Tweaking the formula at Sand

10 April 2012

This review was first published in June 2001

Sand bar and restaurant is a sociological barometer. Once upon a time, youngish people hung out at coffee bars and played jukeboxes; next they went to pubs and swigged snakebite; then they went to wine bars and guzzled Beaujolais Nouveau and deep-fried Camembert, or frequented neon-lit disco pubs; now they go to Sand.

Soon, every suburb will have a bar like Sand. Maybe it already does. The recipe goes like this:

One: take a spacious venue in an up-and-coming-but-not-there-just-yet area that is a bit too far from the 'West End'.

Two: spend a lot on chic-yet-neutral d?cor: some touches of Kelly Hoppen, a nod to the exotic (a vaguely Moorish screen, a stick or two of bamboo languishing in a corner), a hint of the industrial (the odd exposed duct), and a touch of the techno (small TV screens embedded in the walls, for example).

Three: install a couple of bouncers with two-way radios.

Four: rope off the entrance and wait for the Pavlovian response of the public who will happily queue to get in after 9pm on a Friday night.

Five: laugh all the way to your bank account in the Cayman Islands.

OK, step five was a guess, but given the evident popularity of Sand the night I visited, it looks like that is the natural result of steps one to four. Sand has a 2am licence, vital if you want to make a bit of cash, and there are plans for the inevitable members' club.

Nevertheless, Sand's real genius is that it is formulaic without appearing to be so. If you imagine a bit of Hush, a soup?on of Attica, a touch of Teatro, and a dollop of Chinawhite, you have Sand. If the soundtrack of your life is 'Now That's What I Call Chilled in Ibiza, Vol 63', then this is the place for you.

I had seen pictures of Sand and thought it looked worth a whirl on a warm Friday evening, so I bundled Mrs Foulkes, and a nice new Connolly-bound A-Z purchased especially for the occasion, into the car and headed south. As we journeyed through deepest Fulham, the rugby-shirted inhabitants of that fragrant quartier were already indulging in their merry, early evening japes. We arrived in Clapham at around closing time of the Church of Christ, and fought our way through the excited congregation as they swapped liturgical tips and scraps of wisdom from the gospels.

We hurried along, and it was just as well that we did, because minutes after we had got in and found our table, a queue comprising well-built women in tight denim jackets, and their male escorts in Hawaiian-print shirts and Tag Heuer watches, had formed outside the door.

Sand is not the place to come for a relaxing dinner on a Friday night, but this observation is a reflection of my age and increasingly sedate demeanour. In fact, the last thing a lot of people want on a Friday night is a quiet supper; they want a full-on evening of having it large. There was a time when I would have gladly joined them, and probably wound up in a brawl some time after last orders. But, for the moment at least, that time has passed.

Besides, the young people I saw at Sand seem to be a lot better behaved than I was when I was their age. And the food has improved since those days, too. Ten years ago, the best you could have hoped for from such an establishment in South London was a bowl of BSE chilli. Now the food is imaginative, varied and not at all bad ? even if some customers, such as the two Bridget Jonesalikes seated at the next table, seemed intent on testing the kitchen to its limits by ordering pasta, chips and mayonnaise.

From seared tuna with Japanese cucumber salad, via Isle of Skye mussels with gumbo sauce, or venison steak with chestnut, shallot, carrot and turnip confit, to Grecian three-cheese tart with almonds, olives and mint-yoghurt dressing, the menu, like the look of the place, is cleverly put together and mindful of prevailing trends.

It is also more than adequately prepared. I ordered a plate of seared Isle of Skye queen scallops with coriander, chilli and lime butter, and although the scallops were of a dwarf strain, there were plenty of them, all deliciously sweet. Mrs Foulkes ate a steak that she pronounced excellent. The only cavil I had concerned a rocket and parmesan salad, on which, instead of shavings, the parmesan cheese appeared in powder form.

We considered staying for pudding. However, the queue outside was lengthening and we felt it churlish to deprive Sand of what seemed to be a party crowd clamouring to get in and spend their pay packets on a range of fine wines, witty cocktails and exquisite bottled beers.

So, instead, we motored on to another South London suburb, Barnes, to continue our dinner at Riva , where I ate a few courgette flowers and some miraculous mackerel pasta, before the tiramisu that is one of the three best puddings in London.