The Ledbury crowned UK’s best restaurant, again...

Two Michelin-starred Notting Hill restaurant The Ledbury has been crowned the best restaurant in the UK at the National Restaurant Awards for the third year running. As reported on db.com, the restaurant, run by Australian chef Brett Graham, saw off competition from Jason Atherton’s Pollen Street Social and Marlow pub The Hand and Flowers, which came in second and third respectively.

Owned and run by Tom Kerridge, The Hand and Flowers, the world’s first pub to be awarded two Michelin stars, was also named Gastropub of the Year. Five of the top ten restaurants on this year’s list are in London, with Quo Vadis in Soho, run by Jeremy Lee, the highest new entry at number 9. Master sommelier Xavier Rousset’s Texture in Marylebone bagged the Wine List of the Year award, while Lima London in Fitzrovia was voted the One to Watch.

Phil Howard meanwhile, of two Michelin-starred The Square in Mayfair, was voted Chef’s Chef, while Dinner by Heston Blumenthal picked up the Hotel Restaurant of the Year award. Chris Corbin and Jeremy King, owners of celebrity favourites The Wolseley and The Delaunay, along with the newly opened Brasserie Zedel, scooped the Personality of the Year award.

Earlier this year, the Ledbury climbed 20 places to number 14 at The World’s 50 Best Restaurant Awards, making it the highest climber on the list. And if running the UK’s best restaurant wasn’t enough, Graham and his team heroically protected diners last August when the restaurant was attacked during the London riots, chasing away masked looters with rolling pins.

Now in their fifth year, the National Restaurant Awards aim to highlight the best restaurants in the UK and reward the nation’s top chefs and restaurateurs. The restaurants are voted for by a team of 150 chefs, restaurateurs, food critics and journalists across 12 UK regions. Chefs are not allowed to vote for their own restaurant. 

The Top 10 Restaurants in the UK

1: The Ledbury, London

2: Pollen Street Social, London

3: The Hand & Flowers, Marlow

4: Restaurant Sat Bains, Nottingham

5: The Fat Duck, Bray

6: The Sportsman, Seasalter

7: The Square, London

8: The Kitchen, Edinburgh

9: Quo Vadis, London

10: Dinner by Heston Blumenthal, London 

Casa Batavia

“Italians are particularly prone to the comfort and reassuring nostalgia of food. They eat with a childish verve and enthusiasm, and exuberant remembrance of their homes, their mothers, their lovers and their Vespas,” so says AA Gill in his review of Casa Batavia in last Sunday’s Style magazine in The Sunday Times. The Vespa reference is a national stereotype too far, but I get what Gill means. Italians have a love of food unequalled throughout the world. They worship at the altar of food, the architecture of their day built around what they are going to eat.

Nicola Batavia is a self-confessed “eggspert”. I met the chef a month ago at a Castello Banfi dinner at Camden curio Gilgamesh. His arrival at the table was met with much fanfare and clapping of hands, like the returning of the prodigal son. Unfamiliar with his oeuvre, I felt in the presence of a world-famous celebrity that had somehow got through my net. Peering through a pair of neon orange specs, he tells me, in a Dalínian fashion, of his beatific reverence for eggs – of their mystic duality: the hard and the soft, the white and the yolk; the eternal conundrum. Mention is made of a truffled egg dish, which recalls treasured memories of Spuntino’s truffled egg on toast. Noting my enthusiasm, Batavia invites me to try the dish when he’s next in town.

The Michelin-starred chef found fame in Italy with his Ristorante Birichin in Turin. He now has a regular spot on Italian TV, a book, wine line and olive oil to his name. This summer, he teamed up with seasoned London restaurateur Paolo Boschi to launch Casa Batavia on Kensington Church Street. White walls, black leather chairs and polished wooden floors lend an air of austerity to the space, which is softened by playful graphic prints by Italian cartoonist Osvaldo Cavandoli. The interiors are so pared down they border on corporate, but a glass-domed roof lends much-needed light to the proceedings. Tablecloths are a tasteful beige, mirroring the hues of the ladies who lunch that populate the room.

Boschi is so old school you couldn’t invent him. He takes my (beige) coat and sits me at the window table, in full view of the Notting Hillbillies passing by. Our feast gets off to a good start with a cupful of crunchy, lithe grissini sticks served with Batavia’s bright green, grassy, Umbrian olive oil. With it we’re served a generous-sized Riedel glass of Gancia Alta Langa Brut 2007. Aged for three years in oak, the northern Italian sparkler glints gold in the glass, offering a rich and toasty nose of honey and hazelnuts that could give Bollinger a run for its money.

We’re then presented with a silver slither of skate wing served with capers, tomatoes and olives. Soft as swan’s-down, the fish is tremendously tender, and enhanced by the autumnal accoutrements. The embodiment of Batavia’s “modern Italian” cooking philosophy, there are no foams or temperature tricks, just simple, seasonal ingredients. Then it arrives. I can smell it coming. The famous truffled egg. Hopes are high. Poached, it looks beautiful in the dish, nestled in a pond of potato fondu, a solitary sage leaf balancing on top like a fallen feather. The egg is expertly cooked, its orange yolk oozing into the cheese pool below. Rich from the truffle oil, it’s decadent, delightful and comforting beyond belief – what baby food would taste like in heaven.

