This fish and chip restaurant opened in November 2012, situated between Grosvenor Square and Oxford Street. Marketing doesn’t seem to be their strong point, with a bare bones website with the message “coming soon” being the sum total of their on-line efforts a mere seven years after they opened. There is also a sister restaurant in The City.
The dining room has two sections, with counter seating at the front and tables at the back. The menu has the traditional chip shop offering as well as some more ambitious things like grilled (but farmed) sea bass and grilled megrim sole from Devon at £18.50. Megrim is a flatfish related to brill and turbot, rather in the same way that a Trabant is related to a Mercedes. It is much cheaper than lemon sole, which in itself is a poor cousin of Dover sole. Blood pudding fritters with apple sauce lacked much in the way of flavour, the batter a little greasy. If I tasted this blind I would have been struggling to identify it as black pudding, though the apple sauce was pleasant enough (10/20). Old fashioned prawn cocktail was better, the prawns a decent size and the Marie Rose sauce having a pleasant piquant tang to it (12/20).
The haddock and chips was rather ordinary. The fish in itself was OK, being cooked properly, but the batter was again slightly soggy and greasy when you would hope that it would be crisp and golden (11/20). Chips appeared to be of the catering variety and double cooked rather than triple cooked. They were certainly edible but lacked that crisp, golden exterior that you hope for a top-notch chip (11/20). Our waiter seemed distinctly hazy as to what the “scampi” consisted of, and although notionally this should contain langoustine, he seemed to think that some sort of shrimp was inside the batter. It certainly tasted like a prawn rather than a lovely sweet langoustine (11/20).
Service was pleasant enough in a “who ordered what?” kind of way, but this is after all a chippy rather than Le Gavroche. The bill came to £30 a head for two courses and a drink. I was rather disappointed by this place given that a few high-profile chefs have been spotted here. It seemed scarcely better than my local chippy based on what we ate.
P S BAKER
I've been there twice in the past year. First time was quite good, the second time not, when the battered plaice was so slimy that I sent it back. The fish was also quite tasteless, I wondered if it was too fresh. Service was cheerful but blase. Fishers in Putney is good, all except the chips - I find it almost impossible to find a chippy that does them well.