Local eats: Escale

Last winter I went on a fattening frenzy in Istanbul. I ate rich. Changa, recognised as one of the best restaurants in the world, blew my mind, and with 2.5 million lira to the pound, I was able to return several times in 10 days. They mix up Asian and Italian influences with the extraordinarily diverse elements of Turkish cusine. With their brand of modern Turkish fusion, we're talking Turkish coffee ice cream made with buffalo milk and not a baklava in sight.

I also ate poor. The Turks have amazing street food and I managed to fit in three extra meals a day eaten on the hoof - but could not fit into my jeans on return. Fish sandwiches bought from boats on the shores of the Bosphorus or tasty grilled intestines bought by the spice bazaar in one hand and a large glass of freshly squeezed pomegranate juice in the other. Midye tava, deep-fried mussels on a stick with a garlicky sauce, were another favourite. I am, not a little, in love with Turkish food.

I was meant to review a family place, Restaurant 109, in Richmond this week, but it was closed because the owners had to go to a PTA meeting. Instead, I plumped for a Turkish place called Escale just over the road.

It's a good location, on a corner. Two sides of the room are entirely window so there is a warm evening light inside. The decor is typical - blond wood, white tablecloths, recessed lighting, some naïve paintings of fruit and vegetables. For a Monday it was busy, given the amount of competition on the restaurant-packed boulevard that is Kew Road.

I thought, as I was shown by a gentle-eyed waiter to my table, that I might have chanced upon something approaching the Changa end of Turkish cuisine, and in a small way I was right. The menu was a slightly moderated and modernised version of Turkish, but in an uninspiring way. There were the old favourites, fish and kebab, but rather than interpreting recipes, the chef just tidied them up, dosed down the spicing a bit, and presented them a little bit fancy. This was peasant food made slightly posh.

To start we had some meze. A tabbouleh was its plainest version of parsley, cracked wheat and lemon with a bit of onion and tomato. Midye tava, those fried mussels I so love, were moist but the frying was not quite right, so the batter was shiny instead of dry. The sauce had a sickly mayonnaise quality I do not remember from roadside stalls. Fried squid with walnut sauce were, again, a good consistency but a little too glossy and the walnut sauce disappointingly bland. Zeytin mashli bakla - broad beans with dill, garlic, yoghurt and olive oil - had the right thick, high-fat yoghurt and some small sweet beans. It was the best part of the quartet.

The mains showed a good cross-section of fish and fowl, from famous kofte and shish dishes, to a dandier stroganoff. They called traditional Turkish dishes by the names of their often more simply cooked Greek sister dishes (kleftiko and mousakka) which displayed the sort of admirable grown-up lack of nationalistic pride which will probably make Cyprus a lot happier one day.

Prada Elaine, who loves a kebab (though usually in more glittery Lebanese establishments), chose a beykoz kebab, some tender cooked lamb wrapped in domineering aubergine slices with a rich tomato sauce. She said it was heavy. I had my personal favourite, iskender kebab, which is usually a heavy baked mix of grilled meat, pita and yoghurt with tomato sauce, but the modernising of the dish did nothing for it. The bread, as opposed to pita, had not fully absorbed all the meaty juices, which, surely is the point of this dish.

I guess the fanned napkins might have given it away - the pretensions were entirely superficial. Still, their Turkish coffee was rich and tasty, the staff were kind, efficient and quiet. I suspect if I weren't such a Turkish nut I would have been more satisfied. As I left, a strong brown South African hand grabbed my arm - its owner had watched my note taking. 'I love this place above all others in this street, the sea bass is my favourite, the ingredients are always fresh. How could you fail to love it?' A passive 'like' is the strongest ardour I could muster.

Escale
94 Kew Road, TW9 2PQ