db eats: Brasserie Joel

Location, location, location. It’s amazing how being south of the river automatically downgrades your status, even when it’s by a matter of metres with an exceptional view of the Houses of Parliament.

Perhaps it doesn’t help when you’re the centrepiece of a two-way roundabout which can only have been conceived by lunatics on day release from Hemel Hempstead – and being part of a hotel chain is always a passion killer.

This has to be the reason why Brasserie Joel hasn’t made more of a splash with the excitable London foodie crowd. Certainly you can’t fault Antunes’ Michelin-adorned CV. After a decade in the US and Asia, the French chef returned to London to head up the kitchen at the Westminster Park Plaza when it opened last year.

It’s difficult to predict how long this current project will last. For some reason best known to the architect, the Brasserie Joel dining room eschews a stunning view across Westminster Bridge in favour of a windowless den reminiscent of a nightclub in a ship’s hold.
 
If that was unsettling, the menu was even more so. Promising "classic brasserie dishes", it initially appeared to offer just that – and very mouthwatering they all looked too. However, among the fish pie and beef Bourguignon temptations, your eye suddenly catches sight of Thai coconut soup with crab dumpling, then tuna tartare with avocado and Japanese dressing.

We should really have saved our taste buds some confusion and stuck to the main theme, but in a conscientious effort to put the kitchen through its paces we ordered the two orient-influenced starters, followed by "pork feet" cassoulet and tournedos Rossini. What with the decor and cuisine, there’s something of an unnecessary identity crisis going on here.

The Thai soup was delicious. Delicately yet intensely flavoured, it was served with a pleasing bit of theatre and the dumplings added tasty substance. The tuna seemed to suffer slightly from its fusion leanings. Served sashimi cold, it seemed to be asking for zingy ginger rather than the crispy onions whose flavour overwhelmed the rest of the dish, undoing any textural embellishment.

Changing gears awkwardly, we dived into the mainstream classic French section of the meal, which only confirmed our suspicion that the kitchen should have kept its focus here.

Food aside, the oriental intruders made choosing wine rather troublesome. In the end we nursed our aperitifs during the starter before finally broaching a bottle of Houghton, The Bandit 2008, a Shiraz/Tempranillo blend from Western Australia. It wasn’t quite rough enough for the cassoulet but was pleasant, if somewhat monotone in personality. The silky Tempranillo-led character, bulked out with Shiraz fruit, was perfectly juicy and innocuous but failed to entice two hollow-legged wine lovers to finish the bottle.

The tournedos Rossini arrived more medium than the rare that had been ordered, but was nevertheless declared "a phenomenal piece of beef". The generous portion of foie gras was also very slightly overcooked, but the overall sensation as it melted away in the mouth to leave a deep beefy flavour was truly decadent.

The cassoulet arrived with neat but pleasingly rustic presentation and surpassed itself for flavour, texture and Sunday supper-style comfort. Having been advised against ordering green beans as a side dish on the grounds that there were (coco) beans in the main act, I was relieved to be able to steal my friend’s own portion, which offered just the right light, refreshing balance to the highly-seasoned, wintery pig.

From this pinnacle we wound down gently with pudding. My fruit salad with Tequila sorbet looked as though it had come from a tin, although it was more likely the victim of some ruthlessly proficient knifework. The fruit tasted as out of season as it was but the Tequila sorbet nicely ticked the refreshment and digestif boxes. Of his semifreddo, my friend admitted "I can’t fault it", though it failed to inspire the same expression of intense satisfaction as the beef.

Allowing our food and opinions to settle, we gazed around the room at our fellow diners. It certainly wasn’t the foodie crowd that you might expect for a kitchen of this calibre. Most seemed to be the random assortment of guests you invariably find in international hotels, who certainly didn’t appear to be treating this meal any differently to a convenient refuel at Pizza Express. Several were drinking pints, apart from the birthday party on the next door table who were tucking into Laurent-Perrier and simultaneously lowering the average age in the room by a decade.

Antunes is an excellent chef, but his talents seem to be lost on most of his clientele here and it’s difficult to imagine a more appreciative crowd braving the restaurant location and atmosphere to enjoy his food. Perhaps he can be persuaded to do take-aways.

Brasserie Joel
Park Plaza
London
SE1 7UT

Tel: +44 (0)207 627272
Web: www.brasseriejoel.co.uk

Gabriel Savage, 26.04.2011