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Thirteen years at The Ritz, a spell at L’Enclume in Cumbria, three years with Jason Atherton at Row on 5 – and chef Spencer Metzger displays nods to his illustrious career in the loos of Chez Rose. The miniature Michelin-Man figurines are a reminder of decades spent refining veloutés, tweezering caviar on to white crab meat, fusing miso with truffle, and helping to convince customers to shell out £250 per person on tasting menus and sips of rosé at £75 a glass (available at the two-Michelin-star Row on 5).
Then what does Metzger go and do? He opens Chez Rose, supported by Atherton, on the site formerly home to Atherton’s Little Social restaurant, where he has free rein. Metzger can direct the décor and decide the culinary direction – and the result is as revelatory as it gets.
It provides the answer to the question: “Where do chefs prefer to eat?” Where do the tweezer-brandishing, froth-propagating overlords like to chow down? Clue: it’s not somewhere with a 12-course tasting menu. No, they want what I (and all the other critics who will pile in here) want, which is chicken, fries and a good-value bottle of wine.
Hence Chez Rose. The name is a tribute to Metzger’s grandmother, Rosemary, who passed her love of food on to him; the place a French bistro with cute banquettes you step up and into, servers in white coats buzzing about and dishes and wines listed on a chalk board. It’s in Mayfair, but while the prices are robust they’re not bonkers, and there’s excellent house wine at £45 a bottle. What’s the catch, you might ask?
Anxious not to find one, we started with two nibbles on toast – anchovy with curd, and a raw red prawn under a pile of chopped tomato, both cute little things.
Then the real deal began with a starter of tomatoes. Here was a plate that I never thought was possible in London, something I assumed could only be achieved in the likes of the Mediterranean.
For it was the taste of a judicious and inspired trip to the market – for tomatoes, at their freshest, grown on the rich volcanic ash of the slopes of Mount Vesuvius, and soft, ripe peaches. Just as a glass of fizz encourages new friendships at a party, so here stracciatella (creamy shreds of sweet, soft buffalo-milk cheese) unified the fruit, which was finished with olive oil and crowned with basil leaves. It was achingly good.
A dish of Orkney scallop with Café de Paris butter was well cooked, but I’m not a sucker for that compound butter, as it can lean too heavily on the curry powder. If I were a young Spencer, I’d have nipped into the kitchen when Grandma Rosemary wasn’t looking and hidden the curry powder, for all our future good.
Next, chicken fetched up in a handsome copper pan on a wooden board, divine looking and expertly sliced. This is poulet roti at its finest. It cannot be bettered anywhere. With golden skin and tender flesh, it came with morels and a tiny scattering of herbs, in the most delectable sauce made with vin jaune, the briny, nutty white wine of Jura in eastern France.
It was more elegant than creamy, and of this version Auguste Escoffier would have been proud. We had all this with a green salad and fries, of course. I sat there wondering why on earth anyone would wish to eat anything anywhere else.
Coaxed by the wonderful sommelier into drinking a delicious pinot noir (which was served in a glass of such magnitude and shape I felt sorry for whoever has to polish it), we headed to pud. We shared a chocolate mousse – very good and soft and rich, but with too great a heap of chocolate shavings on top. I would have preferred it pure, simple and unadorned, just as the salade verte was.
But, who cares whether there was too much chocolate. Chez Rose is so good you’d best head to Pollen Street and take your place in the queue – because it deserves a long one.
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