It’s a long time since this reviewing lark delivered me to “Connaught Village”, an odd part of London behind Bayswater Road that isn’t quite Paddington or Marylebone. I’m early for dinner, so I have a wander. Past steakhouses I’ve never heard of, where I’m huckled by touts, shabby hotels pockmarked with “vacancy” signs, Indian restaurants whose house special is obsequiousness. Blue plaques announce the former homes of Winston Churchill and Lady Violet Bonham Carter. Blank, cobbled mews are creepered with security grilles. I nip into the handsome Victorian pub opposite the restaurant; it smells of mutton fat and the 1960s.
Who, apart from Tony Blair, obviously, would choose to live round here? And what possessed the owners of Salt & Honey to decide on this location for their second restaurant? It styles itself a “neighbourhood bistro”, but one where the bolognese is made with wagyu and everything that stands still long enough is truffled: truffle honey, truffled corn velouté, truffle mash, french fries with truffle oil. This is food designed for the rich and jaded.
I’m shown to one of the tiny tables for two, jammed so closely together that you can hear your neighbours’ every bodily shift. Might I have one of the empty booths? Our server, blessed with a powerful miasma of fags, scoffs, “No, madam, they are for parties of four.” Minutes later, he gives it to a walk-in table of two: men, red-trousered. No wonder he doesn’t feel able to meet my eye for the rest of our meal. Not even when he’s poured us – twice – glasses of cheap macabeo instead of the grüner veltliner we asked for.
The cooking is mostly just fine, despite namedropping as enthusiastically as our neighbour Tony B, albeit with on-trend ingredients rather than presidents. Here are “heirloom carrots”, cooked with a little extra sweetness and served with a log of ash-coated goat’s cheese and a gravel of quinoa and pine nuts. It’s a dish imported from their sister restaurant, Manuka Kitchen in Fulham, pleasant enough, if a little hair-shirted. “Fennel-cured beef” is bendy, chewy, an unlovely pemmican plonked on burrata that doesn’t taste in the first, creamy flush of freshness. And salmon “cured in lemongrass and Manuka honey” must have swum upstream from these aromatics: it’s so pedestrian, it should come on black-and-white-striped plates. All three dishes are topped with the same microherbs and mandolined radishes, an admirably pragmatic, that’ll-do approach to garnishing.
So much for the starters. The pal has the fish of the day, nicely cooked, crisp-skinned sea bream on a barrel of truffle-oily mash with clams and oyster mushrooms, a dish best described as “beige”. I have the wagyu pappardelle: excellent, silky pasta with real bite, the sauce as rich as a mews-owning Londoner, its smugness punctured by the pungency of rocket pesto. It doesn’t say where the “wagyu” comes from. I’m generally not hung up on knowing my dinner’s name and address, but real, fat-marbled wagyu beef is rare and wildly expensive, so using it to sauce pasta seems about as smart as putting Tilda Swinton in Next. We have one pud, a lemon and meringue, modishly-deconstructed-plus-granola item: it may be lemon but the effect is entirely vanilla.
Our fellow diners are a sociable and intriguing bunch. To one side is the 88-year-old widow of the first person to speak on the BBC; she’s having dinner with the widow of a once-household-name magician. On the other is Damien Hirst’s 70-something business manager, regaling us with tales about fun with Beyoncé and Bono and his house in Bognor Regis. These people are by far the most interesting things about Salt & Honey (as our new chum Frank says, “See, you wouldn’t have met us if they’d put you in the booth.” Fair point). And now, at least, I know the answer to who lives round here.
Grasping for positives, Salt & Honey is not overpriced, especially for the area. Don’t misunderstand me: I’m not permanently in search of culinary whizzbangery, and anyway, a fine “neighbourhood bistro” is the last place to look for it. But you do look for something to draw you back time and again. Unless I could be guaranteed the unexpected joy of our random encounters, I can’t imagine coming back. This is a fairly dull restaurant for a fairly dull postcode.
• Salt & Honey 28 Sussex Place, London W2, 020-7706 7900. Open Tues-Sun, lunch noon-3pm, dinner 5.30-10pm (9pm Sun). About £30 a head for three courses, plus drinks and service
Food 5/10
Atmosphere 5/10
Value for money 6/10
