Chez
Kristoff - Robust French Country Cooking
Dine
Online's Autumn 2004 survey of French
Restaurants in the South East
As
young singer, I'd just come back
from my first recital tour of France,
all agog about pâtés, terrines, daubes
de boeuf and courgettes farcies,
and there being no obviously affordable
French restaurants in London at that
time, I went out and bought Elizabeth
David's French Provincial Cooking,
and then later, an autographed copy
of her 1950s French Country Cooking,
price three shillings and sixpence.
What they lacked in colour photos
(there were none), they made up for
one hundredfold in marvellous descriptive
writing. Her caveats about eating
out in France are still as valid
now as they were in 1960, and her
warnings about the importance of terroir
and seasonality should still be heeded,
although the supply chain is undoubtedly
better than in her day, at least
where serious restaurateurs are concerned,
who don't try to source their ingredients
from supermarkets. My recent visit
to Chez Kristoff suddenly brought
those memories flooding back, and
I went straight to the bookshelf
and dusted the books down, smiling
at their tomato and wine stained
pages.
Chez
Kristoff is the third restaurant
to have been opened by Jan Woroniecki,
whose first restaurant Wodka is a
great favourite with my American
culinary arts students, for whom
it is a neighbourhood restaurant.
He went on to open the highly successful
Baltic, on the South Bank, and now
Chez Kristoff has opened in the relative
restaurant desert of Hammersmith
Grove.
Chez
K occupies what was Maquis, the offshoot
of Moro, which mysteriously caught
fire. The new layout is basically
similar, with the usual clear cut
minimalist lines and long banquette
seating down a plain white wall.
I can tell you straight away - it's
packed, especially at the weekend.
But don't let that put you off. The
waiting staff under the guidance
of the very experienced Walter LeCocq
work their socks off, and OK, there
are sometimes longish pauses, but
the atmosphere and the cooking (and
the prices) more than make up for
the odd hold up. Oh, and the waiting
staff are very easy on the eyes!
We
were so eager to get stuck straight
into the starters that we forgot
to order any of the three hors d'oeuvres
to pick at and share: a flammenkuche (a
thin Belgian pastry with bacon, onions
and creme fraiche) or the two variants
on anchovy dip: anchoïade (cold,
like tapenade) or bagna cauda (warm
and served with crudités). I shall
pick up on these next time I come.
My
fish soup came with all the correct
accoutrements, grated gruyère cheese
and a very good, mustard kicked rouille.
The soup itself was OK, but lacked
fishy intensity - I like bits of
fish floating about, unashamedly
vulgar, probably. In contrast, the
salad of smoked eel with bacon and
potatoes was both traditional and
tasty. The stuffed squid were those
little baby ones that don't have
a huge amount of flavour, but the
vegetable stuffing and the sauce
were both well done. Some juicy prawns
came in the pan they'd been fried
in, with a sharp sauce vierge enhanced
with anise pastis. There were so
many other good things that we had
to miss out on, like boudin noir
with apples, or sautéed sweetbreads.
The
pan the prawns came in were but a
presage of what was to come. All
four of the dishes we chose were
ones that come to the table in a
black marmite, or casserole
pot, which is of course the traditional
batterie de cuisine for making pot
au feu. The latter is on the menu,
but somehow I missed it (it
was fairly dark in our corner). Next
time I will have the pot
au feu. What I did have was the partridge,
which had been lightly grilled to
give it some caramelisation then
put into the pot and braised very
gently with Savoy cabbage and tiny
onions. It was fabulous, still miraculously
tender, but not falling apart like
overcooked chicken. The braised lamb
shank was, according to my guest,
very good, but that is to be expected
these days, and the rabbit with prunes
was, like the partridge, soft and
perfectly cooked, though both could
perhaps have been a little gamier.
This is, however, correctly French,
particularly in the early autumn
when the weather there is still quite
warm and the hanging of game has
to be done with caution. Of all the
dishes, I think the very best was
my lady guest's Daube of Ox Cheek.
This had been extensively prepared,
with up to 48 hours marinating, followed
by four hours gentle stewing which
had rendered the meat to an almost
jelly like consistency.
The
menu is refreshingly terse - none
of those tedious recipe type descriptions -
though some indication as to whether
additional vegetables are required
would be useful. The ox cheek comes
with a bowl of mash, but our extra
side order of Pommes Dauphinoise
was creamy and comforting. It's nice
to see celeriac remoulade on a menu:
the mayonnaise dressing was laced
with just the right amount of mustard. We
drank a couple of bottles of an excellent
and aromatic Pic-St-Loup from an
interesting and reasonably priced
wine list.
There
wasn't much room for pudding, so
we shared a delicious fig tart and
some sorbets with bugnes,
a rather dry version of the lighter
beignets. The ices were proper water
ice, refreshingly flavoured and rahter
better than those that have cream
added.
Here
is a really buzzy neighbourhood bistro
where you can enjoy Chef Nicholas
Pound's good cuisine grandmère at
grandmotherly prices - our bill for
four people came to £150, fully inclusive.
So forgive the odd lapse in service
- the smiles are gorgeous and they're
trying hard to please a demanding
and expectant crowd.
Clifford
Mould, October 2004
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