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SOMEONE WHO is now an eminent critic once told me that he realised he had to give up reviewing batches of fiction, in those earlier, less illustrious days, when he felt himself starting a paragraph: 'Another book in which doorknobs feature . . . '
Now that eating is fashionable and every shiny-jacketed novelist wants to prove her trendy, in-the-know credentials, the novice reviewer would not have to go to such des- perate lengths to find a link: it's food. Not a schlock novel is without at least one scene in what the Americans call a restaurant of destination. And they all eat from the same menu: 'hot crusty ciabatta' followed by hilarious and preposterous confections in which ingredients collide, dragging in their wake entire and disparate continents.
I thought these were just made up, a fig- ment of the word-processer-induced imagi- nation. Then I went to Wild World. East and West, Japan, Milan, Americas North and South, nursery Britain and the Lebanon: Wild World resounds with culi- nary echoes of all these places, and often not just in one menu but on one plate. I knew that the chef, Mark Brdadbent, favoured a style of cooking that sometimes goes by the name Modem British Eclectic. His globalism is indeed meant to be the point of the place.
One of the reasons I hadn't visited the restaurant earlier is that I had thought it was called, in reference to the culinary inclusiveness, Wide World, and had spent some time unsuccessfully trying to per- suade directory enquiries to get me the telephone number. Everyone has been telling me how marvellous it is ever since it opened about eight weeks ago — which is perhaps unfortunate. If expectations are too high, disappointment is inevitable. 'Much better than the Brackenbury' is what everyone's been saying to me. As it hap- pened, I had lunch at the Brackenbury, where Mark Broadbent worked for a while, the same day that I had dinner at Wild World, and it just ain't true. Wild World isn't bad, but the delicacy of palate, the simple and direct rightness of the food on the plate and unshowy boldness that are distinctive of the cooking at the Bracken- bury are nowhere near matched at Wild World. They are both in the same London postal district; I can't see any other point of comparison.
One of the pities about Wild World is that it occupies ground and basement floors and has given over the ground floor entirely to greeting the customer, and so the restaurant is in the basement. It is utterly beautiful, all of this, with rapturous colours, Turkish blue and raw coral stream- ing across walls, and a peachy light gleam- ing from a parchment ceiling, but a base- ment is a basement. Another thing working against it, and the customer, is that music is played very loudly, and I'm with P.D. James on this one.
The menu positively vibrates with buzz words. There's toasted baby scallops, salted almonds, piquillo peppers and lemon oil (Cal Ital in the kitchen of Frida Kahlo), scattered crab sushi (winsomely poetic Japanese), serrano ham, baked vine toma- toes, rocket and olives (imaginative Iberian as featured in the pages of the Sainsbury's Magazine) and so on. The baby scallops, when they came, took me by surprise. I had expected something fashionably simple and left alone, and instead a creation rather like something Marguerite Patten might have devised arrived. The sweet-fleshed scallops were topped with a, frankly, greasy, crum- ble of nut and pepper. But pappardelle with apes and sage were wonderful. The pasta was thick and eggy and more than equal to the creamy, manila-coloured sauce in which were fatly dotted the fresh and meaty, divinely odoriferous mushrooms.
I stuck to starters, but a main course of rib-eye steak with horseradish mash — it's always styled 'mash' these days — and red wine shallot sauce satisfied, if not gratified, the person who ordered it. A rice pudding managed somehow to be both overcooked and undercooked at the same time. Straw- berry fool was fine, though I managed to leave some of it. The Shiraz at ill seemed a bargain until we tasted it.
Wild World is not as duff a place as my rather grumpy review might seem to sug- gest, but the gulf between its obvious aspi- rations and its achievements are too gaping to ignore. Maybe it was an off night, maybe everyone had talked it up too much. I don't know. Certainly, I am isolated in my under- whelmment. Still: service is charming and you do go out whistling the scenery.
Wild World, 264 King Street, London W6; tel: 081-748 0333.
Nigella Lawson
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