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Seven Dials
■ ••, s 1141E1 Mn lineI 41 lin' I IMI IT'S a funny thing that the cheaper and more wretched human life becomes, the more desperately people try to ensure their own survival. Never have so many people known, and indeed done, so much about health and diet. Still, much as I suspect the motives behind the health movement, I do not advocate a blind epicureanism in the face of rising blood pressure, cholesterol and, let's face it, weight. Not many of us want to feel awful and even fewer want to look it.
Anyway, for whatever reason, many people would be glad of a restaurant where you could eat good and good-for-you food. Anton Mosimann has managed this to perfection with his cuisine naturelle, which doesn't taste like food that's apologising for being healthy, but not everyone can afford Dorchester prices (around £35 a head). There is still room for somewhere between the Do Your Nut type of place and a four-star hotel, and reason for it to be slightly nearer the upper end since most unnecessary (and therefore improvable) eating goes on at lunchtime, the expense account's golden hour.
Seven Dials in Neal's Yard, Covent Garden (836 0984) was meant to be just that: it calls itself `a stylish restaurant offering fresh ingredients that have been produced naturally and not subjected to chemical additives' and boasts a chef, Mirabelle-trained John Brabbins, who 're- lies on the freshness and quality of the ingredients rather than over-elaborate dressings and sauces'. I went on the strength of this promising announcement and was very disappointed.
Anything described as `stylish' is auto- matically suspect, but this restaurant is downright repellent. Everything is leaf- green and coral: carpet, walls, tablecloths and china, with the trellis as motif. It looks like an executives' dining room in a Cross- roads set. At least there was no piped music.
The menu is likewise disappointing. It's not that they were lying — I'm sure everything is wonderfully E-free — but one might have expected somewhat simpler food. However, it's all very concocted here, just like in any other over-priced, over-ambitious restaurant. But what I found most annoying was not the fussiness, but the fact that the food, when it came, was as rich and high in fat as anything you would be avoiding elsewhere. What's more, it doesn't taste as good.
The fixed-price menu (two courses and coffee, £8.95; three, £10.95) is the worst offender on this score. I had a starter of seafood drenched in a buttery cream sauce, tasting predominantly of smoked haddock for some reason, drowning the dill it was supposed to be flavoured with. The navar- in of lamb I had to follow was not much better. Without potatoes or onions, the sauce was thick, aggressively tomatoey and the lamb without any detectable flavour. Other choices, such as quenelles of salmon with a chive cream sauce or paupiettes of veal stuffed with stilton did not seem preferable. But the chief crime, if we're thinking of food for the health-conscious, was the treatment the vegetables got. I don't care how organic the butter is, broccoli swimming in half a pound of it isn't going to do anyone any good.
The a la carte menu is a bit better, but still more or less everything comes with a sauce. You can stay reasonably safe, though, with the starters. The spinach, mushroom, bacon and parmesan salad is just this side of all right. Main courses are not cheap, mostly above £7, but at the lower end, at £6.25, there is a not bad stir-fried fillet of pork with calabrese in a ginger, honey and soy sauce. The idea, though not original, is better than its execution. You do end up with a rather gungy, over- enthusiastically spiced mess. Despite the would-be innovativeness of Mr Brabbins his is a cliched menu: steamed scallops and prawns in leek and Noilly Prat sauce, breast of wild duck with grapes and armag- nac, rosettes of venison with green pepper- corns and brandy and so on.
The pudding trolley is not cheering lurid mousses and waxy tarts. But the cheeseboard, despite supposedly consisting of English farmhouse cheeses and having no cheddar and being mostly from France, is good. Wine prices are normal to expen- sive: there are quite a few bottles, though, under £7, an adequate house wine for £4.50 and if you feel brave there's always their organic wine. With wine, you would end up paying not much under £18 a head here, which is a ridiculous price consider- ing the standard of cooking and service, which was friendly but inefficient. I still look forward to finding a restaurant which is a pleasure to go to without being a health risk.
Nigella Lawson
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