Ah, winter. The nights are drawing in, it’s getting colder (and, at the time of writing, an extraordinary storm is tearing up the country) and so you’re looking for the sort of solidly warming comfort food that’s going to delight and satisfy alike. Well, help is at hand. We’ve been to three of our favourite spots – from City-based Brazilian plenty to a new and deeply satisfying Oxford bar-restaurant – and believe that these would all make for the perfect spot to settle into this season and hibernate until brighter and sunnier days await.
Fazenda, Bishopsgate
Since its opening in the City last year, the lavishly appointed Brazilian restaurant Fazenda – the London outpost of a small and highly-regarded group – has endeared itself to its patrons by dint of a brutal simplicity of menu offering that has distinguished it even in this most carnivorous of environments. If you’ve ever suffered through appalling food in low-rent ‘all you can eat’ establishments, naming no names, then the quality of the food on offer in the so-called “churrasco” experience will come as a welcome surprise.
For £62 (or £49 at lunchtimes), diners can have as much top-quality Brazilian meat as they can manage, allowing them to try the most succulent sirloin, pork, fillet, ribeye, chicken hearts etc as they can manage. Come very hungry – if you must try something non-meat, starters of king prawn and queen scallop are superb – and then delight yourself with a true feast fit for a hidalgo.
Wines and cocktails are also a serious part of the operation here – the separate ground floor spot, Fino, is one of the area’s most popular places for after-work drinks – and so it’s little surprise that, thanks to the brilliant and wonderfully clued-up sommelier Andrea, everything that you drink here is going to be extremely interesting.
A bottle of the 2016 Ramon Bilbao Rioja, served very slightly chilled, is more than up to the job of combating the various varieties of meat that we order, and an opening cocktail of an ‘Old Fernando’, a Fernet Branca-spiced take on an Old Fashioned, is sublime in the extreme. If you’re looking for a quintessential winter warmer, this is the place to come. For more information, please visit www.fazenda.co.uk.
The Garden at The Corinthia (main picture)
We’ve all heard of rus in urbe, but how about montes in urbe? Ok, when you visit this well-hidden garden courtyard in the middle of the Corinthia hotel, it’s not quite mountainous peaks and skiwear, but it’s a truly brilliant idea, if one undercut with a certain element of chutzpah – why not create a simulacrum of an Alpine lodge right in the middle of London, with a well-chosen selection of excellent cocktails, wines and appropriately Swiss dishes? All that’s missing is the fondue, but if you’re having the excellent gorgonzola and mushroom pizzette, the wild boar sausage and the astonishingly good Conte Della Vipera wine to start, wrapped up nicely in one of the blankets and sitting next to the fire, this is as much fun as you can have in London this winter.
The Corinthia is a serious culinary destination, as anyone who has been to the excellent Kerridge’s restaurant can testify, and the food here is top-notch; mains of daube of beef with creamed polenta and raclette are superb, as you would expect, and sides of parmesan and truffle fries and grilled hispi cabbage are the finest accompaniments that anyone could ask for. That is save a bottle of the exemplary Chanin Pinot Noir, which is light enough not to overwhelm the dishes and rich enough to stand up to the beef and, of course, the raclette. Desserts are comfort food writ large, especially a fine apple strudel, and the Café Italiano is a Swiss take on the espresso martini and all the better for it.
If you’re looking for conventional festive cheer, the Northall next door has just launched its Christmas menus, which will offer all the turkey and salmon that you could possibly want. But for those of us in search of something elegantly different, this is probably the best Garden that you’ll spent time in since Eden. For more information, and for bookings, please visit www.corinthia.com.
Dishoom Permit Room, Oxford
We at the Arbuturian are huge fans of Dishoom, the Indian restaurant group that summons up the spirit of Bombay grand cafes from a bygone era. It was only a matter of time since an offshoot of theirs launched, and so the Permit Room bar-cafes, which are found in the traditional student towns of Cambridge, Brighton and now Oxford, are a sprightly, hipper alternative to their grander siblings. Booze is to the forefront here, and the cocktail list is a thing of beauty.
If you’re after a traditional cocktail, the New Permit Room Old Fashioned – served in its own ‘Drink Me’-esque glass bottle – is about as good as these things get, and their take on an espresso martini, the Chai Caffe Martini, is a turbo-charged wonder that will make you forget all your troubles, especially if you pair it with one of the “short and boozy” cocktails, which are thimble-sized delights designed to be sipped, not shot. I can especially recommend the Sazerac, which is a cool-as-a-cucumber number that can’t fail to delight.
Still, this is a recommendation of places to eat as well as drink this winter, and if you came to Permit Room and missed out on the Anglo-Indian delights on the menu, you should have your dimaag examined. Some of the dishes here are familiar to anyone who has been to a Dishoom; the black daal returns, magnificently, and a lamb ‘ruby murray’ can be recommended unreservedly, thanks to the unctuousness of the tender meat and the wonderfully rich sauce. (And if you don’t order the garlic naan, there is nothing that can be done for, or with, you.)
But some of the smaller plates here are new and exciting, whether it’s the devilled masala eggs, an exemplary spinach chaat or some chicken pick-me-ups, the drumsticks of your dreams. Although this is a place more geared towards cocktails than wine, the short but well-chosen list is a delight, especially the Vinho Verde and a rich, plummy Syrah. So if you’re in need of warming up this winter, grab a chair and prepare to be lavishly entertained. You won’t regret it. For more information, please visit www.permitroom.co.uk.
