Borough Plates

Borough Plates

When I first moved to London, millennia ago, I was but a brisk walk from Borough Market.  It was one of the good sort of places that was trying to recreate the French and Italian food markets that so punctuated my youth. Here were fattened tomatoes, sunset-hued and jolly-cheeked.  Monstrously expensive, granted, but it was fun to wander around and think that one day I would know I had made it in London when I lived in a sweet little Georgian house and was able to shop at Borough Market regularly, nay, weekly, without feeling the pinch. Ha ha! What halcyon dreams have turned to ashes.

In those days, whilst working at Shakespeare’s Globe (that is the official name, I am not trying to differentiate it from a snow globe, say), we would go every Friday and scarf a Brindisa chorizo sandwich, or a hog roast baguette, whilst laughing at the tourists and all the ugly, gape-mouthed fish.  Sometimes we would ferret our way into the Market Porter for a surreptitious G&T and more often than not would come back to the office with a Konditor and Cook brownie.  Those were simpler times.

I mean, we all know that this is an ersatz market, much as the Globe is an ersatz theatre.  It is a sanitised, chi chi version for middle class people who like to cycle on upright bikes with a large bunch of radishes and a sourdough loaf protruding from their shiny wicker baskets. Well-meaning, earnest people who deserve a bit of downtime at the weekends and if that involves chutney tasting and cupcakes who are we to disapprove?  Real markets have evil-looking men chopping up bits of pig amidst a fast and furious babbling haggle system.  Real markets have congealing globs of blood on sawdust and old women with faces like prunes and they have bright blue plastic bags. People with shiny baskets seeking out shiny cherries might look aghast.

So, to Borough Plates, which, at this juncture I would urge you to go to but for the fact that it is a pop-up and has very nearly popped down (it took me rather longer than anticipated to write this).  You have a few weeks though so hurry, hurry! The restaurant is on the corner of Winchester Street, where the eponymous Geese once flocked, a ground floor room decked out in hessian-covered benches and wooden tables and low candlelight. The concept is super simple – creating dishes only from ingredients sold in the market. It seems strange that the market, who own the venture, had not thought of something so obvious before, even though many of the restaurants in the vicinity proudly use the local stallholders as suppliers. 

I took a chef, because I did not have time to waste with namby pamby guests and be all polite when they say ‘I don’t eat any fish or dairy or wheat or eggs or lamb or onion or garlic or tomatoes or brassica but I will eat anything else!’  I love my friends dearly but I do seem to have amassed more than my fair share of fuss pots. Nor did I want an eeny meeny weeny creature who has an open mind but a closed mouth, who takes simpering nibbles of this and that and declares herself quite replete, thank you! after a spear of white asparagus, a spoonful of sea urchin and a few measured sips of a negroni.  OR the sort of companion who cannot, will not, get on board with shared plates and unblinkingly orders a ‘starter’ and ‘main’ and hogs them both with nary a share. As a caveat I would add that SOME of my friends are true culinary adventurers and pioneers and THEY are not fusspots.  Just the others.  I have wasted many good meals weeping over the forsaken burrata, or the baby octopus winking at me salaciously, whilst they go all goo goo eyed over garlic bread and bollocks like that.  Still, we cannot all be the same.  I am sure said fusspots roll their eyes at my inability to play the piano, muster an interest in football or make any concerted effort to tame my hair and yet we remain fast friends.  Or maybe they just like me because I take them out for meals.  One friend (a non-fuss pot) says that when I invite him out he just shuts up and does as he is told and we get on famously.

I had high hopes; I think one should even if those hopes are dashed like a kitten’s skull on a rock.  One should always have high hopes in life even if they are continuously dashed (see Everlasting Romantic Love, Motherhood, Home Ownership, Getting Front Seat On the DLR) because otherwise one becomes the sort of person who won’t share sharing plates or who suddenly develops a pesky cocaine addiction and ends up staring at themselves in the mirror at 4am, pawing at their face silently and Munch-like at the horror of it all.  As Nina Simone would say, I ain’t got no home, ain’t got no money but I do have all the other parts belonging to a woman and I have hope, especially when it comes to food.

So, sack cloth and hessian and large communal tables so that you could accidentally sneak a bit of your neighbour’s dinner.  Which I almost did when I noticed that the couple next to us had not touched their squid.  I was horrified by the notion.  Because said squid was gorgeous, with a polenta crumb that gave a nice bite and little cubes of chorizo that bled into a corn cream.  It was an unusual but delicious combination, the sweetcorn living up to its name and a blousy foil to the texture of the other ingredients.

The menu is a litany of producers – Turnips, Elsey & Bent, Spice Mountain, Northfield Farm and the sniggerish Ted’s Veg. There was mutton dressed as mutton, braised in a stew with purple sprouting broccoli and a trick of light tempura anchovies that gave their own umami smack to the dish. There was a beautifully tender beef (although a mite under-seasoned, perhaps) with truffled aïoli and cress.  We especially loved a simple dish of charred cabbage with miso and sriracha mayonnaise and a crunchy scattering of shallots and hazelnuts.  Each ingredient earning its place, unlike my prose where the words just jostle and barge in and I have to let them be.

Blood pudding with bacon jam, pickled mushrooms, poached egg and lardo was a great surprise; I suppose a sort of poshed-up, pimped-up English Breakfast if you think about it too hard, but one that is far too sophisticated to be bolted down by a trucker on the M6.  I hate blood pudding as a rule, because it is basically just one big scab (bilious!) but this was rather nice.  Bravo, Borough Plates.

We eschewed cheese somewhat mournfully but the glorious pudding of chocolate, hazelnut and miso caramel made us forget our dairy-yearnings instantly.  A globe of chocolate filled with nutty ganache and surrounded by crumbs and sauces and undoubted black magic  It was like going to the moon. Chef is not a pudding lover per se but I had to smack him over the hand with my spoon to ensure he did not eat the whole thing in one.

And finally, I was told recently that I do not write enough about wine, though it is evident that I drink enough of it.  So – the £28 bottle of Muscadet was as light and elegant as a corps de ballet twinklet, and there was not a hint of dying sheep or blasted chalk.  The high notes of pear and elderflower were like a lark ascending.  Sounds good doesn’t it?  I mean, in hindsight we probably should have chosen a red wine, given the food we ate, but hey ho.  It was a perfectly nice wine.

Do go if you can, this is a proper little star that deserves a longer run as a leading lady – bookings@cuisson.co.uk