Shades of promise

What a difference a lampshade makes. Sorry: a reductive thing to say but when we last visited the restaurant at The Hospital, Dave Stewart's arty Covent Garden complex, I couldn't picture anyone having a good time in the bruise-hued morgue of a room. None of chef Adam Byatt’s culinary-grandstanding could take away the taste of gloom, the pall of depression that hung over the place like a toxic fart.

So I wasn't surprised to hear that they had called time on Thyme. Not surprised but sad. Byatt is talented and had wowed everyone in his same-name outfit in darkest Clapham. But when he moved to the West End, charged a set of exorbitant prices and served overmannered, elaborate food in a soulsucking space, the consensus was that he had suffered a suitably Icarus-like fate.

Now he's back, without former partner Adam Oates but in the same much-derided, windowless restaurant. Talk about brave. But what a transformation. The formerly awkward room has been cleverly reinvented: now it comes across as moody and sexy. Plush, sludgy colours and tactile textures are punctuated by bursts of colour from the aforementioned lampshades — comically twisted versions of granny's favourites. Half the room is now a deliciously grown-up bar; half a comfortable, see-and-be-seen restaurant. There's some impressive
art. It's altogether lush.

Since Clapham days — and before the current bandwagon — Byatt has been keen on a grazing approach, and that remains. I like this: more tastes for your money can only be a good thing. But you just know they're going to be small. Which is perhaps why I beasted into the divinely salty home-made bread with unnecessary enthusiasm.

The carb-phobic date looked on with distaste. Yes, dishes were small but they were also inventive, assured and bore the unmistakable stamp of sympathetically sourced ingredients. I liked the terrine of poached foie gras with spiced plum but its recipient found it 'too greasy'. Since foie usually comes across like the bastard child of meat and butter, this didn't really compute. It came with excellent, cakey brioche and aromatic, fruity relish.

My humble mackerel outshone it, though: crisp, smoky fish with the sharpness of finely sliced beetroot and the punch of horseradish. Then my favourite dish: a cast iron casserole of pot-roasted quail in a light broth vivid with sage and thyme, a mirepoix of root vegetables and toasty little hazelnut gnocchi. A little pot of autumn: simple, subtle, gorgeous. Lobster — moist and accurately cooked, which is hard to come by these days — came with a pale green vegetal spume and little sign of its promised citrus. Good? Yes. Small?Very. £10? Indeed.

Veal belly and scallops might not seem like natural playmates but the pale meats, one sea-scented, one slow-cooked and delicately beefy, worked together well, helped out by the oysteriness of salsify. Pork with a vinaigrette of cockles — a vaguely Iberian concoction — suffered from gluey black olive mash. Still, our magnificent Huia Marlborough Pinot Noir from a genuinely interesting wine list perked it up no end.

Overall, the cooking has a muted air. Byatt's natural exuberance — the confident flourishes we met at Thyme in Clapham and the overwrought histrionics of the Hospital version — seems to have been tempered by his temporary fall from grace. This is food as hubris, the creations of a formerly overconfident stylist who has had his wings singed.

Perhaps if Origin stays busy — and it should — Byatt can relax into his previous form. He's finally got the setting for it.

Origin
24 Endell Street, WC2H 9HQ