and there are elements of glamour to the restaurant, but I must confess to thinking that the patterned maroon carpet didn’t quite work with the rest of the décor. It all looks expensively done, but there is a sense of sterility to it, and it’s probably better suited for bistro-type lunches than intimate dinners.

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A selection of canapés

It was that time of year again, yes, my birthday. I decided against organising a large celebration this year, instead listing a couple of things that I most wanted to do with a few close friends. First on that list (yes you guessed it) was a good meal, and second was a nice spa afternoon. The latter I duly accomplished in fine fashion, but to the nice meal…

My choice was The Square, a two star Michelin restaurant. It’s been many years since I have been, and I was craving something with great finesse. The chef and co-owner is Philip Howard, who after spending a summer cooking in the Dordogne region in France, went on to work under Albert Roux OBE at the Roux Restaurants group for a year. This was followed by another year long stint with Marco Pierre White at Harvey’s, a restaurant that was situated where Chez Bruz now is, and then a similar amount of time under Simon Hopkinson at Bibendum.

The Square has won many awards along the way since it opened in 1991, and arguably Philip Howard, who is known for his elegant, classical French cooking is one of the best chefs in the UK today.

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Shane Osbourne

If you are a fish lover such as myself, you probably can’t help but be alarmed by the ‘S’ word – sustainability. A doubling of global fish consumption since 1973 has led to overfishing, leading to some fish species becoming endangered. The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations estimates that more than half of all fisheries around the world are being overfished. The issue of fish sustainability was further highlighted in the recent release of the film “The End of the Line”. Based on the book of the same name by Charles Clover, a former Daily Telegraph journalist, the documentary argues that unless the fishing industry is regulated, the world will run out of seafood around 2048, which would lead to starvation for 1.2 billion people. Furthermore, it shows that 50% of the cod fished from the North Sea is caught illegally, and that the waters of Newfoundland, once fat with fish, have also almost run out of cod.

But whatever the facts, the subject matter is poignant. Current rates of fishing is unsustainable. It was therefore positive to hear that as a consequence of this film, Pret A Manger and Marks & Spencer have announced that from now on they will only source sustainable tuna. There have also been calls for Nobu to drop the use of the endangered bluefin tuna.

This week I was invited to a lunch prepared by Shane Osbourne of Pied à Terre where an Australian farmed kingfish imported by the Australian company Clean Seas was being featured on the menu. I missed cookery school to go, so there will be no blog post on school this week, but it really wasn’t difficult trying to choose between slaving away in a kitchen and eating a meal prepared by a two star Michelin chef. But more importantly, I was curious to find out more about this product which Clean Seas claim is sustainable.

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