Grill left looking half-baked

This review was published in March 2002

No matter what you might think of Antony Worrall Thompson, his career in restaurants indicates a stout finger on the capital's culinary pulse. From the earliest days, when the man whom fellow 'celebrity' chef Gordon Ramsay describes as 'a squashed Bee Gee' stimulated the appetites of the jaded and thrill-seeking 1980s diner with Menage A Trois - serving only starters and puddings - AWT has had a keen radar for the zeitgeist.

Now, in the more cautious and comfort-seeking new millennium, he's done it again. The newly-opened and gruesomely punning Notting Grill, formerly his Wiz, is the perfect concept for our times.

Apparently we're abandoning the city centre mega-restaurants and patronising our locals; this is very much a neighbourhood joint. There's been a backlash against the 'too ponceyfied, mucked-about' style of catering; the menu at Notting Grill is short, focusing on steaks, mixed grill, roast chicken, sausages, a fish of the day - it couldn't be more back to basics.

Paranoia about the food we eat is rife; here Thompson offers meat with a family tree: pure breed Shorthorn, Welsh Black, Aberdeen Angus; his own rare breed Middle White pigs; veg comes from his own garden.

So far, so commendable. But is it any good? A bunch of well-heeled locals - the solid citizen kind, not the district's youthful groovers and hipsters - certainly seemed to think so. Perhaps it's the look that's pulling 'em in - with its ornate chairs, roughhewn tables, brick walls and soft furnishings, it's not what you'd call directional: affluent suburban wine bar is closer to the mark.

I, however, am not so sure. As an overall observation, the food tasted pretty good, it just wasn't very competently accomplished. That's not quite the contradiction in terms it sounds: my starter of reblochon en croute packed the punch of that most gutsy of French cheeses and came with a zingy homemade apple and ginger jelly, but was swamped by the greasiness of a pastry that had been baked at too low a temperature.

Bubble and squeak with poached egg tasted of good vegetables but was, again, far too oily. But breads - especially something that looked like a poppyseed-dusted baguette crust and tasted of chilli - olives and unpasteurised butter were all splendid.

My entrecòte was a great piece of meat, with that gorgeous slight furriness that comes from lengthy hanging, but hadn't been trimmed. I prefer my sirloin stripped in the New York style so that a slender, decorative bracket of fat remains - kind of the culinary equivalent of the Brazilian wax.

For me, thanks to its wodge of meat thickly striped with gristly fat, nearly half the steak was wasted. Its blue cheese sauce appeared to be Stilton - no doubt an organic, artisan example - which had been blasted in the microwave until it had separated into curds and oil, not an attractive proposition.

A fillet steak with Bèarnaise and hand-cut chips was excellent: perfectly cooked, marvellously velvety meat into which the knife just sank, great salty chips, luxurious sauce. But the champ bore a startling resemblance to the bubble and squeak.

It was at the pudding stage that the kitchen's mixed abilities were most highlighted (there was no sign of AWT on our visit): a chocolate brownie with chocolate ice cream had its recipient purring with pleasure, it was that sublime marriage between meringue-ey crispness and sinful squidge. But a crëme br°lèe was dreadful - too-burnt sugar topping, grey with too many vanilla seeds and completely liquid. It clearly hadn't spent long enough setting.