A Dish a Day: Polpetto’s Clams with Wild Garlic

Clams with wild garlic and crème fraiche

Today the spotlight is on the clam. Particularly the ones in the newly opened Polpetto in Soho: fiddly to get to and salty to taste, slightly sweet on the chew and enveloped in a thin coating of sauce (crème fraiche with wilted wild garlic). The fingers of focaccia are torn off to mop up the juices and collect the flecks of wild garlic flowers.

In between dishes are sips from a tumbler of a sweet bellini, softly fizzy and pink with rose and rhubarb.

The second best dish consists of slivers of cauliflower with the edges browned and wizened, a sculptural shard next to plump scallops, and hidden under the folded fat that is lardo. All on a cream-coloured purée of truffled cauliflower, which is utterly moreish.

Actually, joint second is a dish of Marinda tomatoes from Sicily which are naked bar a modest lick of oil. In short, I recommend that you visit Polpetto in Berwick Street, because it seems at home in its new home and you’ll soon feel at home there too. Especially when you've a bellini or two in hand.

The rude bottom of a Marina tomato

Polpetto 11 Berwick St, London W1F 0PL 020 7439 8627

Read my first thoughts on the original Polpetto.

A Polpetto lunch

Polpo was the darling of London restaurant-lovers when she opened in 2009. Cutting through the ubiquity of the pizzas and pastas that have come to define Italian food, the breakthrough concept of the Venetian bacaro had arrived in Soho - a kind of working man’s wine bar, serving good but rough round the edges food.

A hard act to follow, no? Well, hot on its heels trots Polpetto, Polpo’s wittier, more confident little sister. Perched happily above boozer The French House, a Soho institution, battered stairs lead to the diminutive room that has the effortless intimacy of a supper club. It’s busy. And you have the sense it’s always busy. Polpetto only has 28 seats and a legion of Polpo fans after all. Tiny tables crammed with elbows and dishes, flickering candles in the bright daylight backdrop the hum of conspiratorial chat rising above the beats of Mark Ronson. This is not a deal-making place but one where plans are hatched. 

A window seat means a firm view of brazen torsos and tight Y-fronts in an Old Compton Street shop window. Staff are equally rock ‘n’ roll, and we’re served by the cheery spit of a Camden frontman, all skinny limbs and skinny jeans. He’s the right side of chatty rather than intrusive and is quick to serve our inexpensive rosé from the well-chosen list - a fresh and accessible bardolino chosen by Ruth, sloshed from a humble carafe.

Chopped chicken liver crostini
Moscardini
Cicheti is the thing here, tapas-type small plates, which start at a friendly £2.50. Thick-cut crostini slathered with punchy chicken liver are impaled with the tartness of sunblush tomato. Moscardini, baby octopus flecked with shards of garlic and fennel is excellently flavoured but upsettingly chewy.

Braised ox cheek, polenta bianca
and breaded sardines, caper mayonnaise
Larger sharing plates are wholesomely good; braised ox cheek has a gloriously unfashionable amount of fat that ensures its melty softness. The cavolo nero, a kind of kale, is an inspired dish enlivened with the crunch of rosemary breadcrumbs as are crisp breaded sardines.

Cavolo nero, borlotti beans & rosemary crumbs
Polpetto has nothing to prove, and there lies its scruffy charm. While the food may be slightly patchy, the coolly effortless concept isn’t. It has slipped seamlessly into The French House’s scuffed walls as though it’d been there all along and I bet you anything will be far more popular than her big sister.

Pizzetta bianca

Polpetto
Upstairs at The French House, 49 Dean Street, London
020 7734 1969
Reservations taken for lunch only.

Click here for my take on Polpo last year.

Voracious advent Calendar: The Bumper Edition

Yes, it's the last weekend before Christmas. But don't panic, here are five ideas for the week ahead if you've not managed to get all your shopping done...

The Flavour Thesaurus

A brilliantly conceived book - you don’t realise you have needed this all your cooking life until you read it. Niki Segnit’s guide to flavour combinations is far from an exhaustive list of ingredients but a deliciously witty exploration of why certain flavours, such as goats cheese and coffee, work, and why some just don’t.

Worth getting if only for the pithy put down of chocolate and beetroot.

“It’s champions can hardly believe the lusciousness and chocolatiness of the combination. I couldn’t either and.. I still don’t.

“In chocolate beetroot cake...the raw cake mixture was so unpleasant that no one wanted to scrape the bowl clean. Case closed, at least in my kitchen.”

