It was 7.30pm on a Monday night but we still had to queue for the best part of an hour before getting fed at Gourmet San. Keeping pace with London’s ever-expanding portfolio of restaurants is an on-going challenge and it is always great to hear about somewhere interesting. In this instance the Chinese fishmonger at a chain of restaurants had praised Gourmet San to his boss, and he in turn recommended it to me. On the face of it the Bethnal Green Road would not be your first port of call when looking for a Chinese restaurant serving interesting dishes at bargain prices, but when you arrive you can see that Gourmet San is something special. This resto opened about a year ago, it’s small, crowded and 80% of the customers are Chinese – you have to make a special plea to get one of the three or four copies of the menu that is printed in English.

The food is magnificent, fresh, with amazing tastes and textures, lots of unusual items. The house speciality is "xingjiang style lamb on skewer" - very good indeed, dry marinated lamb kebabs - take the deal offering 12 skewers for £10. The bbq squid is good - great texture. The bbq rabbit leg is also good. Then how about "lamb and fish soup" - a well-flavoured citrussy broth with chunks of sea bass and slices of lamb, an unlikely combo but one that works terrifically well. There's lots of offal:  £6 gets you a platter with 8 or 9 braised pigs' feet - gluey and unctuous, very rich, very tender; or pork stomach with green pepper; there’s tongue; tripe; pork intestines with salt and garlic. You can order that Sichuan favourite – “sea bass boiled in spicy water” a fish is cooked in oil on top of which floats a two inch layer of dried chillies. Or there's a stellar dish of cumin fried fish - perfectly cooked sea bass. Another of the more charming dishes is one of the simplest - stir fried green beans with chillies, very crunchy, with an impressive depth of flavour and small slivers of pigs’ ear adding to the minimal, but rich, sauce. This place is open from 4.30pm until midnight with the main rush being between 7 and 9pm, so if you want to avoid the queue try very early or very late. Alternatively you could just revel in the queue you get to inspect a wide range of dishes as the waitresses wriggle their way through the crowds.

Charles Campion

Gourmet San, 261 Bethnal Green Road, E2(020 7729 8388)

Todiwala does sherry

It was no easy brief – “Let’s have an evening where we match fine sherries to Indian food”, but forty or so diners sat down to a four course dinner at Café Spice Namaste and each course was paired with a sherry from Gonzalez Byass. Cyrus Todiwala is a very cerebral chef and the menu was carefully considered:

To start pomfret mappas on Oriental coleslaw was matched with chilled Tio Pepe – surprisingly the strong flavours (sour tamarind, chilli heat, crushed peppercorns, palm vinegar) enhanced the steely crisp qualities of the Tio Pepe.

Then cinnamon and clove smoked magret of Barbary duck with a chilli cheese on toast was matched with Alfonso - a magnificent dry Oloroso. In this instance the sherry worked particularly well with the duck (many diners remarked on the affinity between the duck and Spanish jamon) but the cheese toast was a flavour too far.

The main course kari murghi nay masala na papeta was an honest Parsee chicken curry served with an elegant pulau rice made with cumin and shallots. This dish worked well with Vina AB  the single estate dry Amontillado had enough backbone to refresh the palate after the richness of the curry.

Finally it was on to the dessert course and time for Nectar to strut its stuff – we had moved from the driest wine in the world – Tio Pepe – to the sweetest Nectar is made from Pedro Ximenez grapes and has a whopping 400g per litre residual sugar. The Nectar fell into the arms of the kulfi and almond rice pudding like a long lost relative.

Charles Campion

Café Spice Namaste, 16 Prescot Street, EC1 (020 7488 9242)

www.cafespice.co.uk

www.gonzalezbyassuk.com 

Number 40 Chalcot Road is an address with “history” - at least so far as the restaurant business is concerned. It’s a corner site in agreeably affluent Primrose Hill and has been home to various endeavours from the “Pukka Bar” (accessible, modernist curry) to “Black Truffle” (one of a colour coded chain of neighbourhood restaurants). So far no one has been able to make it fly. The latest incumbent is Jean-Christophe Slowik who used to work in Marco’s Empire as front of house and he has called his restaurant L’Absinthe. As far as the décor goes he has made only one major change – filling in the large “hole” on the ground floor to make room for some more tables. The food is very sound – French bistro cooking. Think French onion soup; salad Lyonnaise; Bayonne ham with celeriac remoulade leading on to mains like duck confit with Savoy cabbage; steak frites; sea bream en papillotte; pork chop charcutiere. Good potato gratin. (Starters  £4.25-£6.95, mains £8.95-£14.50, puds £4.15).

