gravy - A New Restaurant whose Stock is Rising

This review was contributed by Penny Gore.

The old faithfuls on Chiswick High Road have a new(-ish) kid on the block to contend with: Gravy has been open only a few weeks and seems to have attracted much attention, with reviews zipping smartly into several of the national broadsheets. With the demise of Mackintosh's, gone are the paper tablecloths and crayons; in comes a more streamlined design and modish colour-scheme (better not try scribbling on the walls here).

We booked at lunchtime for a table on Saturday night and were lucky to get in, though avoiding the 8 pm bottleneck seems a good tactic: at the deeply unfashionable hour of 7.30, we had room to settle in and look around before the rush. Service was friendly, and attentive, despite early reports to the contrary - a bottle of Chilean merlot appeared on the table with pleasing speed

Feeling we should give the menu a reasonable going-over, the two of us went for both a first and second, as the menu puts it.

A 'first' of peppered chicken-livers with warm mange-tout turned out to be intriguingly spicy (a fair bit of chili in there, I'd say), more than generous in terms of portion size, with the livers just pink, and exactly the right amount of crunchy salad-leaves and barely-cooked mange-tout to balance the meatiness.

 

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For 'seconds', the vegetarian choices sounded tempting: unless you're a die-hard carnivore they're well worth checking out. Nevertheless we ended up with fillet of Aberdeen Angus and lamb (good intentions, but....).

Both were cooked precisely as per instructions and utterly delicious, accompanied by potatoes (the beef) and a small mountain of parsnip mash (the lamb), with steamed vegetables as a side-dish.

High quality produce prepared plainly yet lovingly seems to be the hallmark of current 'Modern British' cooking, and on this showing Gravy's chef appears to know just what he/she is doing. One pudding (a chocolate freak's dream: dark-chocolate tart and white-chocolate ice-cream) and one coffee followed, and with a bottle of mineral water and service, the bill was £73.

Not cheap, certainly: Gravy is clearly aiming at those with a bit more cash to flash, but while it's not haute cuisine, neither is it a quick-bowl-of-pasta-and-Peroni place. I'd recommend it if you're willing to spend that bit more for very nice food well-cooked - now let's see how it settles in.

 

2nd July 2005