Grace Dent reviews Foley's: Clearly doing something right, but some things not much more captivating than a M&S lunch pot

Grace Dent longs for largesse at buzzing Foley’s
Counter culture: the best seats are possibly ones overlooking the basement kitchen
Grace Dent12 December 2017

Ambience: 3/5

Food: 3/5

The space between late summer and mid-December is the most wonderful time of the year for Grace & Flavour. Tons of new spots to try, all the summer openings starting to take root plus the chance to wear opaque tights, a frock with sleeves and leave the house after dark to eat supper like a grown-up. British restaurants make most sense in autumn when they’re buzzing, warm, nurturing and when the annoying clots in your party of four stop strong-arming you to eat on an outdoor terrace in clouds of wasps.

Autumn is made for sit-up counter eating. Spare your own home-heating bills; eat dinner six feet south of a smoker oven, warming your cockles on the nervous stress of a sous-chef. With this sort of stance in mind, I popped to Foley’s, recently opened on Foley Street in Fitzrovia. Foley’s is headed up by Mitz Vora who was sous-chef at The Palomar in Soho. If eating Middle Eastern-influenced food in flatteringly lit places playing music nicely intrusive enough to dance to is your thing, then you probably have a lot of time for The Palomar.

Menu-wise, Foley’s casts the net a lot wider, terming itself ‘modern-world’ cuisine and name-checking the Spice Trail, but still there’s many of The Palomar’s spores present. Yes, you can avail yourself of a proper table, but the best seats are possibly ones overlooking the basement kitchen amongst all the shouting, peeling, tonging and kitchen chat. Yes, there’s titivated aubergine, grilled cauliflower and lamb rump with dukkha on offer — so far so Berber-influenced — but also ceviche, sticky beef with daikon and cucumber som tam, and Korean BBQ chicken burnt ends.

Not that captivating: the food at Foley's is missing something

One residing difference with Foley’s is a confident amount of chilli heat seeping through several dishes, even the innocent-sounding affairs such as sweet-potato fritters on a saffron coconut curry or a grilled half aubergine with pomegranate, dates, chilli-lime yogurt and puffed quinoa. Even these would make a chicken korma fan snivel. The potato fritters, I should add, were nicely crisp, daintily light, and possibly a star of the show. The aubergine was squidgy, cake-like and not wholly a success but I have been spoiled for a lifetime by the actually life-enhancing roasted aubergine ‘Sharabik’ at The Barbary in Neals Yard. Let’s be honest: The Barbary is the quiet, trunk-hoisting, all-crushing elephant in the room for everyone in chef’s whites hoping to impress a London audience with Middle Eastern cooking. Even at its sister restaurant The Palomar nowadays. Because there are very few misses or even ‘I’m-not-100-per-cent in-love’ moments on The Barbary’s menu.

The super greens salad at Foley’s, on the other hand, wasn’t much more captivating than an M&S lunch pot. The chicken burnt ends were fatty lumps with no discernable sear, blackening or texture. Inoffensive albeit wobbly. The grilled cauliflower is delicious, rich with cumin and littered with smoked peanuts, but a plate of lamb with hummus was oddly something or nothing.

There is a lack of largesse in the food here. There isn’t the smearing, oozing, glistening and wiping-up with breads one might expect from this genre. Still, stuff me, Foley’s is a hit with its clientele. They’re clearly doing something right. The kitchen bar was jammed with earnest chin-stroking foodie types and I hear only good things about group outings to the basement alcoves. Mac & Wild, across the way, is seemingly doing nicely as well with the two restaurants firing each other’s overfill in opposite directions. Brexit schmexit, I shall believe the financial meltdown has truly taken grip when London millennials stop paying £8 for a quarter of a cauliflower.

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1/128

Foley's

1 Aubergine £8

1 Cauliflower £6.50

1 Market salad £8

1 Sweet potato fritters £6

1 Charcoal grilled chicken £6

1 Sticky beef £9

1 Lamb rump £12

1 Negroni £9

1 Perrier-Jouët Brut NV £12

2 Glasses of Malbec £18

Total £94.50

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