Grace Dent reviews Pharmacy 2: I was charmed by its balls and its continuing bizarreness

Grace Dent doses herself up at Damien Hirst’s Pharmacy 2
Grace Dent10 December 2017

Ambience: ☆☆
Food: ☆☆☆☆★

I do not yearn for a 1990s dining experience. I remember tagines served with bad attitude at Momo, scrabbling to get into Titanic and many patchy outings to Vietnamese cafés on a desolate Curtain Road. As well as curries at Rasa, moules at Belgo, endless crisps at the Firkin, and the occasional jaunt with someone’s company card to Mirabelle. We didn’t starve, patently, but London’s dining scene wasn’t fractionally as fun. We were pre-Nando’s. We were grateful for a Chicken Cottage.

And then there was Damien Hirst’s baby Pharmacy in Notting Hill, which for a short time was the coolest place in London, at a point when London had self-certified as the coolest place on Earth. We were so full of ourselves. Pharmacy burned bright and fast for a year or so in the late 1990s, then became naff, then fizzled on and on embarrassing itself for a few more years before euthanisation. Safe to say, no one was pining to see the return of Pharmacy.

But as Hirst has proven many times, just because something is nonsensical and uncalled for, it doesn’t rule out the result being beautiful or incredibly lucrative. None of us wanted the sheep in formaldehyde until he pickled the bloody thing, then suddenly it was all that we wanted. We might not have wanted Pharmacy 2, rebirthed in an art gallery down a back street in Vauxhall, but eat those words because now it’s booked out for weeks.

Because, in fact, walking into all-new Pharmacy 2, it’s difficult not to be charmed again by its balls and its continuing bizarreness. Pill boxes and medical apparatus stack up in cabinets and the wallpaper is printed with over-the-counter drug descriptions. Stark clinical surfaces contrast with enormous Hirst butterfly pieces.

Imaginative but comforting: Mark Hix's menu is bewitching but not bewildering

The power of suggestion is strong: I’d have happily skipped starters and gone straight on to 50mg of Tramadol. Or maybe a perky little 10mg of Ritalin. Yet, sadly, none were on offer, so we had a carafe of Luberon Rosé and picked at warm ciabatta with romesco.

The menu — by Mark Hix — is my perfect sort of list. Imaginative but comforting. Bewitching not bewildering. There are starters of polenta with duck egg and truffle, hunan spiced pork broth and snacks of cuttlefish croquettes. There are mains of Launceston lamb pie and Swainson House duck curry with apple pakora. It’s a rare menu that would appeal to a foodie as well as your out-of-town grandmother. We shared a starter of almost preposterously fishy cod chitterlings on a bed of sea purslane and oily, outstanding guanciale by Hannan Meats.

Our other starter, falafel, wasn’t earth-shattering, but it was quickly vacuumed up. A plate of linguine with Portland crab and chilli was pretty much perfect: fresh pasta cooked with a bite, idiotically creamy, delicately crabby and with an assertive kick. A pretty, red dish of prawn Arak arrived with a side of distinctly perfumed wild garlic and fennel pilaf.

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I often think, while on Grace & Flavour missions, that it would save me so many hours behind a laptop if I could simply write: ‘We ate the lot, piggily, while chatting. Go!’ Or: ‘We picked at things while scowling. Avoid.’ Sadly my editor wants more bang for her buck. Suffice to say Pharmacy 2 would be the former. They do a jolly decent mini-version pineapple upside-down cake. So mini, in fact, we also ordered a daft but delicious absinthe jelly and a single scoop of honeycomb ice cream, which was extraordinary. I was sniffy about Pharmacy 2, but I’ve eaten those words. I need a repeat prescription.

Pharmacy 2

2 carafes Luberon Rosé £36

1 Cod chitterlings £14.75

1 Falafel salad £8.50

1 Crab linguine £18.75

1 Arak prawn £15.50

1 Pineapple upside-down cake £4

1 Absinthe jelly £4

1 Honeycomb ice cream £2

Total £103.50

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