Noble Rot Wine Bar & Restaurant: A far cry from Robin’s Nest

Fay Maschler finds head chef Paul Weaver, who worked for five years at The Sportsman in Whitstable, on fine form in his new Bloomsbury home
Join the Bloomsbury set: Noble Rot, in Lamb’s Conduit Street
Daniel Hambury/Stella Pictures
Fay Maschler7 December 2017

When I walk into Noble Rot in Bloomsbury my mind trips happily back to Robin’s Nest, that gloriously impolitic late Seventies TV sitcom about a bistro starring Richard O’Sullivan. I remember the one-armed Irish kitchen hand who, when requested to make egg on toast, asked: “How do you stop the egg dribbling into the bottom of the toaster?”

These nostalgia-inducing premises (well, for some anyway) since 1973 were Vats Wine Bar. New owners Mark Andrew and Dan Keeling, the chaps behind Noble Rot magazine, its wine dinners and as of last week the restaurant/wine bar, have had the good sense — and apparently the lack of wherewithal — not to make too many changes. A tongue and groovy bar area in the front is reserved for walk-ins. Beyond a chintz curtain is the restaurant where you may book and contemplate murals of pastoral idylls now overlaid with stylish wine posters.

Wine is the panacea that brought together Mark, head buyer at independent wine merchant Roberson, and Dan, who was once the MD of Island Records. Their decision in 2013 to launch a quarterly magazine was to galvanise an audience uninterested in bargain-basement supermarket buys but at the same time turned off by lofty vinous verbosity. They defined and positioned wine as a product as enjoyable, accessible and merrily exploitable as music, movies, cartoons, photographs, graphics, puns, travel and teases — basically, accentuating the gratification that can be found in all of the five senses.

Who better to consult on the food than genial Stephen Harris, chef/patron of The Sportsman in Whitstable? Theatre critic Kenneth Tynan wrote “I doubt if I could love anyone who did not wish to see Look Back in Anger”.

I feel that way about anyone not wanting to eat at The Sportsman. Paul Weaver, who has worked for five years at The Sportsman and also at St John Bread and Wine in Spitalfields, is Noble Rot’s head chef.

Surprisingly dense and sumptuous: slip sole with smoked butter
Daniel Hambury

The menu is short and mined with clues as to the chef’s heritage. Superb homemade soda bread and focaccia is grouped with sourdough from Hedone (the best) and served with home-churned butter. That emblem of fishy simplicity, slip sole — its skeleton the image for every cartoon of a cat polishing off a fish — is served at The Sportsman with seaweed butter, here with smoked butter. The flesh, easy to separate, is surprisingly dense and sumptuous, with the kick of red pepper just what it needs to avoid complacency.

Brandade is textbook emulsion of salt cod and olive oil but with the texture rough enough to sidestep any accusation of food processor purée. A sprinkling of crunch contrasts with the cool snap of the radishes served alongside it. Creamy ricotta provides a bed for charred Roscoff onions and toasted hazelnuts, definitely the dainty choice when set against pork, pigeon and pistachio terrine or duck hearts with Baby Gem and aioli.

Rock oyster Raveneau with additions of lemon, browned butter, apple vinegar and apple granita served on seaweed is created to bring to mind a sip of wine from the producer of the finest Chablis. It works well when the oysters are room temperature. One evening they are, one lunchtime (first lunch service) they are not. Chilliness from top to toe anaesthetises tastebuds.

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Hurry along to try the main course of turbot braised in oxidised 1998 Bâtard-Montrachet Grand Cru. There can’t be that many bottles left of the blighted great wine. Used in cooking, taint disappears and the intrinsic elegance survives to enrich the beurre blanc, which accompanies a tranche of a great fish.

Meat main courses of lacquered mallard with roasted pumpkin, hispi cabbage and what seems like bread sauce that has gone to heaven and rare roasted lamb rump with roast potatoes, kale and mint sauce are marred at the lunchtime service by being served tepid. Roasted quail with the cutest imaginable dice of roasted potatoes at an evening meal is warm and wonderful. At lunch we sat near the front window, at night near the dumb waiter in the restaurant. Possibly there is the explanation.

All in the serve: the Rock oyster Raveneau works well when the oysters are room temperature, but not if they are too cold
Daniel Hambury

Warm chocolate mousse is quivering debauchery, pear and almond tart with Greek yoghurt a classic slice. When I go back for the fourth time — I love Noble Rot and, furthermore, Lamb’s Conduit is one of my favourite streets in London — I may simply share with two others baked whole Vacherin (cheese) with new potatoes and a bottle of red from the list described by my wine consultant chum as a “taut, sleek supermodel of a list brimming with producers and domaines Mark and Dan have genuine affection for, winemakers they have met and vineyards they have visited”.

In the meantime, we benefit from the list by the glass priced between £4 and £23 (from the Coravin) for 125ml. Mas Coutelou “Vin des Amis” Languedoc 2014 at £7 is proof of the staunchness of this wine area and in its way as enjoyable as the Louis Carillon Puligny-Montrachet 1er Champ Canet 2009 at £23. Well, maybe not quite. Rieslings that wine buffs are carolling are well represented. I’m not sure that at Robin’s Nest there was anything other than house.

Mon-Sat, noon-11pm. Kitchen noon-3pm and 6pm-10pm. A restaurant meal for two with wine, about £110 including 12.5 per cent service.

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