Grace Dent reviews Bird of Smithfield

Summer is here, apparently. When it feels willing. Time for a long-overdue dinner with my friend John Niven, writer of Kill Your Friends, that painfully accurate snapshot of music industry ass-hats at play.

As we were both on deadlines we swore to make this a relatively abstemious evening of chat, some wine, set to be back behind our respective laptops by 7am the next morning; not caught up in an ‘I love London’ vibe, only to be spotted in a Soho drinking den at 3am bearing the vin rouge ‘circle of shame’ on our mouths. As it transpired, we couldn’t have let our hair down at Bird of Smithfield even if we’d wanted to. Bird — owned by Alan Bird, formerly of The Ivy — is set out over five floors of an old Georgian townhouse. It’s the sort of all-purpose London venture I get very excited about, boasting a ground-floor bar-lounge, an elegant restaurant, a private dining room, a cocktail den and a roof terrace overlooking Smithfield Market. The sort of place one can potentially enjoy an evening out on several levels, with one’s bar bill discreetly, but wickedly, following you from floor to floor. Or, in my case, a place never to go back to again.

I arrived to find John in the downstairs bar attempting to extract a solitary glass of red wine from one of the many staff members who were deep in faff. We decided to head to the first-floor restaurant instead. There was no welcome on the door; in fact, when a waitress eventually asked what we wanted, it quickly transpired that our arrival was a complete surprise. We stood in the doorway, staff moving us around as they brought in kitchen supplies, watching a table being hastily mopped. At this point my mood was still remarkably affable. I was even making pleasant noises about the tasteful selection of artwork, and didn’t complain when we sat for a further 25 minutes waiting to be brought wine. The service was, by no slender meaning of the word, atrocious. It was a masterclass in things that should never happen during a £140 dinner.

We begged each tiny step of the meal: to place orders, for forks to consume it with, through to viewing the dessert menu. I ordered treacle-cured salmon with kohlrabi and fennel. It sounded delicious; it transpired to be a rather bland, measly plate featuring around 30 coils of fish festooned on raw veg. The poached asparagus was presented with the exact finesse I’d pull off serving boiled veg on a plate. By this point we had begun to discuss how restaurants are, when all is said and done, all smoke and mirrors, and how if our welcome had been warm and we’d been cosseted and schmoozed, then we’d probably have given the food a larger leeway. I ordered Alan’s shepherd’s pie and a side of beans with chilli. Affable yet unremarkable. We clarified with the waitress that the steak tartare could be ordered as a main portion and the confit egg would arrive separately. Nevertheless, the dish arrived slightly bigger than a starter size with the egg pre-mushed through the meat. The blood orange cheesecake was a sturdy ginger biscuit base with a solid-set orange jelly atop. Back it went. When I’m sharing with friends, I think it’s a strong sign of a restaurant failing when food is sent back. At a content, happy table, people are gannets, despite themselves.

Our table was booked for 9.15pm; pudding arrived at around 11.30pm. I attempted to pay the bill, but had now become invisible. Eventually, I was the only person left sitting alone. I approached the bar and said, ‘I want the bill.’ ‘Yes,’ the waitress nodded, in an ‘all in good time’ manner. When it was brought she narrowed her eyes and checked that I hadn’t got any open bar bills anywhere else. ‘No,’ I said. ‘Just checking,’ she said in the manner of a Customs officer. At this point I wanted to snap, ‘Look, would you like me to pay some of them so we can all go home?’ I handed over the money and exited through the bar downstairs, which had bin bags full of bottles on the floor and the music turned up loudly to entertain the cleaners. When this place pulls its finger out and opens properly, it might be good.