But pleasant though it is, the menu is not the reason that L’Absinthe is so busy. Jean-Christophe is a wine lover and he has chanced his arm and done away with the usual restaurant wine pricing model. Rather than just trebling the price of everything and hoping for the best, he has divided his wine list into four categories and added a variable corkage charge to the “shop” price of each wine. You add £6 to the retail price of cheapies; £8 to middle-weights; £10 to smart wines; and there’s no corkage on anything grand cru – a reward for your good taste. In practice this means you can sit down to Bayonne ham followed by steak frites and drink a bottle of Vosne Romanee, domaine Daniel Rion & Fils 2001 that costs just £38.10. This makes for a very good dinner. We all know that we should drink less and drink better, the trouble is finding a way to finance such a strategy. Here are some of the bargains to be had at L’Absinthe:

Saint Veran, domaine Guegnon-Remond, 2006 £18.45

Puilly-Fuisse “vielles vignes”, domaine Jeandeau 2005 £27.70

Meursault “les Vereuils” domain Dupont-Fahn 2005 £35.45

Puligny-Montrachet Noyers Brets domaine Jean-Marc Pillot 2005 £38.35

Pena Roble, Bodegas Resalte, Ribera del Duero, 2005 £18.25

Chateau Bornac, cru Bourgeois Medoc 2001 £23.50

Chateau Cantenac-Brown, Margaux 1996 £55.00

Chateau Pichon-Baron, Pauillac 1996 £85.00

At last a real incentive to drink good wine. Fortunately the good folk of Primrose Hill seem knowlegeable and appreciative so when they see Margaux at £55 a bottle they pounce on the bargain rather than merely thinking “£55 is rather expensive for six glass of wine”. They also respond to Jean-Christophe’s obvious passion. We could do with more restaurants like this.

Charles Campion

L'Absinthe, 40 Chalcot Road, NW1 (020 7483 4848)

Having gone on at some length about the menu-writing skills of Rowley Leigh and the part they played in the runaway success of newcomer Le Café Anglais it’s a pleasure to see that he is not alone. Mark Hix is the latest chef to take on the challenge that is the Grill at Brown's Hotel on Albemarle Street, he is “a consultant” which seems to mean that he directs matters, creates the menu, recommends the suppliers, and appoints a new chef – in this instance the talented Lee Streeton with whom he worked in his previous incarnation as chef director of Caprice Holdings. You can always tell when a menu is a real whizzer, that’s when, as you read it, every item seems to scream “eat-me”.

Try deciding which of these starters to have: fried monkfish cheeks with caper mayonnaise; potted Morecambe Bay shrimps; treacle-cured salmon with pickled fennel and cucumber; Romney Marsh beetroot salad with Golden Cross goats’ cheese; chicken livers on toast with chanterelles; or baked razor clams? There is nothing listed that doesn’t appeal.

The rest of the menu is littered with dishes that combine simplicity with carefully sourced ingredients and hearty Britishness – rabbit braised in cider with wild garlic; pan-fried Burford Brown egg with baby squid and black pudding; Blackface mutton and turnip pie; lamb cutlets with kidney and bubble and squeak; skate wing with brown butter, capers and brown shrimps.

