TOM PARKER BOWLES reviews Town: ‘Five stars – it is an instant London classic'
I've long admired Parle's cooking, at Sardine, Dock Kitchen and Joy. He's one of those rare chefs who can mix dishes from disparate cuisines without ever compromising or dumbing down. At Town the menu feels essentially European with a few global flourishes – some homemade XO sauce here, a miso-flavoured dip there. The cooking is both simple and sophisticated; a chef and kitchen at the very top of their game.
We start with sage leaves, deep-fried and drizzled with chilli-infused honey, a dish that seems dull on paper but turns out to be crisp, chewy and rather addictive. His take on gildas, that classic Basque pintxo, replaces anchovy and olive with soused mackerel and shiso leaf. It works, managing to retain that essentially salty, umami allure.
Potato sourdough bread, light and freshly baked, arrives with a pot of pan-drippings gravy, complete with scraps of meat, that coats the lips with a lustre of sweet fat. You can never have enough gravy. Sea bass crudo is lithe, clean and impeccably fresh, bathed in an artfully acidic tomato water: a dish of exquisite poise and balance.
T-bone steak, lustily seasoned and magnificently meaty, comes from Wildfarmed, a farm with an admirably regenerative philosophy and one that translates into a very superior piece of beef. God, I love this place. The food, the service, the room, the cocktails, the seductively dim lighting…
In the interests of transparency, one of the backers, Jonathan Downey, is a friend. Which means I have to judge it all the more exactingly. Town certainly isn't cheap, but food of this quality rarely is. 'It's a bit off-grid,' says a well-informed industry insider at the next table. 'But this could make the wrong end of Drury Lane very cool indeed.' Town has only been open a couple of weeks, but feels like it's been here for ever. It is, in short, an instant London classic.
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