Hereford Road, bargain alert!

Imagine you are setting out to find a restaurant that is quiet at lunch time, (so that you can get a table at short notice); where they cook really well and serve beguiling, deceptively simple, ingredient led dishes. Add in comfortable service and a softly priced drinks list. You have arrived at Hereford Road where the set lunch is the bargain of the age - two courses £13 or three courses £15.50. And if those prices seem to rich for your blood (ie if you lunch at McDonald's or KFC) there is the Express Lunch at £9.50: roast quail, watercress and aioli + glass of Pegões Tinto 2009 + coffee.

Setting aside the greedy man’s  rather unkind thought that the quail is a relatively small and delicate bird, it is hard to think of a better lunch for the money. In a few short years Hereford Road has taken its place in the forefront of British cooking. The influences from St John are still present but they are less in your face. This place is all about perfecting simple food. The dishes are all outrageously right. The lack of artifice and folderols mean that this is the food I most like to eat.

On September 1^st you could have chosen a crisp pork, dandelion and mustard salad to start – meaty “super scratchings”, a perfectly balanced salad with capers and cornichons the dressing mustardy and coating the leaves.  Followed by onglet and chips with aioli. Stunning steak, brown and savoury outside with crunchy bits, tender and pink within. What a difference it makes when meat is cooked accurately and then rested. The chips, I would guess cooked two or three times, are the right size; the right degree of crispness; properly fluffy inside; golden  brown; and taste great. Why is a great chip such a rare beast? The aioli is good, not harsh… enough, rather than too much, garlic.  A buttermilk pudding and raspberries comes with small crisp biscuits and is a wobbly, lemony, vanillary delight.

Then the bill comes - £15.50!  Let’s go over that again – the set lunch offers a choice of three starters, three mains and three puds. You would have fared equally well with the beetroot, sorrel and boiled egg to start and the grilled mackerel, cucumber, kohlrabi and radishes for main with the Cashel Blue cheese bringing up the rear.

The kitchen here reels off dishes that are just up my street:  smoked eel and horseradish; lamb’s sweetbreads, runner beans and mint; deep fried calf’s brains and tartare sauce; pot roast duck and fennel; brill, roast cauliflower and capers; devilled lamb’s kidneys, fried potatoes and watercress; wood pigeon, lentils and girolles – bear in mind that even à la Carte the starters only cost between £5.80 and £7.50 while the mains sprawl from £10 to £15. That’s cheap.

The wine lit here is unaggressively priced, there’s a bottle of cider or Meantime IPA for those who fancy one. But I digress, the set lunch at Hereford Road is an amazing bargain very good food. Dishes that have character but are not over-presented. Cheap. Fantastic.

Hereford Road, 3 Hereford Road, London W2 (020 7727 1144  www.herefordroad.org