Dabbous

Dabbous is the first stand-alone venture of Ollie Dabbous, formerly chef at Texture; it opened in late January 2012.  The premises had the industrial look that is the fashion in London at present, with bare stone floor, exposed air vents, unplastered walls and plain wooden tables. There was a downstairs bar area that was, if anything, even starker in appearance. One consequence of all the hard surfaces is that noise levels are high; I had trouble hearing the waitress explaining the dishes from just the other side of the table. Its cooking style is even more overtly modern than that of Texture. A tasting menu was priced at £49, while the à la carte had “small plate” options that would quickly mount up to a similar cost level if you ordered the half dozen plates recommended by our server. A shorter lunch menu was available at £21 for three courses.

The wine list had just over 75 wines, ranging in price from £17 to £395, with an average price of £44. The wine mark-up averaged 2.75 times the retail price, so quite reasonable by central London standards. Example wines were Torrontes Reserva Terrazas de los Andes Salta 2010 at £29 for a wine you can find in the high street for £11, Chardonnay ‘Prelude Vineyards’ Leeuwin Estate 2008 at £65 for a wine that retails at £20, and 2007 ‘Les Noisetiers’ Sonoma Coast from Kistler at £115 for a wine that will set you back £43 if you can find it. We drank the pleasant Boekenhoetskloof Semillon 2008 from Franschhoek at £43 for a wine you can purchase for £16. Seeded sourdough bread was made from scratch and had good texture (16/20).

The first course was green English asparagus with a blob of rapeseed oil mayonnaise and a scattering of hazelnuts and meadowsweet. The balance of the dish was good, the textural contrast of the nuts with the mayonnaise effective, though the quality of the asparagus was pleasant but far from dazzling (15/20). This was followed by mixed alliums in a chilled pine nut infusion. The infusion did taste of pine nuts, but this kind of simple dish depends a lot on the quality of the onions. These were a world away from the sweet Cevennes onions that grace the table at Arpege in Paris, or the similarly superb onions that can be found in Japan, so what you were left with was some prettily presented but ordinary quality onions in an infusion, which my experienced dining companion likened to eating pickled onions (12/20).

The meal improved sharply with the arrival of a coddled hen egg served in its shell, with woodland mushrooms (mousserons, button) and smoked butter, served on a bed of hay. This was a warm, comforting dish, the smokiness nicely controlled (17/20). Barbecued halibut was served with iodised sour cream, boiled beetroot and watercress stems with a smear of parsley puree. The beetroot was fine, the parsley flavour rather dominant to my taste, and although the halibut was cooked properly by the time it arrived at the table it was by no means hot (14/20). Iberico pork was served with turnip tops, savoury acorn praline and apple vinegar. The turnip tops were tender and worked well, but although the pork had nice flavour and seemed to be cooked correctly it had become rather dried out, which was a pity (14/20).

Iced lovage is one of those things that some chefs seem beloved of, but I am afraid that for me desserts should be, well, sweet and devoid of shrubbery. This was doubtless a magnificent specimen of iced lovage but that didn’t make me want to eat it. Custard cream pie was better, made with milk jam and vanilla cream, the texture reasonable (14/20).

Service was good throughout. The bill came to just over £101 a head for the tasting menu at lunch, with a modest bottle of wine between two but a glass of champagne apiece. There is clearly a lot of work going on in each plate, but this seemed to me far from a bargain, and overall I found this an uneven meal. The egg dish showed that the kitchen can produce a very fine dish indeed, but I found it troubling that two dishes had some technical issues, and the dishes were not always well balanced. Presentation was very pretty, but I suspect that my halibut would have arrived hot if less effort had been spent dressing the plate. To me this was a kitchen that is still developing, and would in some cases benefit from removing rather than adding dish elements.