Llewelyn’s, restaurant review: Food for village people

Village London is a joke. An oxymoron, like clever Corbyn or bashful Boris. If you’re in London, you’re not in a village, are you? Except in an estate agent’s fantasy.

Come to Herne Hill, though, one short stop past Brixton on the train, and you can almost believe it. Although only four miles from central London, Herne Hill not only feels like a village but like one that could be almost anywhere else in the South-East. And, just for good measure, dating back to an earlier epoch too.

Just right “if you like nice middle-class suburbia with almost no soul but lots of places to buy ciabatta,” says one snarky property commentator, recoiling from the yummy mummies and, even more woundingly, the “man-child jazz dads”. And of course their babies and buggies. Some people now believe that in Herne Hill adults are now actually outnumbered by infants, at least during the day. Aw!

The area has not been so well supplied with worthwhile restaurants, however. Perhaps it’s one of the side-effects of being, for London, so mono-cultural? No matter. “You can walk to Brixton,” one resident observes, meaningfully. “Shop in Brixton and bring back the produce to Herne Hill,” instructs another, almost over-specific perhaps but wanting to help.

So in family homes all over Herne Hill, high hopes have been raised by the opening of Llewelyn’s earlier this month, just outside the handsome Victorian-Gothic train station, in what used to be Pullens Dining Room and Bar. Might this be, at last, the local joint that Herne Hill deserves? Village-ish yet up to speed?

The omens are good. The head chef is Warren Fleet, one of the early graduates of Jamie Oliver’s Fifteen, more recently in charge of the kitchen at the ever enjoyable Anchor & Hope on The Cut. Ravneet Gill from St John is looking after pastries and desserts and the general manager is Alcides Gauto, formerly at Rochelle Canteen. The menu is focused on “simple, seasonal ingredients” (it would be a rare restaurant that owned up to the opposite, wouldn’t it?) and, looking at the website, it genuinely changes daily, unlike many places that claim that but actually manage only limited variety.

The refurb, by local architect Henry Harker, is admirable, using the glossiest of black paint to make the most of the original frontage, overlooking Station Square, where there’s a Sunday market. And a big bike stand. Gazing at this, it suddenly occured to me that even the cycles here looked prosperous and well cared for: proudly middle-class wheels.

Inside, it’s light and spacious with white-topped tables, wooden furniture, some dark green leather upholstery, simple mirrors and a few touches of brass. You can perch on a stool at a window shelf overlooking the street or retreat inside, as you prefer. It’s an easy space behind a formal frame.

Last Friday the lunch menu offered six starters, six mains and four desserts. Crab soup and rouille croutons (£6.40) was a decent bisque, a little lighter and fresher than the preserves in bottles from Brittany that make such a good cheat’s starter. Zillah, however, was disappointed that the croutons had already been dumped into the soup, making a soggy mass when served, when one of the pleasures of this dish is adding the crunch as you go along.

We ordered fried friggitelli, sherry vinegar and sea salt (£5) because it sounded like a camp joke, maybe one that Alan Bennett would enjoy. Friggitelli, we now know, is a sweet and not-too-hot green Italian chilli pepper, here served whole, simply cooked and dressed — a nice enough taste but more a tapas offering than a dish in themselves.

David Sexton's week in food

1. Wednesday: crab linguine for lunch at the amazingly recreated Pharmacy 2 in Damien Hirst’s gallery in Lambeth, with Christopher Woodward, the director of the soon-to-be re-opened, wonderfully well extended Garden Museum nearby. Mark Hix’s version of this dish is a lesson in how much more impact it can have when it’s brown meat and bisquey, rather than white meat and herby.

2. Saturday lunch at home: a few chicken livers with shallots, some sage, a splash of Madeira and a few strips of Serrano ham on some lettuce and rocket leaves. Plenty.

3. Saturday dinner: five-hour shoulder of lamb, Greek-style, in wine and chicken stock, and orzo added at the end, with our friend Tom, making his first expedition since pole-axing back trouble. He brought a remarkable biodynamic Alsace Pinot Noir 2013 Pierre Frick — pur vin, properly.

4. Ally Pally farmers’ market on Sunday boasts a fishmonger, trading from a dinghy. For lunch, pasta with some unusual clams from the specialist importer SLF: Tapes semidecussatas, originally from Japan, now farmed in the lagoon of Venice.

5. For Sunday supper, a little squid, slow-braised with fresh peas from Cyprus from Yasar Halim down the road: pretty chunky items these, but frozen ones just don’t absorb flavours the same way.

​Burrata, borlotti beans, rocket and crumbs (£7) was a nicely assembled warm salad, also including roasted halves of plum tomato, carefully de-seeded, with a good dollop of richly creamy cheese, easy to enjoy. So these starters were fine, fairly priced, if not thrilling. Maybe that’s all you want from your local, though?

The mains stepped up a little, although not beyond feasible bistro. Skate, lentils and green sauce (£16.40) was a sizeable portion of fresh fish, thoroughly cooked as skate must be, and quite fibrous, atop straightforward stewed lentils with whizzed up herbs for enlivenment.

Sweetbreads, bacon, peas and wild garlic (£16.80) was a delicately put-together ragout, although perhaps sweetbreads don’t especially shine with such modest treatment? Hereford beef shin ragu, soft polenta and parmesan (£16.80) was the best: softened but still gelatinous chunks of meat in a meaty jus on a neat disc of liquid yellow, again bedecked with chopped-up greenery.

Chocolate cake (£6) was a gorgeous slice, so light that perhaps it was actually flourless, yet still tremendously rich-tasting: the desideratum. A rhubarb fool (£6.40) was lovely too, loosely textured, making the most of the tart-versus-sweet play.

These were highlights. This was a meal that anybody, having only just survived until the end of the week and rejoicing at being able to skip the shopping, cooking and clearing up, would be delighted to find locally. Whether it would merit a lengthy detour from, say, darkest north London, or hold its head up in competitive Soho, is another question.

The wine list majors on natural, organic, low-intervention bottles, sourced from the wonderful Les Caves de Pyrène (its wildly inventive 406-page list, freely available online as a PDF, is more worth reading than most books published this year), plus a smaller outfit specialising in such juices from the Loire, Under the Bonnet. However, the list itself is hopelessly reticent, not giving any vintages, often missing out the producers, not explaining the overall approach either. Shame: had I known then what I know now, thanks to the Pyrène wine-list, about Batlliu Biu de Sort Pinot Noir, Costers del Segre from Spain, £49, I would have tried it.

Service, by the way, was, although friendly, ever so slow and haphazard. Everything moves slower outside London, doesn’t it? But not as dopily as that. No doubt the service will, as they say, bed in. Or perhaps it could have been a stern reaction to my Herne Hill specialist dining companion Andy’s T-shirt, denying responsibility for Brexit. You never know, in a village.

293-295 Railton Road, SE24 (020 7733 6676, llewelyns-restaurant.co.uk). Open Tues-Sat, breakfast 8am-11.30am, lunch noon-3pm, dinner 6pm-10.30pm. Sunday breakfast 8am-11.30, lunch noon-4pm. About £80-100 for two.