acid reflux – which former PM dined and dithered at The Dover last week?
Plus Jonathan Nunn’s recommendations for eating in New York City.
This edition of acid reflux was supposed to be a New York special, but I can’t overlook gifts when they drop into my lap.
Lately in the London restaurant world, there’s been a lot of chat about Carbone, the New-York-restaurant-turned-luxury-dining-chain, whose recently opened London branch currently has a score of 2.8 on Google due to a spate of near-identical 1-star reviews. Two restaurant critics even rushed out opening-night reviews to get the scoop that Carbone is, in fact, not very good – something I could have told you for free.
At the same time, a hot take about Carbone has been solidifying into something approaching received knowledge: ‘We don’t need Carbone because we already have something better’ – namely The Dover, a homegrown steak, burger and pasta restaurant on Dover Street that is essentially Carbone crossed with the understatement of a Mayfair club.
I decided to eat at The Dover last week, not for this newsletter but because my long-suffering girlfriend is tired of date nights when either 1) the food is terrible or 2) the restaurant is in Enfield. So, I booked in for what I hoped would be an uneventful evening of good-enough, non-boundary-pushing food. The first signs were auspicious: the restaurant is designed like an intricate wooden jewellery box, with hidden compartments and alcoves, and a curtain that ensures no sunlight will ever penetrate the room. The starters section is essentially a footnote of things that go well with martinis, of which there are nine, and the three we ordered were all superb. The burger tastes almost exactly like a Whopper (complimentary).
As it was Mayfair, we expected to see some characters, and tried to play a game of working out which table in there had the most evil energy, before concluding that it was probably us. That is, until the former prime minister of the United Kingdom, Rishi Sunak, was seated next to me and completely killed my vibe.
Since the dissolution of his ministry, Sunak has been busy working at Goldman Sachs, consulting and, evidently, doing more eating out to help out. I was less struck by his dry chat (AI, ChatGPT, problems at Microsoft) or the revelation of whom he fancies (Keira Knightley, Natalie Portman) than by his ordering.
I think you can tell a lot about a person not from what they order but from how they order it. I respect people who know what they want and just order it, without compromising. Sunak’s technique was to ask every single person at the table what they were ordering, ask the waiter for his thoughts, spend the next ten minutes fussing about whether the Dover sole was too big, asking the waiter if he thought the Dover sole was too big (answer: no), trying to negotiate sharing it with someone else at the table and failing, before capitulating and ordering penne arrabbiata.
After witnessing this dithering over a piece of flatfish, I left The Dover with a better understanding of our ruling class. How can you possibly hope to lead the country if you cannot even lead your own stomach?
An interesting parlour game for nerds: which PMs would have just ordered the sole?
IMO Wilson would have got the sole. Blair would have got the sole. Even Callaghan would have got the sole. Now we are doomed to be ruled by people who want sole but order the penne.
Update on Castle Square
It’s been a busy fortnight in the fight to save five restaurants from their unfair eviction from Castle Square, as covered in the last acid reflux. Since then, Latin Elephant have secured a temporary reprieve of sorts, with the council leaning on Castle Square’s developer Get Living to agree on a deal for repayment. However, there is still much work to do. The traders have only been offered ‘tenancies at will’, which mean they can be legally evicted at short notice, and they have not been offered any space in the new development despite earlier promises that they would.
You can keep up with the developments on Latin Elephant’s Instagram and find an updated template to email your local councillors here.
Recommended reading
‘Is new Dublin restaurant Entrecôte connected to the French originals?’: A masterclass of reporting, in which All the Food, a Dublin-based blog, investigates the newly opened Entrecôte Dublin, proving in the process that it cannot possibly be related to any existing Entrecôte franchise, despite insinuations that it was in marketing materials. Soon after, the owner of the Dublin Entrecôte, Paul McGlade, put out a backtracking statement, confirming that his restaurant wasn’t associated with ‘similar L’Entrecôte / Entrecôte restaurants around the world’ after all, but rather was a homage. Entrecôte Dublin has already closed.
