Falling just short of the mark

This review was published in September 2001

Mona, one of the leading characters in Armistead Maupin's perceptive Tales Of The City, came up with what she called Mona's Law, something like: You can have a hot lover, a hot job and a hot apartment, but you can't have all three at the same time. I think I'm starting to formulate a law of my own about London's restaurant openings: You can have fabulous surroundings or fabulous food but you'll never get both in the same establishment. And it's always going to cost a small fortune.

Nahm, Conrad Gallager, Foliage - fabulous food, indifferent or insipid rooms; Babylon, Jago, Hakkasan - stunning gaffs, forgettable food. In recent memory, only Chiswick's La Trompette offers great food, pleasant decor and reasonable prices.

Which brings me to Chamberlain's in the candy-cute Dickensian stage set that is Leadenhall Market. This is the new venture from one Les Steadman, whose life has been heretofore dedicated to all things piscine: since starting off as an eel-stand employee at Billingsgate Market, where his dad was a porter, he's built up a seafood business with an annual turnover of more than £12million. Now, at 60-odd, he's opened his first restaurant, totally self-financed and having the air of the culinary equivalent of vanity publishing.

'Look,' it seems to be saying. 'Look at what the poor old Billingsgate boy's pulled off, all you ponceyfied City suits.'

And he hasn't spared the pennies: it's extremely pretty, all twinkling glassware and leather club chairs; the upper room has dramatic long windows looking on to the decorative upper reaches of the market; there's a chilled - in both atmosphere and temperature terms - basement bar that serves a seductive selection of light seafood dishes in contrast to the more formal and, yes, stratospherically expensive (we paid £130-ish for two) menu upstairs.

In the gents' loos, where I was taken by the charming maitre d' in what's becoming something of an alarming pattern (is it something about the way I look? It's not like they know I'm writing a review), the chaps can wee against a wall of a lavish fish tank. So, of course, following the new Law, the food had to be something of a disappointment.

It's nothing to do with the quality of raw ingredients, which, as befitting a major supplier, are excellent (although I do wonder about billing Avruga, which is a perfectly splendid herring roe, as 'caviar'), it's just that the execution is a bit Station Hotel, rather like the fancily waistcoated and over-solicitous waiters. And like the beautifully sweet, fresh white crabmeat that came in a cylinder bound with mayo and perched on guacamole; we're talking overkill here - even before the slick of emerald, herbed oil or the blobs of red pepper Isupposethey'd-call-it-coulis.

Or the gorgeous, plum velvet tuna carpaccio that came with lozenges of the Avruga, barrels of avocado and a stickily overpowering slick of reduced balsamic. Then there was the lobster papardelle: boisterous, plump lobster pieces and good, al dente pasta bludgeoned by too much yellow pepper sauce and medicinal quantities of dill. And the disappointment of the evening: John Dory, whose regal qualities had been overthrown by overpanfrying in flour, balanced on clumpy cous cous and displaying no evidence of the much anticipated pink ginger in the buttery sauce.

Les, mate, you've got an attractive gaff here. Have a gentle word with your chef and it could be one of the exceptions that prove the Law.

Chamberlain's
Leadenhall Market, London, EC3V 1LR