In which I wander down to Wandsworth
And have a Sunday lunch at Chez Bruce
I can’t remember the first time I ate in Chez Bruce but it can’t have been very long after Bruce Poole, late of Bibendum under Simon Hopkinson, opened it in 1995. I remember telling the bemused sommelier about a great new English sparkling wine that I had discovered: Nyetimber Classic Cuvée 1993. It was virtually unknown then.
Nor can I remember quite what drew me to Wandsworth to eat there. There were a lot fewer interesting restaurants in London in those days and I suppose people were talking about it. I recall taking the tube to Clapham North and having a pretty stiff walk from there to Bellevue Road on Wandsworth Common.
These days I know that it’s closer to Balham (“Bal-Ham, gateway to the south! “ in Peter Seller’s words) but by far the easiest way to get there is by the 319 bus from Sloane Square (just outside Peter Jones, the John Lewis store that is so superior it even has its own name).
My latest visit was on a warm and sunny Sunday to meet friends for lunch, publisher Anne Dolamore of Grub Street and her husband John. The food is hard to define. There are French flourishes but no strong accent, an emphasis on sound raw materials, many of them inexpensive but treated with great care and precision. I’d say Chez Bruce is, in way ways, the epitome of “modern British”. I mean, there’s nothing French about Bakewell tart, is there?
Like all Michelin starred restaurants, Chez Bruce is not cheap. Lunch is £67.50 for three courses while wines start very reasonably at £8.50 a glass (£25 a bottle) for a decent Montepulciano d’Abruzzo and £9.50 (£28 a bottle) for a very pleasant Austrian Grüner Veltliner. In the London context, albeit a bit out of town proper, Chez Bruce is very reasonable.
We had a lovely, rather private and bright window table with crisp napery and sparkling stemware. Things are done properly here, and the menu read enticingly.
I mean, few will not be drawn by this description: Miso-glazed aubergine with ginger, puffed rice, sesame, shiso and soy? Yes, it sounds rather fabulous, but it looked even better. And, boy, it was simply fabulous to eat. A thick middle slice of aubergine – lengthways – was indeed miso-glazed and thoroughly marinated, but the really striking thing was how almost ethereally tender it was. This gossamer-like platform was thoroughly flecked, Jackson Pollock style, with the purple of red shiso leaves, the crimson of chilli, the green of spring onion, the cream of sesame seeds. And it was so much more than the sum of its parts. It was the dish of the meal and a very hard act to follow (so good, indeed, that the chef, Matt Christmas, has to keep it as a more or less permanent fixture on the menu).
Our other starter – which may have seemed a little out of place in early Summer – was an elegant mushroom tart, the earthiness of which was framed nicely by the combination of caramel creaminess and acidic tang of Old Groendal cheese from Belgium. Oh and buttery crumbliness, the whole thing a kind of savoury celebration.
The Asian theme continued into one of the mains: Pork cheek braised in soya sauce with sticky trotter, fillet, bak choi, ginger and chilli. This was a multi-textured dish: soft meat, crisp strips of crackling, al dente bak choi but in flavour the essential pigginess was somewhat lost somewhere in the soya sauce braising liquid. However, it was far from a hardship to eat.
Less successful was the distinctly Summery Grilled asparagus with red pepper & feta pastille, butter bean hummus, coriander, lemon and almonds. There was simply too much going on here and it was hard to figure out how the coriander was going to add to the gaiety of the affair. Far from unpleasant, but somewhat confused and confusing.
Cornish hake, on the other hand, was superbly cooked and served with a warm tartare (of which we are seeing a lot of late) with little new potatoes and what I suppose must be the last of the leeks, plus a “prawn croustillant”. i.e. one wrapped in fairly transparent filo. This was a very successful composition, a harmonious and thoughtful affair.
Bakewell tart with griotte cherries and clotted cream was perhaps even better than that bald description implies, while a crème brullée was classic and flawless, no mucking about. The cheese selection, as always here, was in perfect condition and carefully chosen.
So, was it a perfect Sunday lunch? No, but it was pretty darn good. There is some exceptional cooking here, service is very good and there’s a sense of occasion without undue formality. Oh, and the wine list is the kind of thing that you should study at length in advance.
All in all, Chez Bruce is as good as always and well worth hopping onto a 319.
Were it in Dublin, it almost certainly wouldn’t have a Michelin star but that’s a Michelin issue and implies no disrespect to Chez Bruce.
Chez Bruce
2 Bellevue Road
Wandsworth
London SW17 7EG
chezbruce.co.uk
Phone: 0208 672 0114