Chapter One

Lucky Locksbottom! There's a phrase we could never have expected to utter at one time, but the truth is that this is one of outer London's premier addresses for finger-on-the-pulse fine dining in the immaculate contemporary idiom. A Tudor house that was once a watering-hole for coaches on the capital-coast run, it has been a restaurant of one sort or another for the past century, but scarcely can it ever have looked so chic (walls blocked in cheery cherry-red, against an otherwise monochrome palette), or offered such distinguished cooking. For make no mistake, Andrew McLeish, a protégé of the great Nico Ladenis in his pomp, would put wherever he was cooking on the map. The early years with Nico bequeathed a strong appreciation of classical technique, but he has absorbed that seamlessly into the British modernism of the present day, with its investigative approach to construction and determination to surprise. A meal might start then with an offering of braised Kentish snails teamed with poached cod cheeks and smoked potato purée in bourguignon sauce to set the compass-needle spinning. You may be agnostic about foams, but if they taste of something sharp and to-the-point, like the horseradish potion that anoints an oxtail raviolo with cavolo nero, it's hard not to be won over. Main courses may offer one of those portfolios of meat variations, perhaps the rump, cheek and sweetbread of veal with potato gratin and spinach, or pancetta-wrapped loin of rabbit with a little cottage pie alongside puréed black pudding, while fish comes in for the most adventurous treatments. Loch Duart salmon is roasted and dressed with rose-petal harissa, along with braised chick peas, aubergine purée and a shallot tart. As impressive as the obvious imagination these dishes exhibit is the profundity and apposition of flavours conjured out of them. Wild combinations and thrilling textures are on offer at dessert too, with peanut parfait, raspberry sorbet and peanut brittle, or dark chocolate and praline mousse, Baileys ice cream and frangelico jelly, to ponder. The three-course Menu du Jour is a steal, and simpler dishes, including charcoal-grilled steaks, chicken and burgers, are available on a brasserie menu.