Jewish food with Six appeal

This review was first published in October 2000

Jewish food and a pleasurable experience aren't often mentioned in the same breath. The laws governing the preparation of kosher food, originally designed to ensure the health of an ancient nomadic tribe, have resulted in dull, heavy food - no pork, no seafood, no mixing of milk and meat.

The mainstays of the old-style Jewish restaurants have done little to make inroads into people's perceptions: stodgy potato latkes, horrid gluey lokshen pudding and the dreaded gefilte fish, leaving only salt beef to offer a glimmer of redemption.

But a new restaurant just north of Oxford Street intends to change all that. Six-13 - named because of the 613 mitzvahs, or Jewish rules for living - offers the intriguing possibility of modern Jewish fusion food. (Now I really have heard it all.) Its kitchen, despite being run by gentile Steve Collins, formerly of Quaglino's and Circus, adheres to stringent rules. However, he doesn't have separate meat and milk kitchens for the simple reason that there are no dairy products used in the cooking. As someone whose arteries are furred from daily doses of butter, cream and stinky cheeses, I find this inconceivable.

But I didn't find this out until after our meal and hadn't noticed. Entering Six-13 is vaguely surreal, like being transplanted into a Woody Allen film set in New York's garment district. The solemn façade and heavy doors lead into a strikingly simple, art-deco-ish room heaving with people: men sporting yarmulkes, the little Jewish skull-cap; trendies; businessmen; matriarchs; sage-looking old coves; and children.

The menu initially appears familiar: there are risottos and spiced noodles; you'll see words such as piperade and confit bandied about. Each section offers a couple of utterly traditional choices. My Jewish companion said it was full of things 'that Jews like a lot', such as Dover sole.

Obviously, we had to have chicken soup with matzo balls - Jewish Penicillin'. This was a real test of the kitchen's ability: richly flavoured consommé is rare. It was excellent, prop-erly concentrated yet limpid, the matzo balls given a modern twist with fresh herbs. Tuna served fashionably rare with wasabi, coriander and pickled vegetables was also splendid, but gorgeously meaty and garlicky field mushrooms were let down by their impenetrable bed of concrete toast.

Salt beef - it had to be: a series of ripely pink, yielding and unfatty slabs; fabulously gungey dumplings with an astringent stab of horseradish. It came with desperately dull mash (I now realise this was because it lacked lashings of butter and cream). Bream with hummus and blobs of a coriander pesto wasn't popular with its recipient, the hummus claggy and the coriander too strident.

The quality of puddings is astonishing, given that no dairy is allowed. Rice pudding was lent a sweetly sticky creaminess with coconut milk and even the clotted spaghetti horror that's lokshen pudding was given a new lease of life with fresh berries.

It probably won't surprise you to find out that, with kosher wine, we spent about £50 a head - this kind of culinary chutzpah's never going to come cheap. But the last word goes to my date (and he should know): 'Kosher food's just never going to be as nice as normal food.'

Six-13
19 Wigmore Street, W1U 1PH