IT IS hard to believe that one of London's best
Italian restaurants started life as a staff canteen. Until a year ago, the River Café was open only to the architects, adpeople and other style-conscious workers on the Thames Wharf complex. Last February Richard and Ruthie Rodgers decided to let in the general public. Now you have to book weeks in advance to be guaranteed a table.
Richard Rodgers, not surprisingly, de- signed the restaurant, 'which is why', as one of his manageresses explained, it looks how it does'. How it looks is austere, boxy, fashionably (just) clean-lined, but this is the least noteworthy thing about the place. What you come here for is the food, which bears no stylistic relation to the decor. And the sort of food Ruthie Rod- gers and Rose Grey cook bears equally no relation to the spaghetti bolognese, veal escalope and tomatoes-with-everything approach which has characterised Italian cooking in England from its raucous, formica-tabled beginnings to its dubious heyday of brandished outsize pepperpots and tight-trousered waiters; the presiding culinary spirit here is more Marcella Hazan than Mario and Franco.
Try to get a table near the window, so you can see Peter Logan's sculpture of a vast suspended pencil. In the wind and the dark you can just make out its mesmeric, slow swinging to and fro. Inside, walls are white, the waitresses wear black. Along one side runs a gleaming stainless steel bar, covered with white china bowls filled with olives, bread, lemons, purple-and-green artichokes, the best of still lifes.
The food has the same perfect simplicity. A small menu which changes daily offers thick Tuscan soups, sophisticated Man- hattanised salads (this is no criticism: some of the best Italian food is eaten in New York), char-grilled fish and odoriferous, pan-roasted meats. Why the River Café is more interesting than many other chic Italian restaurants is that Ruthie Rodgers and Rose Grey have also created dishes which are not specifically Italian (not, for example to be found in an Italian res- taurant in Italy) but taste — are authentic. In Marcella Hazan's words, they know the language, have the vocabulary, and this, more than anything else, is what is important in cooking.
There are salads of artichoke hearts, Tuscan white beans, rocket and slivers of parmesan, of trevisse and chicory with a hot anchovy and rosemary sauce; soups of Tuscan bread, tomatoes and basil and cabbage — and bean-thick minestrone; plates of roasted peppers with green chill's, basil and capers, vegetable tarts, grilled polenta and pesto-stuffed aubergine. Although there are few dishes to choose from, making the choice is delectably hard. I agonised over the main courses: pheasant braised with cabbage, pancetta and rosem- ary, bollito misto with salsa verde, mostar- da di Cremona and lentil, lo schinco veal shank pot-roasted with white wine and bay leaves, with risotto — calves liver, char-grilled cuttle-fish with red chilli and rocket, grilled partridge with polenta, field and wild mushrooms and daurade char- grilled with aubergines, zucchini and pep- pers. I hadn't had bollito misto since I was in Rome, in Dal Bolognese; here there is less ceremony in its serving, but it was almost every bit as good. There are not many puddings to choose from on any day — maybe a warm choco- late cake with crème fraiche, almond tart, torta di gorgonzola, Vin Santo with cantuc- ci, those almond-shaped, almond-studded biscuits. There is a medium-sized wine list, with mostly though not exclusively Italian wines. House wine, from Abruzzo, is £5.60 a bottle, a fine-looking Barbera d'Alba £10 and Soave £7.30. A good, soft house champagne (Albert Beerens) was £17.80. Dinner for two people, eating three courses each and drinking well but with restraint, should cost around £50.
Warning: the River Café is extremely difficult to find. It looks easy enough on the A to Z, but nearly every road leading up to it seems to be blocked off. The way to get to it is via Fulham Palace Road. Take the turning on your right (if you're coming from Hammersmith) just after you have passed Charing Cross Hospital (Rosedew Road). You come to a small junction, and you turn left into Rannoch Road. Then take the first turning on your right, which is Bowfell Road, and you come to Rainville Road and Thames Wharf Studios, behind which is huddled the restaurant.
Nigella Lawson
The River Café: Thames Wharf, Rainville Rd, London W6; tel: 381 8824.
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