Lander William - The Quality Chop House: [modern recipes and stories from a London classic]

Foreword
by Marina OLoughlin

When I left my job as restaurant critic for the Guardian, I wanted to go out with a bang. And with a solid gold banger. It wasnt a difficult decision there was only ever really one choice: off I duly trotted to somewhere Id been many, many times before, the Quality Chop House. Its no overstatement to say that I love the place not something Im moved to say very often. This is one of those incredibly rare restaurants that simply gets everything right: setting, food, service. (Not forgetting one of the countrys great winelists.) The nature of my job means that Im governed by a chase after the new; but left to my own devices Id happily eat here on a weekly basis. Since its early days as Progressive Working Class Caterer, it has had a chequered career: Im just old enough to remember Charles Fontaines residency, but Charles and his fishcakes only provided a temporary distraction. Over the years, its deliciously spartan interior seemed to withstand every attempt to soften its edges and dilute its austere beauty. Despite this, I felt confident that one day the remarkable space and the right people to run it would find each other.

And so it came to be. With the arrival of Will, Josie and Shaun (and later Dan), the Quality Chop House magic began, a combination of people and place that was little short of alchemical, the common denominator a unique brand of charm. These are the custodians you can only wish for, in love with but not in thrall to the idiosyncracies of their Grade II-listed baby. I once suggested that head chef Shaun should have listed status slapped on him too, being that rarest of creatures, a supremely talented chef who appears to be ego-free. That lack of dick-swinging braggadocio extends to all the key players, gloriously refreshing in the self-aggrandising climate of todays me-me-me restaurant scene. These people just want you to have a good time, one that involves sensational food, a winelist of dreams bristling with rarities by the glass always the opportunity for some kind of delicious discovery and for you to leave feeling that for the duration of your meal youve been in exactly the right place at exactly the right time. Awards and accolades may pile in, but I always get the sense that these are far less important to the team than simply making people happy.

One of the most uplifting things about this lot is their absolute ease with marrying innovation and tradition. The same applies to Nick and Gus in their small kingdom, the wine bar next door. Sure, theres a resolute base of Britishness to the food some of it wouldnt look out of place in the chophouses of the 18th century: Cullen Skink, treacle tart with clotted cream. And, of course, roast Yorkshire grouse. During game season, the Quality Chop House is unmissable, and Shauns extraordinary way with grouse the tiny copper pot of mash-topped game pie, the soothing balm of the nutmeg-scented bread sauce, the insanely good liver parfait has to be experienced at least once in life. If not annually.

But the dishes will often feature Asian techniques and ingredients, or ideas that have come directly from the chefs (corn and Marmite butter and yes, it works), or clashes of cultures: caramel pickled plums with lardo di Colonnata; nods to todays obsession with fermenting; an Italians love for purely wonderful ingredients; a French persons delight in classical saucing and technique. When some American media types landed in town, they were pilloried for describing the menus trademark mince on toast as a traditional British dish. Who cares whether it is or isnt? Its bloody gorgeous: a vivid distillation of the very essence of meat, the meatiest meat youve ever tasted, juices leaching into the dripping-fried sourdough toast, just the peppery snap of watercress to save you from a fit of beefy-richness-induced vapours. I once described it as outlandish and, despite its apparent simplicity, it is.

The Quality Chop House is a restaurant with a clientele of regulars. This might not seem particularly noteworthy, but it is. The London scene is rammed with novelty hounds, not so much in search of dinner as the next social media post. They make a lot of noise but have the attention span of gnats, always buzzing off to the next best thing. Regulars are a lot quieter and, to my mind, a whole lot more desirable. What greater testament to any restaurant could there be than people who want to keep coming back?

When Im ancient, once the restaurant critic business has finally spat me out and I can simply choose to go wherever I want, I hope theres a table permanently reserved in the bar for me. There Ill perch on a bentwood chair, a glass of something cold, white and ravishing in hand and in anticipation of whatever issues from the kitchen. Perhaps something topped with a truffle shaving or several. A sliver of almost-high, carmine gamebird. Maybe the teeniest, tiniest pork pie from the shop next door. (God, I love a good pork pie and sausage roll, and in these pages youll find emperors of the species.) At the time of writing this, theres a special menu on offer in the restaurant celebrating 150 years of the buildings life, featuring the sorts of things that make my pupils dilate with lust: theres a fishcake Im guessing a nod to Fontaine; jellied eel to underline its absolute London-ness, the famous and much-copied , of course. I hope that they keep the beef fat brioche, chicken liver parfait and black truffle on the list in perpetuity. But Ive never had a bad meal here, ever. Hell, Id even content myself with one of their egg mayo sandwiches. Whatever the future brings, Im happy to predict its where Ill always want to be. Heres to the next 150 years.

We dont know much about the first couple of years of the Chop Houses existence. If you go to the Islington Council Archives and trawl through their dusty leather-bound volumes of landlords and tenants, youll find the names of our predecessors here, all the way back to the late 19th century. Although they are just names on a page, you still get a sense of their success and failure; poor old W. Trevelyan arrived in 1876 but two years later had already been replaced (what would he have given for Shauns confit potato recipe?), while P. F. Harris clearly had the right idea dropping anchor on the site in 1888 and staying until 1903.

Our knowledge of the restaurant really only starts to move from the speculative to the certain around 1950, when our current landlords grandfather Mr Enrico was at the stove and his daughter, wife, cousin and any other family members he could find were working on the floor. This was the period when the Progressive Working Class Caterer label had none of its current ironic baggage: breakfast and lunch were served quickly and without fuss. In fact, current guests of a certain vintage often tell us they lived in fear of the chefs wife and her notoriously brusque way of dealing with guests, which was almost as no-nonsense as their menu of simple, cheap British dishes designed with hungry, hardworking locals in mind. What is clear from talking to the few regulars who knew the Chop House in those days is that even then it possessed that inexplicable alchemy of food, hospitality and atmosphere that defines a good restaurant. One chap still swears to this day that: they did the best toast Ive ever had a dubious accolade but one that shows that the Chop House has aimed to impress guests with pared-down cuisine for longer than we might have imagined. By the 1980s the Enrico family could no longer rely on the patriarch and head chef to run the business. The community forged by them and so many other Italian families in Clerkenwell, though still strong, was beginning to dissipate as the neighbourhood changed. A different kind of operator was needed. Charles Fontaine, head chef at The Ivy, was looking for something different and took a punt on the Chop House, accurately guessing it would be a happy home for an old-school French chef-patron with a passion for English cooking. Thanks to some fine reviews after opening in early 1990 (a certain Nigella Lawson was particularly effusive in