Marcus Wareing, chef and proprietor of Pétrus restaurant in St James's, has had considerable coverage on the news pages recently.
There was a dispute with a leading restaurant guide as to whether he deserves top billing and insider gossip that he might actually be taking over a rather anodyne hotel setting (the former has been settled with Petrus receiving five stars in the new AA Guide and the latter is now definitely not happening).
These followed the widely reported dinner at Pétrus a year ago when five businessmen spent a cool £44,000 on a dinner that included several of the restaurant's most expensive bottles. Is Wareing worth all this attention? Is he as good as he is reputed to be?
I had eaten at Pétrus in its early days in 1999 when I found that unfriendly service and the sombre still-life paintings detracted from what was even then accomplished cooking.
Regrettably, the paintings are still there (and the lighting in the evening is equally melancholy) but the service is much, much better. An all-male brigade, with haircuts so short that the waiters could be accepted immediately for service in the Metropolitan Police, patrol the narrow room at a fair lick. One waiter approached our table with such a broad, knowing smile on his face that my guest was getting ready to shake his hand like a old friend rather than sit back and allow him to take her plate. There is now a much better balance between friendliness, formality and efficiency.
The service was not flawless, however. At lunch we were brought another table's first course and in the evening the sommelier arrived at our table without having been informed about our order so he was not at all equipped to pass on any advice on a suitable wine.
But he has put together an attractive and comprehensive wine list and whilst it is the high ticket items which grab the headlines there is no shortage of reasonably priced bottles, either. We drank a chilled Saumur Champigny 2000 at lunch £35 and a stunning Morey St Denis 1997 from Hubert Lignier in the evening for £53. (When ordering do remember that their cheeseboard is also one of the best in town).
I have a similar number of small quibbles about the food at Pétrus as I do about the service and I believe that both have their roots in the narrow confines of the dining room, (the site was originally a bank then an art gallery before becoming a restaurant), the fact that the kitchen is in the basement and the seemingly insatiable demand for tables.
Wareing understands his lunchtime clientèle. As she sat down at the table next to me, a woman promptly asked the waiter for the priced menu as she was paying but this was an unnecessary request. All menus are priced (£26.50 for three courses at lunch) and the menu provides a distinct point of differentiation from the local competition: more refined than Wiltons, Quaglino's, Greens, Che or The Avenue and far more sophisticated than the nearby clubs. Its nearest rival is currently L'Oranger, where Wareing coincidentally once cooked.
And all that Wareing's kitchen delivered provided substantial value: a raviolo of salmon and langoustine; a ballotine of foie gras; slow roasted pork belly and a fillet of halibut with diced broad beans and the ubiquitous frothy sauce; a chilled citrus terrine that oozed freshness and a liquorice icecream that was amongst the most intense I have tasted. My guest was suitably impressed and that was the point of lunch.
A week later I was less so by what was to be a social rather than business dinner. The evening menu is now £55 but includes far more expensive ingredients – line-caught sea bass, turbot, venison, caviar and duck – and all the trimmings: little pots of very fine chicken liver pâté and a smoky aubergine dip that was so authentic it would not have been out of place at one of the Middle Eastern restaurants on the Edgware Road.
There was no doubting the quality of the execution (better in fact than my last meal at his partner Gordon Ramsay's restaurant in Royal Hospital Road) or the flavours extracted from the ingredients just a rather uniform approach to presentation. A crispy fillet of sea bass looked exactly the same as the turbot with pommes anna and caviar and both looked very similar to the halibut that had been on the previous week's lunch menu (the ameuse bouche, a creamy celeriac soup with truffle sauce was the same on both occasions, too). All were served, annoyingly, in bowls rather than plates.
I tried to voice these quibbles to Wareing when we met in the restaurant one morning against a backdrop of constant deliveries. But he, with the determination that has seen him progress from Southport, Lancashire, to this position via stints amongst others with Guy Savoy in Paris and Daniel Boulud in New York, was not willing to see any other point of view.
'I think I have managed to adapt my cooking to these surroundings. There are certain dishes which the waiting staff do finish in the restaurant and I want to encourage this interaction more and more, to introduce more and more theatre. My ambition is to stay here, to encourage the chefs and train the waiting staff so that ultimately we can gain two Michelin stars for Pétrus.'
It would be foolish to contradict such a proud, passionate and driven exponent of the individual restaurant. But my own feeling is that Wareing may have outgrown this particular site and that, should he move, St James's loss will be another street's substantial gain.
Pétrus, 33 St James's Street, London, SW1A 1HD (tel 020 7930 4272)
Closed Saturday lunch and Sunday.