The Flavour Thesaurus: Usually £18.99, but now £10.44 from Amazon


Doughnut Box Canvas Bag

Anything from New House Textiles would be a stockingy treat, but their doughnut canvas bag is a particular favourite.

And thanks to the lovely Katy from Pinch of Salt, who brought them to my attention in her Friday Finds.

Doughnut Box Canvas Bag, £12.95


Le Creuset Bean Pot and Soup Bowls in Cerise

Forgive me for being twee, but this bean pot is adorable. I don’t even like beans. (That much).

I would like a kitchen big enough for these, and I’d probably make soups and stews all day and serve them in these lovely soup bowls which have lids, just because.
Heavy duty, French farmhouse and devilishly practical. I love them.

Bean pot: £45.60, John Lewis
Soup bowls: Set of 2: £17.60, John Lewis


St. John Hotel

St. John Hotel The opening of St. John Hotel is one of the most anticipated launches. If the restaurants in Spitalfields and Clerkenwell are anything to go by, after playing in Soho, this will be a a homely respite from the cackling bustle of Chinatown.
Writing about the St. John ‘Breakfast Bun’ at breakfast time is unforgiving, so I just beg that it opens soon. Breakfast or a cheeky stay here would be a wonderful present. Prices start at £200 for the post-supper room. For reservations, details below.

1 Leicester St
London
WC2H 7BL

0203 301 8069


Red Cabbage and Beetroot confit

And finally, a recipe. I’m sure you’ve had your fill of the brilliant ways to cook your bird already (Margot Ferguson’s collection in the OFM last week is a great place to start) so I’ve got a red cabbage one instead to go with it.

This is meant to be a ducky accompaniment, but actually if your meat is fatty, salty and roasty, I’m sure this sweet, rich confit would still work wonderfully well.
Finely slice a red onion, grate three beetroot and finely shred half a cabbage.
Heat up a knob of butter with some oil in a heavy saucepan, and soften the onions for a good ten minutes. Add 100g sugar, two heaped tablespoons of jam (raspberry or strawberry is good), 100ml red wine vinegar. Bring to a bubble, then throw in the beetroot and the cabbage, stir well, cover and keep it on the lowest heat for 30-40 minutes. Add another knob of butter before serving large spoonfuls.

Adapted from Riverford Farm Cookbook

Café Boheme - the Friday Night Steak Frites

There’s a dizzying flurry of incredible restaurant openings in London this year. Providores’ Gopapa and Hawksmoor in Covent Garden, St John Hotel in Chinatown, Bar Boulud, Les Deux Salons, Polpetto...

Quite frankly, I can’t keep up.

You know if you want to eat at these places (and I do) there will be months of ‘fully booked’ or two-hour-long waits amidst the hype. And now that it’s pretty much winter and the temperature has plunged to an unsociable degree, most nights I’m happy to nurse a bottle of red wine and sit staunchly in front of the X Factor/Downton Abbey/The Apprentice.

But it’s reassuring to know when you are out post-pub you can still stumble into the depths of Soho on a Friday night and get a no-frills humble dinner without the pressure of knowing what you should order, how you should order it, snaking queues, and above all, waiting.

Seeing the pulsing bar of Café Boheme in Soho is like catching sight of the golden arches. Yes it’s busy, crammed and London Underground-esque; but push through the bottleneck of Old Compton street crowds and you reach the oasis of a familiar faux French brasserie. You tentatively ask if there’s a table on the busiest night of the week, you begin to wince as you expect that no. And then... and then... relief! They say yes.

Perhaps it’s the relief that makes the food so good. I only ever order the steak frites with a simple side salad here. The steak is a good ol’ ribeye marbled with a wonderfully unfashionable amount of fat. It’s meaty and beefy and begging to be ordered rare. The frites are almost matchstick - crispy and even better with a coat of béarnaise. It’s not the best I’ve ever had. But it’s pretty damn good.

You can tell Café Boheme is the same stock as the Shoreditch and Soho Houses, same banquettes and French tiling, impeccable service, amazing drinks. The place is reminiscent of the upmarket Cafe Rouge feel of Pastis and Balthazar in New York, but with that London crowd piling in from GAY and the throb of Bar Soho, this is something unique. The lack of pints is an oddity (only halfs, two pint jugs or bottles sold here), but it’s just an excuse to down a G&T instead.

Boheme shouldn’t be your destination. It should be the place to go when you don’t want to end the night. It should be your golden arches because it is there, just when you need it most.

Café Boheme
13 Old Compton Street

London W1D 5J
020 7734 0623