Not a bad catch afterall

This review was first published in September 2000

Catch first came to my attention when Fay Maschler slated the place. As far as I can remember, she came to eat dinner only to be told she'd have to give her table back at 10pm. Not since Hitler shot and poisoned himself at the same time, having given instructions that his body be doused in petrol and burnt afterwards, has there been a more committed attempt at suicide. It seemed as though Catch felt it needed nothing more than a really bad review from the most influential food and restaurant critic in London. It duly received one.

Ever since, I have been curious about the place. Was it run by some 21st-century Basil Fawlty who delighted in annoying restaurant critics? My curiosity was further sharpened when I saw pictures in Hello! - or was it OK!? - of celebs partying at Catch. Eventually I went with my wife and a cosmetics mogul friend. I had a nice evening. It was sufficiently pleasant to suggest that I met my friend, the motoring correspondent, there for a spot of supper. I wanted her opinion on the new Grand Cherokee, with coachbuilt humidor, that I'd bought two days before the start of the recent petrol crisis.

We met shortly after nine on a balmy September evening. I was treated to an affectionate greeting of the kind reserved normally for prodigal sons or those just raised from the dead: the manager had clearly learnt the lesson of the Maschler review. I was called 'Mr Nick', a name that always appeals to me, and although nothing was said, I got the impression that I could have had my table as long as I wanted, way beyond 10pm ... perhaps even until 10.15.

Catch is small. It used to be smaller. But the bar that occupied much of the ground-floor restaurant has been removed and the expanded restaurant now does about 20 covers, tops. I have even been told that the site is a feng shui catastrophe; apparently it would have been better feng shui to have opened Catch in the middle of Chernobyl rather than on this street corner.

Happily for the owner, the customers do not seem to know much about the intricacies of feng shui, nor do they seem unduly worried about getting slung out of their tables at 10pm sharp. Nor do they particularly care that the restaurant is only marginally larger than an Herm?s scarf. In fact, the only thing they do seem to care about is snogging.

The first time I came here, the occupants of the table behind me could not keep their hands off each other. Such was their abandon that I was surprised that they did not get right down to the entire Kama Sutra of sex acts.

By my second visit I knew better. As the table in the corner - he looked like a football stadium manager; she was very, very short - started familiarising themselves with each other's tonsils, I looked over in a worldly way. I then returned to our conversation on the riveting topic of over - and under-steer, about which the motoring correspondent talks with the wit of Dorothy Parker and the unrelenting drama of Homer's Odyssey.

In order to take my mind further off the two tonsil-suckers, I buried myself in the menu - not a distraction that worked as most of the food I would have ordered was off. I had been hoping to have the roasted sea scallops with risotto of fresh garden peas, which I had enjoyed the time before, followed by roasted wild sea bass and fondue of tomatoes with thyme and fennel. In the end I had to settle for asparagus and caramelised skate wing, the motoring correspondent had fishcake.

The skate wing was simple, generously proportioned and good. Indeed, we liked the food so much that we stuck around for pudding. I am glad we did. Poached peach, vanilla ice-cream and raspberry coulis was well up to the mark, as was the trio of cassonades - a sort of mixture of fun-sized br?l?es. But however fun-sized the br?l?es, they were not as much fun as the punters who then started turning up in Catch's basement bar.

These were some of the more entertaining specimens of humanity to totter along the Old Brompton Road. Perilously close to the Fulham Road, I suppose the bar at Catch is about as near to the Met Bar as most Sloane Rangers will ever get, and so they try and look the part as best they can.

As if to illustrate the point, a bunch of them got out of a VW Golf and tried to make an entrance. I say tried. Imagine Tiggy Legge Bourke, done up in vaguely Notting Hill style, trying to sashay sexily from car to bar and you've got the picture. The bloke superintending this crew of women obviously intended to look cool too, with some ill-advised decorative work carried across the shoulders of his pale Nehru-collared jacket. I could easily imagine him spending hours in front of a mirror perfecting the best way of opening a soft pack of fags in the style of James Dean. But then that is all part of the feast of fun that is an evening at Catch. A good supper, a quick snog, half a dozen Marlboro and one too many drinks at the bar downstairs - SW heaven.