Salon, Brixton Market - restaurant review

Joy in the restaurant-absorbed reaches of Twitter seems unconfined when a chef sets up an operation with a no-choice menu. For some reason it is regarded as thrillingly, masterfully radical even though Sally Clarke did exactly that in her restaurant Clarke’s in Kensington Church Street 29 years ago. Relatively recently, strict Sally relaxed the rules.

There are various fundamentals attached to the idea of frequenting restaurants. Not having to shop, cook or wash up are three. A diverting element of choice is another factor that happily separates the experience from meals at home. Who hasn’t sometimes wanted to hand a bill to people invited over for a meal? But that doesn’t mean that going out should be the equivalent of a paid-for dinner party. Intricate tasting menus of hundreds of courses; that is another matter.

The financial benefit (to a business) of a set menu for all is barely acknowledged, such is the excitement at the thought of being dictated to by someone who once knew a man who knew a girl who danced at a disco with a Young Turk. If everyone is compelled to eat the same dishes in a fairly small restaurant, ordering is simple, pressure on chefs ameliorated, wastage minimised (a good thing, of course, unless no one turns up) and one day’s menu can segue almost imperceptibly into the next. Such economies of scale should be passed onto the customer but seldom seem to be.

Salon, where ex-Brunswick House Café head chef Nicholas Balfe is cooking, is a small rackety restaurant — seating about 26 — above the British deli Cannon & Cannon on Brixton’s Market Row. Because I had a stomach bug last week I am reporting on dinner and lunch that I ate on January 4 and 7. I made allowances for possible problems with supplies at the time of year — although shouldn’t a thrusting young dude chef be able to conjure a carnival from a carrot?

Having noted rosehip fizz (I’m sure the hippest fizz there is), razor clams with sobrasada, “mad flavours and unknown vegetables”, when three of us were presented with six endive spears cradling strips of cold cured mutton and slivers of pear, I thought, “Well, it’s a difficult time of year”.

“Two each,” barked the waitress and then grudgingly acceded to a request for butter for the few slices of bread.

The next course of mussels with smoked pig’s cheek and fennel — two garnishes that were to pull their weight on another day — was cooked so briefly that lots of the mussels hadn’t opened. A closed mussel can also signify a dead one. Consequently we didn’t eat very many, just in case. My friend Joe remarked that the average bloke rustling up something for his date could do better.

Some professionalism was apparent in snowy slices of halibut with notably crisp skin accompanied by capers and celeriac purée. It was noble fish well cooked. I don’t want to say that bergamot posset with an unrolled brandy snap was a dinner party dessert, but bloody hell it was.

Cheeses (£7 supplement), Denhay, Gubbeen and Perl Las, a blue Caerphilly from West Wales, were supplied by the deli and well worth ordering except that it brings the cost of a meal for one consumed in coltish discomfort to £36, or £58 with the chosen wines. These are perspicaciously selected, some of them natural wines, but demoralised by the Duralex glasses in which they are, perhaps inevitably, doled out.

Lunch on Sunday, because of the time of year, comprised a short à la carte (normal service of a fixed-price menu has now resumed). I had wanted to go back to give Salon another chance. I suspected that the kitchen had more flair than had been in evidence — and the chaps in the deli could not have been nicer.

The dining room, occupied by one other couple who soon left, was chilly. Listening to Radio 6 Music, gazing out of the window onto Market Row, which is quite diverting, we waited ages for one dish of chickpeas, fennel and smoked pig’s cheek and another of braised venison shank with celeriac purée and Jerusalem artichokes.

Obviously both were cooked in advance but even after about 45 minutes they arrived tepid. The chickpeas interspersed with tiny nuggets of fat soon grew monotonous and the venison tasted exhausted. Welsh rarebit, made we were told with Lincolnshire Poacher and Teifi Valley cheese, was like one coat of varnish on a piece of grilled bread. Best item was Ossie’s fresh ginger beer made in Brixton. That has real zing.