Food Miles

It was 8pm by the time my friend Secombe and I arrived at the old Town Hall in Bethnal Green. This decommissioned civic building is now home to a hotel and chef du jour Nuno Mendes' much-trumpeted restaurant, Viajante. But we were heading upstairs to his new venture, Corner Room, a space until recently used as the hotel's breakfast room. Who knows what it was when the place was still a town hall? Perhaps it was where appeals against parking violations were processed.
Corner Room is not somewhere you can reserve a table, though, and the young fellow on the door told us there would be no chance of us eating for at least 45 minutes. 'There's a bar downstairs. I'll call you when there's a table.'

'So it's not possible to book?' I asked.
'No,' he said. 'You probably won't ever be able to. That's sort of the concept.'
David and I exchanged glances.
'It doesn't really work,' the fellow added wistfully. 'But it is the concept.'

Seventy minutes later we sat down to eat, having consumed far too much red wine in a dark bar that seemed to have been designed to ensure that people like Secombe and me don't go there. Corner Room is lighter, high-ceilinged, and filled with young trendies in thick-rimmed glasses. There is no art, as such, but there is an entirely cosmetic spiral staircase leading to a tiny door. An array of industrial-looking lights hangs at one end of the room, one of which a waitress banged her head on when delivering the starters to the table next to ours, as we eagerly spread butter on to fig and walnut bread.

The food is dainty and delicate. I started with crab, dressed delightfully with pickled apple and cucumber; Secombe had squid with new potatoes and fennel. Then he moved on to lamb loin with vegetables and herbs. I had a splendid duck confit with girolles. This was good food, but it was not a menu designed to soak up the amount of booze that we had consumed as we waited in the bar. Given that Secombe ordered another bottle of Piedmont when we sat down, I am amazed that I can remember anything at all about my chocolate pudding with peanut butter ice cream. I certainly can't remember the journey home, but I do have a receipt that proves it was made, in part, by taxi.