New look for Foxtrot Oscar

This review was first published in September 2000

Foxtrot Oscar on Royal Hospital Road is an institution: a greasy spoon for aristos, a Rover's Return for posh people. It has the sort of success that you can neither deconstruct nor replicate. It is so much more than the sum of its parts: the d?cor is perhaps best described as 'student digs', the food is unremarkable. And yet over the 20 years since it opened, it has enjoyed a success and established a following that only somewhere like Le Caprice can rival.

And just as Le Caprice was brought to the peak of success by Jeremy King and Chris Corbin, so Foxtrot's unique - how should one describe it? - 'charm' has been created by a great restaurant partnership: Rex Leyland, an excitable bearded man with a taste for exotic Japanese automobilia, and Michael Proudlock, a man often cited in Nigel Dempster's column.

These two are the Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kid of the restaurant scene, charming locals who have created a profitable business with almost complete disregard for such mundane concerns as gastronomy. And just as King and Corbin expanded their business from The Ivy to include J Sheekey, so the Foxtrot boys have expanded theirs. Their second venture, Foxtrot Oscar, was in a basement in EC3. Stairs lead down to a disused Tube station that boasts the trademark 'every expense spared' approach to d?cor. The latest is a restaurant in Battersea.

It was with a shock that I arrived at Foxtrot Battersea. It is different to the others: it looks like a real restaurant. There are nice hardwood floors, smart oversized plant pots that have a touch of the Philippe Starck about them, a pleasant fireplace for winter, high-temperature outside burners to stop people dying of hypothermia in summer and a cocktail bar that, if not quite designed by David Collins, is definitely several cuts above other Foxtrots.

I saw Rex Leyland skulking at the bar with a pretty young blonde, who was actually my date for the evening, and immediately accused him of having sold out on the Foxtrot philosophy. I also pointed out that many of the key customers of Foxtrot are no longer in their first, second or even third flush of youth and that this brave new look might actually frighten some of them to death - literally.

He then informed me that far from being upset by this new incarnation, many Foxtrot followers had become backers of this brave new departure - including television's Brian Turner, the older person's Ainsley Harriott. That made me feel much better; at least neither Proudlock nor Leyland had used their own money. This was not to say that they did not enjoy spending someone else's.

As Rex gave me a GT (guided tour, not gin & tonic) he pointed airily to the back wall of the upstairs dining-room and said that he was about to install a banquette to 'cosy it up a bit'. Nor was this any old banquette, but one covered in Connolly hide. Apparently, Proudlock had taken great pleasure in choosing the hides in which this epic piece of furniture was about to be covered. Forgive me if I'm going overboard describing the setting; it is a perfectly pleasant, albeit ordinary Battersea restaurant, in a modern sub-Chelsea-Harbour-style residential complex. But I'd like to convey the sense that this is a considerable departure from the Foxtrot norm.

Even my date was stunned by the appearance of the place. She is a veteran of the Foxtrot experience, having worked as a waitress and later returning to be a senior manager of the Chelsea establishment.

We ate surprisingly well. The asparagus was rather nice, my tuna salad with lentils the apotheosis of healthy eating, and my date chattered enthusiastically about the comforting properties of the vast shepherd's pie she devoured. We both then ate rather good puddings. The chocolate pecan pie with ice-cream was preposterously calorific, rich and concentrated. The banoffee pie was deemed equally miraculous.

The menu does not transport one to hitherto unimagined realms of gastronomic novelty and delight. Nevertheless, it does what it does in a quiet, unassuming and rather effective way. It is also rather cheap: wines, diet beverages, three courses all for under 50 quid for two.

If I lived in Riverside Wharf, Battersea Quay, Wandsworth Reach or whatever this anonymous riparian development is called - yes, the one bit of open space is called a 'plaza', and the top-floor flats are called 'penthouses' - I would not bother to cook; I would come here. Certainly, the other punters looked happy enough. Your average crowd of middle-aged, affluent South Londoners relaxing over an ice bucket of champagne before heading back to their penthouse apartments.