Dolada, Albermarle Street, Mayfair

Mr Oil and Mr Vinegar have decided to review Dolada in Albermarle Street, Mayfair – a restaurant famed for its high prices. The results are surprising...

MrV: I went in there with my hackles up. Partly because I didn’t much rate it in its former guise, Mosaico. But also, I hate it when I read about how expensive a restaurant is. It makes me determined to dislike the place, because I can’t help feeling the management is taking me for a mug.
MrO: I know exactly what you mean. But how extraordinary it is that no one has noticed what appears to be a sea-change in the pricing.
MrV: Perhaps they were stung by the criticisms. People do bridle when they’re told that the starters are £28 or something silly.
MrO: Or perhaps, bearing in mind the recession, they simply responded to their customers’ requirements, like all good businesses should.
MrV: At any rate, that was one of the best-value lunches I’ve had in Mayfair in a long time. It’s funny how those little roads between Piccadilly and Mayfair sometimes yield real restaurant bargains, particularly at lunchtime. Go a hundred yards north and you’re paying twice as much.
MrO: As soon as I walked into Dolada I loved it. The decor, lighting and furniture are all extremely soothing.
MrV: Full of proper grown-ups too: no flashy young spivs – although there was that young man with a beard, sitting with his parents. If my son ever grows a beard I’ll disinherit him.
MrO: The chairs were very comfortable and the tables were properly spaced so that you could hear other people talking but you couldn’t hear what they were saying.
MrV: And the waitresses are all rather appealing. I don’t know why men bother spending fortunes on consorting with women of the night when all they really want is for a pretty girl to be nice to them, which they can get for the price of a tip after dinner in a decent restaurant.
MrO: I hadn’t ever thought about it like that but you might be right. Anyway, it was a good move going with the Business Lunch...
MrV: Made me feel like a real Man of the People.
MrO: ...which is very good value at £21 for three courses. My bruschetta was very good. The trick with bruschetta is getting the toast crunchy enough, which restaurant kitchens often cannot do.
MrV: My salamis and other cold meats were very good. I particularly liked the pickled turnip or swede or whatever it was – not too vinegary.
MrO: I’m surprised that you don’t like a lot of vinegar, but perhaps your system manufactures so much that you’re in danger of overdosing.
MrV: Aren’t you funny? The spaghetti alle vongole was pretty good. I believe that spaghetti alle vongole is the surpreme test of an Italian restaurant. It’s such a simple dish but apparently one which is very easy to mess up.
MrO: I agree. A disappointing spaghetti alle vongole was what put me off San Lorenzo many years ago.
MrV: I had a distinctly unimpressive one at the River Cafe recently. That place does irritate me – full of grungy left-wing civil servants, design gurus and other crude, unhelpful non-thinkers. And their spaghetti alle vongole had no shells! I like clam shells in my alle vongole. It gives the dish a feeling of authenticity - and looks better, too.
MrO: Yes, well, getting back to Dolada, I thought the ice cream was excellent. Very, very freshly made and the praline flavour was quite fine, as was the coconut.
MrV: That white wine was alright, too. Panizzi Vernaccia is very rich, isn’t it? But pretty good value at £35. The mark-up on the wines is quite fair, even generous, in my view. They’re knocking out a 2004 Tignanello at £140, which is far less than double the retail value. Harrods, for instance, is selling it for £95. We should have tried it. I could happily have spent all afternoon there but you insisted on going back to work.
MrO: It is customary to work after lunch.
MrV: Not for me it isn’t.

Mr Oil and Mr Vinegar ate three courses each and together drank two vodka-and-tonics, a bottle of white wine, two glasses of Chianti, two glasses of limoncello liqueur and four cups of coffee, at a total cost of £158.

Dolada Restaurant
Arcade House
13 Albemarle Street
London
W1S 4HJ

+44 (0) 207 409 1011
manager@dolada.co.uk
www.dolada.co.uk

Smith's of Smithfield

Mr Oil and Mr Vinegar have been to the meat trading district of Smithfield, to gorge themselves upon rare steak at Smith's.

MrO: That was a very satisfactory experience.
MrV: It's a proper restaurant, all right. There's something rather magnificent about celebrating bloody meat so ostentatiously.
MrO: How was your ribe-eye? My sirloin was cooked to perfection.
MrV: Very good, although I do still become sentimental when I think of a steak I had here a few years ago. It was served with garlic spring greens and chips and was, I think, the single most delicious steak of my life.
MrO: I think I remember that. Was it the Black Welsh beef that had been aged for 38 days?
MrV: Precisely. My God but it was tasty. Such a shame they never did it again.
MrO: Oh yes, there was a peculiar complication, wasn't there?
MrV: It was so rich it stayed on the breath of the customers for several days and all their sweethearts complained that they stank of rotting carcasses.
MrO: My wife didn't complain.
MrV: I'd be very surprised if in the past 20 years your wife has been close enough to your mouth to notice - and who can blame her?
MrO: Smelly old cuts aside, John Torode has done well with this place. It is the best site in Smithfield with an excellent view and a terrace well above the soot and grime. On a warm, sunny day it can't be bettered.
MrV: I don't know how often he's cooking any more. Too much of a celebrity. I do get fed up with chefs who become too famous or busy to cook in their own restaurants.
MrO: Me too, but I have never noticed standards slipping at Smith's. On the contrary, it seems to go from strength to strength and now Torrode has opened another place somewhere in the City.
MrV: I wonder where he finds the time to oversee the quality when he's doing the Masterchef programme with that bald bloke, Greg Wallace.
MrV: He has a very strange way of eating. Have you noticed? He sort of levers the food into his mouth as if he's negotiating a sofa through a narrow doorway. Quite disgusting. We were always taught to cut up our food into bitesize pieces.
MrO; I daresay, but returning to the matter at hand, I would also add that the service at Smith's is excellent. That waiter had really taken the trouble to understand the menu, and the raw materials, and the wine list.
MrV: I couldn't fault him on his wine suggestion, although it was rather irritating that two bin ends advertised in the wine list were no longer available.
MrO: Yes but the American wine he suggested was exceptional. Smith's, it was called, by coincidence. Extremely good value at £40-odd a bottle and closer to a claret than any American wine I've ever tasted.
MrV: I tried to order some over the internet but it appears not to be readily available in the UK. The man who makes it is a gothic wine maker, whatever that may be. He's in Washington State, where gothicism is all the rage. Americans are so strange, aren't they?

Mr Oil and Mr Vinegar ate two courses each and drank three bottles of wine plus coffee and one pudding, at a total cost of about £200.

Smith's of Smithfield
67-77 Charterhouse Street
London EC1M 6HJ
+44 (0) 20 7251 7950
www.smithsofsmithfield.co.uk
reservations@smithsofsmithfield.co.uk