I haven’t eaten at the Grill during a regular service, but I did have lunch there at a long table with various suppliers including the man behind Cornish Sea Salt (well packaged, tastes salty, sustainably produced – since you ask). The overall standard of cooking was excellent and Lee Streeton looks like being a man to watch. One dish was exceptional – delicious, contrasting textures, elegant and simple. It was a slightly salted chunk of cod with mashed potato. Mark Hix makes no bones about stealing the idea for the dish from a Michelin spangled Frenchman but it has been refined and perfected. You take a thick fillet of cod and then pack it in salt for half an hour, this pulls some of the water out of the flesh so that when you cook it the flesh becomes meaty and flaky (to get the best flakes it must be a thick fillet), the potato (which could be more accurately described as butter with some potato added) is very sloppy and acts as both sauce and seasoning. The charm of the dish lies in the contrast between firm flakes of fish and ultra smooth purée. When it is plated the hunk of cod sits atop some buttered sea vegetables. A truly outstanding fish dish.

Charles Campion

The Grill at Brown's Hotel, 33-34 Albemarle Street, W1 (020 7493 6020) www.brownshotel.com

There is  continuing debate about defining the “right” moment to visit a new restaurant, one school of thought has it that the moment the doors are open (and often sometimes before the paint is dry) restaurants are ready for review. The writers and editors in this camp always say that as soon as a resto is charging full price the it is fair game. The opposing argument runs along the lines of “give them a chance to settle in” and mirrors a tried and tested strategy – who wants to be the first person to use new computer software or operating systems? XP will do very nicely for another year or two  yet while boffins work out any unforeseen glitches in Vista. But while waiting a while before visiting may get you better service and a better dinner, it too presents problems because you cannot help read what everyone else has written about a new restaurant before forming your own opinion.

And so it was with Urban Turban, Vineet Bhatia’s new establishment on Westbourne Grove. I start from a standpoint of admiration – Vineet has always been a terrific cook the food was good at the Star of India, then at Zayka and currently his chic Chelsea Michelin spangled kitchen Rasoi. That’s a pretty convincing C.V. and many splendid meals.  However it has taken me until now to get in to see the Urban Turban and I did so burdened with the knowledge that others had found the service very poor, the waiters rude, the portions small and “un-authentic” (whatever authentic means) and the prices high.

The room is large and dominated by an island bar, the seating at the round tables around the periphery is a combination of banquettes (comfortable) and stools (less so). The service seemed fine and considering the complexity of some dishes the food arrived in good time. As for authenticity – you would expect the street food of Mumbai to undergo a few tweaks on its journey to London W2. The menu leads with “desi tapas” A.K.A. the starters – sample a few and then move on to a curry. A good option is the “platter” which serves two people and costs £12 a head. It’s not a platter. It’s a perspex stand and the six different dishes are presented in cones of paper. Don’t worry, Vineet has form for extravagant presentation (at Rasoi a soup used to come to table in a china cup that appeared to defy gravity due to being secured on a vertical saucer by a magnet).

The paper cones are quirky but not offensive. The contents are delicious – machli Amritsari – goujons of white fish in spiced batter - well judged; lamb seekh kebab – a little dry, but well spiced; chicken lollipos – delicious, crisp and tender; chilli chicken – agreeably hot; khandvi – rolled pancakes, interesting texture; and potato chat – like moody potato salad. Good flavours and textures. Good fun. Set aside the aberration that is the “volcanic rock grill platter – cook scallop, prawn, swordfish, lamb rolls, chicken tikka on a hot volcanic stone at your table”. What this means is you get to warm up chicken tikka etcetera, unless they bring a tandoor to the table you will never be able to cook these dishes yourself. Cooking on hot stones was a fine gimmick in country pubs during the early 1980’s and that’s where it should have stayed. The “mains” at Urban include a very decent lamb biryani with crust – very good raita; a spicy Punjabi chicken masala that is indeed suitably spicy; and a smoked aubergine and pea masala that manages to be very light. The breads are fine, if on the small side. It is a pleasure to eat dishes where the spicing has not been toned down and messed about with, at the Urban Turban what should be chilli hot is chilli hot.

Overall, (and as is evident from a packed restaurant on a Tuesday night) Vineet is getting it right, even if the presentation of dishes can sometimes get too involved. The food is good, and at about £35 per head in W2 it is neither cheap nor expensive, the service seems sound and the room had an agreeable buzz to it. All of which makes you wonder if that is what this restaurant was like during those first frantic days when the reviewers piled in.

Charles Campion

Urban Turban, 98 Westbourne Grove, W2 (020 7243 4200)