It is in the nature of what I do that my restaurant going should appear to have great width but little depth; that I should seem to visit many places once but few places more often than that. It's not actually the case. Being a greedy sod, I end up in restaurants much more than my one a week review would suggest, but have little room or excuse to discuss what I found there in my column. That, I think, will be one of the pleasures of this blog: the chance to return to places previously reviewed.
And so to my dinner last night, with my wife Pat, at a neighbourhood restaurant in London's East Dulwich called Franklins. This is a regular for us and with good reason. It always delivers. I'd go so far as to say that anybody thinking of setting up a neighbourhood place should come and eat here first (they also have a second branch in Kennington).
The menu is short, seasonal and in keeping with the teachings of the much loved St John. Last night it was starters of globe artichoke with vinaigrette or some sweet, tidy cockles with chunks of chorizo in a garlicky broth. After that, impeccably rare slices of lamb for her and for me, pork belly and black pudding with roast fennel. This is a treat for me. I've ordered pork belly so often while out reviewing, that I have to avoid it now or you'd think me obsessed. Which I am. Anyway, when I'm out eating on my own dime I can do what I like. We finished with a strawberry Etonmess, possibly the weakest link in the meal, because the fruit wasn't quite up to snuff. But it was, nonetheless, almost exactly the kind of meal you want from a neighbourhood place at the right price (£85 for two all in).
Looking at Franklins menu, and looking back over my reviews of the past few weeks, I note an interesting development in the British food scene. We are, I think, able at last to say that we have developed a genre of restaurant food that is wholly indigenous to these shores. Sure, the restaurants take as their model the French bistro but the food, like that at Franklins, has a butch, British sensibility, also informed by the work of Fergus Henderson at St John. Think of that venison and trotter pie I had at Magdalen a month or two back. Or the pigs head croquette, followed by a fricassee of calves kidney and sweetbreads at the Westerly in Reigate. Or the snail salad and roast lamb at Great Queen Street, itself an offshoot of another St John influenced gaff, the Anchor and Hope.
Personally I am delighted because, while I know the offal obsession is not to everybody's taste, it is to mine. For anybody interested in this stuff, and how it came about, there was an intriguing exchange in the Financial Times a week or two back between Rowley Leigh, one of our smartest chefs and for 20 years the brains behind Kensington Place, and Fergus Henderson of St John. What I think most intriguing is the way Henderson credits Paula Wolfert's book on South Western French cookery and Marcella Hazan's Classic Italian Cook Book as great influences. To eat his food you would think he had not taken an ounce of inspiration from anywhere south of Dover. But it makes sense that, to achieve this revolution in British cooking, you would first need a French sensibility.
