Youthful excess at Smiths

This review was first published in July 2000

'Reminds me of a youth club,' grunted the Chairman as I sidled up to him at the bar of Smiths of Smithfield. It is on account of just such antiquated observations that I cherish the Chairman's friendship. He makes young Mr Grace of Are You Being Served? seem like a sprightly executive high-flyer with a brace of MBAs.

The Chairman was not in a particularly good mood. He had tried to get the young man behind the bar to furnish him with a small pre-prandial Havana. To listen to the Chairman, one would have thought that he had just completed a Labour of Hercules. He apparently asked for the humidor three times before changing his request to the cigar box and making himself understood. And this is the man whose Hackett polo shirts are worn by some of the most enthusiastic football supporters this side of Charleroi.

He should have felt at home at Smiths of Smithfield. It is not quite Hackett polo-shirt country - but almost. The ground floor is like a big, slightly unfinished All Bar One. The first floor - what the chairman described as the youth club - is a vaguely trendy cocktail and champagne bar with a vaguely industrial feel to it.

Upstairs, the industrial theming intensifies. The second-floor dining-room is a deliberately undecorated space: exposed brickwork, bare floorboards, highly visible air-and cable-ducts etc. One side of the building looks over attractive railway tracks, while the other glories in the picturesque vista of Smithfield by night, with powerfully built men, their Hackett polo shirts obscured by hygienic EU-designated overalls, hauling vast carcasses from refrigerated vehicles. It is, as the Chairman described it so appositely, loft eating for loft dwellers. It is also very noisy and extremely busy.

I have to say that seeing the dressed-down bourgeoisie all around me, tucking into tomato and basil soup, cannelloni of pumpkin with ricotta and grilled lamb with spiced aubergines and lemon, I was suddenly gripped by a depression. Smithfield used to be something slightly different and rather exciting. Now it has just become another bit of pasteurised fashionable London, all expensively scruffy, ersatz edginess: it is possible to feel like you are slumming it, but still be able to order a bottle of Pouilly Fuiss? or an interesting Cabernet/Merlot from New Zealand.

Smiths of Smithfield bristles with that rather niggling Jamie Oliver 'honesty' - all 'bung it in', 'splosh it on', 'get stuck in' heartiness. It is fine, but a bit too chummy for me and it occurred to me that it is really the sort of thing that Antony Worrall-Thompson was doing ten years ago at Bistrot 190. Good 'honest' food served in hearty portions.

The menu is a collision of rustic Italian (focaccia, olive oil, gnocchi) and aggressively trad British (minced beef and potatoes on toast, shepherd's pie, calves' liver, bacon and onions) seasoned with flashes of Oriental piquancy (lucky squid with chilli jam and choy sum). I had to order the lucky squid, purely because of the adjective. It was all right. The Chairman's smoked haddock omelette Arnold Bennett looked nothing like an omelette: it appeared in the guise of a 'bake'. I rather wish I had ordered it and from the rapidity and pleasure with which he devoured it, the Chairman could obviously see I was eyeing it up.

I had a huge hunk of grilled daily fish and sauce Gribiche, perfectly good if not overly testing for the kitchen, and a salad with blue-cheese dressing - since its appearance at Spoon+ I am pleased to see that this dressing is enjoying a renaissance. I also had a lovely little pudding: a fig tart with Jersey cream that was worth every penny of the £3.50, that despite its rustic looks demonstrated a deceptive lightness and eloquent delicacy. I believe that John Torode is involved here and if he can bear to keep himself off the telly and spend some time on his premises, this ex-Conran chef should have a monster success on his hands.

Certainly, we were in august company when we ate here. No sooner had we sat down, than one of Yale's more attractive, WASP-y, strawberry blonde alumni sashayed over to tell me about her recent experiences at a reunion at her alma mater. She also slipped into the conversation that she had been having drinks with the American ambassador earlier that evening.

At another table, I saw a senior staffer at Tatler and the new, surgically improved Christa D'Souza. She was dazzling a table of people whom I can only assume were bright young things. I had bumped into this woman at a Society wedding a few weekends previously, when her husband had blinded me with his financial small talk and his grasp of the international fiduciary instrument.

Any establishment that can attract the flower of East Coast American womanhood, a leading Tatlerette and God knows how many young(ish) people in signet rings, plus the mob of heavy-drinking twenty- and thirty-somethings that garnished the rest of the building, does not need my custom to be a success.