IN LIFE there are a few restaurants to which I
return again and again; in these pages I try not to retrace my steps too often. I have no desire to pursue novelty, but I would prefer to avoid repetition. Still, after nearly 11 years on the job, it would be hard to avoid it altogether. I'm not quite sure, actually, whether this week's account of The Halkin is the second or third in this space. I went when the hotel opened and Paul Gaylor (now at the Lanesborough) ran the kitchens and although I did return not long after the present chef was installed — with, at first, Italy's own superchef Gualtiero Marchesi as consultant — and had started to establish his own menu, I can't remember whether I wrote about it.
What I do remember is that on that visit Stefano Cavallini hadn't quite seemed to have got into his stride. His food was good but lacking in distinctiveness, perhaps reverberating a bit too much with his mas- ter's voice. Now he is cooking some of the best food you can eat in London.
Italian food has become so much the vogue in this country over the past few years that it might seem impossible to get excited about any more of it. But what is generally spoken of as Italian food is only one kind of Italian food — for the most part Tuscan — and Cavallini's is of quite a different nature. For a start, he comes from Ravenna, which is midway, culinarily speaking, between Bologna and Venice, and might be amused to hear those English pronouncements about oil being the fat customarily used throughout Italy. As his origins might lead one to expect, Cavallini finds plenty of good use for butter. But the difference is not just one of geography, but also one of tone. I don't think it would be quite right to describe his food, elevated though it is, as alta cucina, in that it doesn't rely on ornamental structures and elabo- rate confections, but it's somewhere in that direction. What it isn't is the idealised rusti- cana of a thousand new-wave trats.
The Halkin is where I always send people when they ask me where they can go where the food's good but the dining-room, for want of a better word, discreet: where there's hum rather than buzz. What you need to know about The Halkin is that it is designed by Italians to find favour with Japanese — and does. It's beautiful, with straight lines and plain colour — none of that hotelly overbrassed ghastliness the French and English go in for — and much- marbled, poised between sumptuousness and elegance.
If this were a smart French restaurant, it would no doubt be run along far more for- mal lines. This isn't to say that any of it is slapdash, but that there's a rather chic, laid- back air that makes it relaxing to eat in. The fact that the waiters are young, tending towards the hip-looking (very short dark hair is worn with sideburns and impressive cheekbones) and go about their business gently rather than clucking with ostenta- tious efficiency is part of it. It's true, one or two of the waiters seem to be having a bit more trouble with English than may be helpful, but it's no less the case that one does feel well looked after, without the claustrophobic solicitousness commonly found in pricy joints. And it's probably unfair of me to say that if the restaurant in the Halkin were a French one the mood would be stiffer, when the man in charge here, Thierry Tollis, is French himself. He's been here ever since the place opened, and exudes calm and passionate devotion to his task.
We started with a glass of champagne in one of those long, thin-stemmed glasses that I have to force myself not to take between my hand and pleasurably snap. I didn't: I drank — and ordered a salad of spinach, ceps and calves' brains, and cold spaghetti with caviar. The brains were mag- nificent: they're soaked in eggs and parme- san (rather after the manner of soft-shelled crabs which are eaten after having been put 'Should we apply for some lottery money?' in a bowl of this mixture while still alive, which they eat for our as well as their bene- fit before being fried) and then breaded and fried in butter. With the raw spinach, wilting under the heat of the magnificent brains, creamy within, nutty without, and the chopped porcini, all scattered with hard-boiled eggs pushed through a grater, this was out of this world. I ordered the cold spaghetti with caviar, one, because it is the only thing on the menu that is Gualtiero Marchesi's and, two — more significantly — because it sounded so vile I had to try it. Reader, it was not vile. I don't know how cold spaghetti, licked with soft Ligurian olive oil (not the peppery Tuscan kind) and dolloped with a clump of oozily grey caviar, could be so good but it was. I don't think I've ever eaten pasta so perfect- ly cooked: it was like a lesson in the true meaning of al dente.
Nothing that followed could have been as rapturous as those starters, but for all that the main courses did not disappoint. Pigeon (from Tuscany, where they do like their little birds) was just grilled, al sangue but remarkably tender, and came with pen- cil-thin roast leeks and tiny blue-brown Castelluccio lentils which had been cooked in a wonderfully rounded vegetable stock, so that you could still taste its fragrant juici- ness. Rabbit came in chunks on the bone — the small bone of the carre attached giving the appearance of mini-cutlets — and in boned fat discs of white meat, rolled in breadcrumbs mixed with garlic and rose- mary.
Pudding was the only course which didn't make the heart beat faster, but that's under control: a new pastry chef, Jean-Pierre Vereecque, has just been appointed and, sensibly, he's a Frenchman, though as the name suggests of Belgian stock. Although I secretly think it's to their credit, the Italians are just not good at puddings, at least not in the way that the French are. For the rest, I think they've got them beat.
I mentioned earlier that The Halkin was favoured by the Japanese. This might have hinted to you that it isn't cheap, except per- haps by Tokyo standards. Our dinner for two, which took in between us five courses, two glasses of champagne and two of grassy vernaccia di San Gimignano and one glass apiece of Chianti, of a glorious Umbrian desert wine, Muffatto della sala, and of a fierce but not too forbidding grappa chiara di moscato, with coffee and a canarino (which is just lemon peel and hot water, for which they charge £3) came to £121. Ser- vice is included and they go so far as to print on the bill that 'gratuities are not expected'. So I didn't leave a tip and, although I don't think one should have to, I do curiously regret not having done so: a dinner this good needs special recognition.
The Halkin: The Halkin Hotel, Halkin Street, London SW1; tel: 0171 333 1000.
Nigella Lawson
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