A large and bright brassserie-style Battersea spot, offering a straightforward menu generally realised to a good standard; we enjoyed our visit, but wondered if it was on the pricey side for a venue constrained by its location to ‘local’ status.
We didn’t get any particular feeling that we were Crossing Delancey as we approached this big and bright new restaurant. Battersea, with all its semi-suburban charms, is hard put to evoke NYC’s gritty Lower East Side.
Nor is the establishment itself particularly American. The styling might just about pass Stateside, but there’s nothing about the staff or menu that makes you feel particularly enveloped by the Star Spangled Banner.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it does make you wonder why they chose the name. (For those who follow these things, it also rather confusingly evokes a restaurant called Allen & Delancey, which, though run by an Ex-Ramsay chef, really is in the Lower East Side.)
Here in SW11, however, they do a very decent dry Martini, so perhaps that’s one mark for ‘authenticity’. The service, with its willingness to help, was arguably rather ‘American’ too. Otherwise, however, this is a pretty standard informal European restaurant –with a culinary style that’s as much French as anything else – in something going on brasserie style. Even if it was rather empty on a Monday night, it still felt pretty convivial.
The cooking is a notch above local brasserie standards, in both aspiration and pricing. We had a pleasant dinner here, but were a touch surprised to find we’d so effortlessly spent £50+ a head.
Was it worth it? The starters were mixed, with three 'small plates' yielding one real success (calamari) and a couple of plodders. Mains were better. A rib eye and chips was good, and liver and bacon pretty enjoyable too. A well-realised dish of 'peas and lettuce’ showed some ability in the kitchen – for an establishment of its type – to venture a little off the totally known-and-usual piste. (Or, if you called them petits-pois à la française, pretty much on the known-and-usual Gallic track.)
A single pudding, chocolate mousse, came with an unadvertised raspberry sorbet. The overall effect was pleasant enough, but the coffee was perhaps rather better.
Let’s just hope, though, that there are enough folk round here happy to spend somewhere round £100 for two on a formula that lacks the nod to ‘hip’ its name might be thought to imply.
