TO ANNOUNCE this early in the season that Pebbles is
the best restaurant I've eaten in all year may not mean much, but the chances are that I shall be saying the same thing in ten months' time, because Jeremy Blake O'Connor's cooking so far outranks the 'general run of things in this country. He has worked with some of the more illustrious names in France, and it is up there with the big boys that he belongs.
Pebbles earned itself plaudits under David and Susan Cavalier who have now set up shop in Nico Ladenis's old place in Queenstown Road, and although Ayles- bury might have been worried by their departure it can rest assured that O'Con- nor will keep it on the map.
It is not an easy place to find — Pebble Lane is an alleyway an arm's length wide off Kingsbury Square — but most of the proud residents will be able to direct you to it. The place itself, wooden-beamed, low- ceilinged and done up in an unremarkable attempt at cosy prettiness, has the feel of one of those out-of-the-way little French restaurants.
You are offered a 'house aperitif of peach-spiked champagne and an amuse- gueule (three little rounds of Toulouse sausage on designer leaves when we went) and left to mull over the menu in comfort. I started with the dariole of lobster, a pale coral mousseline of lobster and pike stuf- fed with hunks of sweet-fleshed lobster and surrounded by an ochre pool of sauce of reduced stock made from the slow boiling of lobster shells flavoured with tomato purée and cognac and thickened with cream and butter. This is a perfect com- position: the smooth lightness of the mous- se offset by the dense meatiness of its filling and the pungent graininess of the sauce. Next came the grilled Lincolnshire mallard served on a potato pancake with spinach and a sauce of three orange li- queurs. The . mallard comes gloriously underdone and fanned out on a wafer-thin round of rosti potatoes (the potatoes shredded and fried on a hot pan so that they resemble a raffia basket squished flat) and a mound of buttery spinach leaves with a glossy brown sauce made from a 'gastric' — sugar, fresh orange juice and raspberry vinegar caramelised in a pan — together with veal and duck stocks reduced with more orange juice, three liqueurs (Grand Mamier, Curacao and Cointreau), chop-
ped shallots, juliennes of orange peel and some green. peppercorns. A side plate bears the grill-crisped leg on an orange salad. This elegant reworking of an old favourite makes a culinary cliche into something fresh and interesting; Mr O'Connor is something of a Mallarme of the kitchen.
If you are prepared to kiss goodbye to any form of restraint, try the Surprise Menu, eight courses of O'Connor's best. For £31 we made our way pleasurably through salad with sweetbreads with a dressing made of veal jus, chopped shallots and sherry vinegar; a mussel soup, the gleaming black shells swimming in a broth of fish stock flavoured with saffron and Noilly Prat and thickened with cream and butter; sea bass in a butter sauce flecked with chervil, sorrel, basil, tarragon and dill, then an apple sorbet doused in marc de Bourgogne, a feuillete of foie gras with bananas and morels in a mahogany col- oured port sauce (I remain unconvinced by the bananas and troubled anyway by foie gras, though not because of O'Connor's cooking), a plateful of superb cheeses, and a large plateful at that, and a selection of his puddings — chocolate terrine in a bitter coffee sauce, oeufs a la neige, passion-fruit mousse and peach sorbet — followed by coffee and a tray groaning with petits fours.
O'Connor's cooking is matched by an excellent wine list. You could drink your way to bankruptcy very happily here. The more expensive of the house reds (at £12), a 1982 Chateau du Clos Renon, is really very good indeed, and so is a jewel-clear raspberryish chiroubles at £14. Pebbles is run with charm and efficiency by Angus, the manager, and a blushing young French waiter. We got talking to a pair of scaffold- ing contractors, Rex and Alan, who ordered bottles of champagne by the brace, paid for from fat rolls of notes, and took us on from the restaurant to Butlers, a nearby drinking club where we whiled the afternoon away in a way that would have done Jeff Bernard proud. As far as I can remember lunch cost around £80 but you could get away for a couple of ponies. Pebbles, Pebble Lane, Aylesbury; 0296 86622. Closed Sunday dinner and Mon- days.
Nigella Lawson
Previous page