‘How James Hoffmann became king of the coffee nerds’: It seems improbable that no one has profiled coffee supremo James Hoffmann before now, but this article in the FT is really about what happens when you get so deep into the thing you love, and your taste becomes so rarefied, that everything becomes disappointing. I will admit that I felt pangs of recognition on reading it.
‘How high-end restaurants went global’: A well-researched piece by Jay Rayner, again in the FT, on the global chain-ification of luxury restaurants, and particularly the move to the UAE and Saudi Arabia – a topic I am fascinated by. In the most recent episode of our podcast, I talked a bit about the London fine dining restaurant Row on 5, its sister branch in Dubai (Row on 45), and my ambivalence over whether this was really luxury. After reading this piece, I am more certain that it is not.
‘A polite argument with J. Nunn’: A genial riposte to me on the above by Marshall Manson, who is a Row on 5 fan. All I will say is: if you don’t like my criticisms, I have others!
I hope to write a bit more about my problems with fine dining in this city over the next few months, but I would like to start on a positive note by shouting out Wilsons in Bristol and Upstairs at Landrace in Bath (both of which I mentioned in the podcast), as well as Dongnae. All are in contention for my meal of the year, and all feel rooted in place in a way that I sometimes struggle with when it comes to London restaurants. Dongnae is the second Bristol-based restaurant from chef-couple Kyu Jeon and Duncan Robertson, a more sedate sister to Bokman, which I once said was my favourite restaurant in the UK. What I love about their cooking at both places is how they combine a forensic, almost-obsessive attention to detail with a keen sense of fun. London has recently been blessed with many Korean restaurants of varying sensibilities, from Calong to Sollip to Miga, but there is something very special about Bokman and Dongnae. I’d like to hope London could incubate more restaurants like them.
The rehearsal
Last month, Guardian critic Grace Dent published a very strange review of Brasserie Constance, which was less about the food and more about the (alleged) behaviour of the staff. Dent arrived at Adam Byatt’s new Fulham restaurant to an empty dining room, seemingly provoking a crisis among the managers who didn’t want the critic to think that the restaurant was vibeless. According to Dent:
‘The table next to us filled up with a group of twentysomethings and, soon after, another table did likewise, then another, until there were five jam-packed tables around us, all merrily going through the motions of having lunch, although, curiously, none of them seemed to have been offered menus or had orders taken. In fact, on closer inspection, not much food was on those tables, either. It was almost as if they were miming having a meal.’
This episode has reminded me of a story of another critic who visited a restaurant in Manchester last year. The critic had asked to be booked in the restaurant under their own name (an increasingly dire trend) on a certain date. The only problem was that the restaurant was supposed to be shut that day. Not wanting to turn down the boost that comes with a national critic review, the restaurant decided to open specifically for the critic, and filled the room to the rafters with table after table of friends and family, all pretending to be paying diners, Nathan Fielder-style. In a rave review, the critic praised the restaurant, with a particular note on how full the restaurant was and how happy the staff seemed to be to greet them. To this day, I am not sure if they know what really happened.
The moral of the story is: don’t be bait!
Shot and chaser of the month
New York, New York: part 2
I was in New York last month and had a surprisingly great time. Last time I went, I found the city oppressive, that New Yorkers have made a personality trait of having bad infrastructure, and that the dining scene was uncanny, serving similar things to London except with sticker-shock pricing. This time, everything was delightful, and I now realise that the difference between the two trips was down to the weather being good.
Here are 20 observations on the city and recommendations for dining in New York that I hope will be useful to anyone visiting (and maybe even to anyone who lives there):
New Yorkers disagree on many things, but there are, to my knowledge, four places about which every New Yorker will say, ‘Oh yeah, I love that place’ – as if you’ve just reminded them of a friend they rarely see. Those places are The Long Island Bar, Maxi’s Noodle, S&P Lunch and whatever their favourite rice roll place is.
You can subscribe to Vittles for £7/month or £59 for the whole year, which gives you access to restaurant recommendations from the last five years, including the Six of One map.