Live dangerously – try some Absinthe!
February, 2008
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SUMMARY: Authentic French bistro food served with enthusiasm and an authentic accent. Open for lunch and dinner Tuesday to Sunday. Expect to spend under £20 a head for food, before drinks and service.
HERE’S A charming, delightful new restaurant serving excellent food that has the locals pouring in through the door. And yet had you asked me about its prospects before it opened three months ago, I would have shaken my head gravely.
This is because 40 Chalcot Road is a graveyard of restaurants, with the failed ghosts of Pukkabar, Chalcots and Le Petit Train – to name but a few – haunting the premises. They all served quite decent food, but they failed because a) people simply don’t like eating in a basement and b) with its one lonely table on the ground floor, the restaurants always seemed deserted and forlorn.
And this is where the new owner, Jean-Christophe Slowik, has made a difference. He has put a roof over the atrium that used to gape over the basement, and in so doing has created a decent-sized ground floor restaurant space. So now, when there are a few people in, it looks busy and inviting. The downstairs room still exists, and when the ground floor is full, people happily go down the stairs. But the point is, the whole ambience of the place has changed.
Then there is the question of Jean-Christophe’s considerable Gallic charm. He has lived in England for 20 years, but he has protected his native Burgundy accent like a valuable work of art, and you can still cut it with a butter knife.
But he is also a serious professional. Those 20 years were spent working with that enfant terrible Marco Pierre White, so Jean-Christophe knows a few things about the restaurant business.
He has brought in a chef, Christophe Fabre, from the South West of France, and has created a menu of appealing French food that is cooked to perfection.
Offerings include starters such as leeks vinaigrette with a poached egg, a salad Lyonnaise with croutons, lardoons and a poached egg, Bayonne ham with celeriac remoulade and marinated salmon with mixed leaves and sour cream.
I had a superb classic French onion soup – a hot and intense broth with large croutons and oodles of chewy cheese melting into it. My Chief Culinary Advisor had excellent French toast (pain perdu) with mushrooms and a confit of shallots.
Main courses were equally traditional, from Duck confit with savoy cabbage (choux vert) to a millefeuille of organic salmon, spinach and a beurre blanc.
My adviser opted for Scottish steak with homemade chips and a pepper sauce. This was an awesome steak indeed, tender, perfectly cooked rare although it wasn’t very thick, and full of flavour. This is a chef who loves his own steak frites, you can tell!
I went for the pork chop “Charcuteriere” which, although slightly overdone, was very tasty and served with an intense jus and creamy mashed potato. I think I was just unlucky, because the man at the table next to us had a chop that was not overcooked. So I will overlook this little flaw.
Desserts were also excellent. My brave advisor decided to go for the blackboard special – L’Absinthe crème brulee, with actual Absinthe in it.
“Ah ouie, live dangerously, zat is our motto!” said Msieu Slowik approvingly.” But there was nothing really dangerous about this terrific dessert that responded to the anise flavour of the liquor magnificently.
Mine was also outstanding, a wonderful homemade lemon sorbet, full of fruit and zest, which was served in a bowl of vodka. This is called “Le Colonel”.
I must say a word here about the wine pricing policy, which is admirably transparent and deserving of high praise on its own. L’Absinthe sells a relatively small but select range of wines which are also available to order in the restaurant. What they do is quote the bottle store price, and then add a corkage charge, with the result that you could have, for example, a really nice Cote du Rhone for £15 – something all too rare nowadays in restaurants.
The bill for our three courses each came to just over £21 each, which is remarkable value for money. Add two glasses of wine and service and it still came to just £28 each. Like just about everyone else in the restaurant, we will be back.
A WORD ABOUT ABSINTHEAbsinthe is a distilled, highly alcoholic – sometimes up to 75% alcohol by volume! – anise-flavoured spirit derived from various herbs including Grand Wormwood. It is usually green in colour and is often referred to as The Green Fairy.
It was hugely popular in late 19th and early 20th century France, particularly among Parisian writers and artists. By 1910 some 36 million litres were being consumed annually in France.
Then, through some extraordinarily bad science and not a little hysteria in the press, it was prohibited in Switzerland and by 1915 it was banned in a whole swathe of European countries and the United States.
The fact is that there was no evidence that it was any more dangerous or psychoactive than any other alcoholic drink and by the 1990s a modern absinthe revival took off. Last year more than 100 brands of absinthe were produced in a dozen European countries.
The whole point about absinthe is that it has to be heavily diluted, and this requires a time-honoured ritual. Traditionally, a measure of absinthe is poured into a special glass over which a custom-made slotted spoon is placed. A sugar cube is placed over the slot on the spoon and then another two or three measures of ice-cold (it MUST be ice cold) water is dripped very slowly onto the sugar and thence into the absinthe, which becomes cloudy.
If you want to see how this is done, have a look at http://www.youtube.com.watch?v=40k7SkXi3Rc