To follow is a trio of oxtail ravioli blanketed with a snowflake-shaped shaving of Parmesan. Packing a flavour punch, the Parmesan has the intensity of a fresh cheese straw and works well with the tender ox meat. Astutely autumnal, Batavia is spookily in tune with the seasons, like a culinary weather vane. To match, the sommelier suggests Andrea Oberto Giada Barbera d’Alba 2005. An attractive bright ruby, the nose bursts with black cherry, plum and forest fruits. Growing in intensity on the palate, blackcurrant notes give way to a liquorice finish.

Mid-pour, the affable young wine waiter tells us he’s from Narni in Umbria, explaining that C.S. Lewis named his imaginary land of Narnia after the Umbrian hilltown, having stumbled across it in an atlas as a child. The final flourish before dessert is Batavia’s signature dish: pork tonnato in a rustic tuna sauce, latticed with courgette and carrot. Usually made with cold cuts of veal, the juicy medallion of hot roast pork loin is textbook. Dessert doesn’t reach the highs of the main event, though a bowl of molten chili chocolate doused in Amaretto lifts the spirits, while a Lavazza espresso from a bespoke machine imported from Italy delivers an invigorating and smooth caffeine kick. Judging from earlier reviews, the Haribo fried egg sweets presented with the bill have been wisely replaced with almond-filled biscotti.

Though heaving on my visit, Batavia made the effort to talk to each customer, gauging their needs and tweaking their order accordingly. You’d never get that level of service in Soho or Mayfair. My only criticism is that dishes are delivered at warp speed – we were served five in under an hour, giving us little time to luxuriate in the memory of what we’d eaten before we were onto the next course. With the pace of life accelerating, it’s more important than ever to be able to take your time over a meal and let the memory of each dish solidify in the mind before moving on, otherwise we’re just refueling.

Supperclub London

Last week a white invite landed on my desk. It was for the launch of Supperclub London, a trendy restaurant/bar/club/chill out concept that started in Amsterdam and has mushroomed to incorporate San Francisco, Singapore, Los Angeles, Istanbul and now my smoggy metropolis. What's taken it so long? It seems like a no brainer.

The invite was in the shape of a flattened box, and asked partygoers to get creative and bring their decorated white cubes down to the club, where the best design would win a prize. The day of the launch arrived and my invite was still flat. I scanned my desk for creative tools. A set of highlighter pens glared back at me. Too garish. It had to be in keeping with the minimalist chic of the club. Then it came to me - I had a Damien Hirst moment.

I grabbed a tube of super glue from the stationary cupboard and counted out six curiously strong mints from the box on my desk, placing a dollop of glue on each and sticking them to the centre of each of the six sides. I named it Pill Box. If anyone asked I would say it was a statement about our pill-popping society and how our increasing dependence on prescription drugs is leading to our physical and spiritual decline.

The dress code said 'all white'. Indecision hit me the morning of the party. I pulled everything white out of my wardrobe and starting putting outfits together. I decided to take the theme to the extreme and stepped out of the door in white cords, a white polo neck, white brogues, a white duffle coat and a white scarf. I looked like a cross between a polar bear and a boy band member - not my finest sartorial hour.

I rocked up to the converted warehouse in Westbourne Park with my friend fashionably late at 9pm and was confronted with a shockingly long queue snaking down the street, still slick with rain. I wasn't in the mood to queue, expecting a smallish gathering of food and drink journalists rather than a full-on club night. Every Tara, Lara and Zara was there, in their Balenciaga dresses and Jimmy Choos, air kissing the bouncers and fast-tracking the queue. A group of dejected-looking paps stood by the side of the road, cameras at the ready, letting off the occasional false alarm flash.

My friend and I were told to wait in the anaconda-sized guest list queue. The other queue, we were informed, was the VIP queue. It turns out they had spectacularly over-invited, ending up with a guest list of over 1,800, so entry had to be staggered. After 40 minutes we arrived at the front of the queue, only a velvet rope now separating us from the splendours that surely awaited inside. We kept there for a further 20 minutes, watching in frustration as the bouncers let in VIP after VIP, while we were savagely held back.

Finally, the rope was lifted and we were allowed in. Walking down the red carpet, I suddenly felt horribly underdressed. Would my snowflake look cut it with the ice-cold fashion crowd? I didn't really care, all I could think about was how good my first glass of Champagne was going to taste. But even that was a disappointment. It said Champagne on the label, but tasted more like cheap sparkling wine. Alas. My thirst satiated, albeit unmagnificently, I headed into the snow-white throng. Men with movie star bodies pranced around in long johns and nothing much else, while women busied themselves perfecting their pouts.

It didn't feel like London, but Europe, or more specifically Amsterdam. There was something incredibly camp about the place. From the white sofa-beds framing the edges and the funky house music to the mohawk-sporting dancers doing Shirley Bassey renditions. After the stress of the queue and the disappointing bar, I decided to call it a night when a deliriously thin Bowie look-alike in white skinny jeans began belting out Europop. Stepping back out into the Notting Hill night, the queue outside was as long and slithery as when I arrived. The paps raised their cameras in expectation, then lowered them again without a flash as my duffle coat and I made our way down the street.