Ploussard, London: Brilliant flavours in nappy valley — restaurant review

I don’t know Northcote Road very well. This is disputed territory — the estate agents’ badlands between Wandsworth and Clapham Common. It’s off my patch. So it was a surprise when I got there to discover it’s where all the small, independent restaurants and coffee shops have gone. It felt like that moment in Jurassic Park where they look out of the Jeep and see a herd of something they thought was extinct and everyone gets teary.

It’s a lovely old-fashioned high street. Shops with stately fenestration and high-Victorian bones. There are places you can buy unimaginably subtle colours of sustainable paint, quite a selection of pampering products and a lot of good-looking food. It’s what anthropologists refer to as a nappy valley, because it’s popular with young families. As a result, it’s entirely devoid of people on this sunny Thursday lunchtime, the whole local population being away for half-term.

Ploussard is a wine bar in an old shop just off the main street, set up by Matt Harris and Tommy Kempton of Other Side Fried, a highly regarded local fried chicken establishment. Harris also has form as the head chef of The Parlour in Kensal Rise. The interior has been artfully dressed with a sort of Deco/Moderne plywood panelling which speaks of a Sydney milk bar or a 1950s Soho espresso joint. It’s spacious and light, there’s a view through to the open kitchen and no customers except a couple with a three-week-old baby. Both parents still have that wide-eyed stare, not quite able to believe the little scrap is going to sleep long enough for them to get in a couple of glasses of wine and squeeze in some shell-shocked conversation. Bless ’em.

There’s only one staff member on duty and he conspires to make me feel better serviced than I’ve ever been in my entire career, while simultaneously missing menus, water and most other basic service points. Popping up with an effusive, almost poetic wine recommendation that somehow didn’t actually describe the wine at all, and then disappearing for long minutes to commune with the iPad booking system. I suspect he was very new to the job and I’m absolutely not complaining. I love this kind of thing. The terrible scarcity of staff has meant the replacement of stone-eyed professionals with people whose jollity, charm and eagerness fill the void where others might have some sort of clue. It’s one of the unexpected delights of “The New Hospitality” that eating out in London often feels like being served by Golden Retrievers.

I’d made a pilgrimage here, drawn only by an Instagram picture of a lamb and anchovy crumpet. Years ago, a chef would have carefully planned and executed their “hero dish”, described it fully in the menu so customers would try it, and word would have spread. Someone like me would have come along, described it even better, and a photographer would have primped it and slid it on to the pages of a weekend supplement. Then, and only then, would you have known about it. These days, 30 seconds after it hits the plate, we’re all staring at it in our feeds, so it needs immediate visual appeal and “cut-through”. As they used to say about Hollywood screenplays, it needs to be high concept and, conceptually, a lamb and anchovy crumpet is about as high as it gets.

The crumpet, made at one of several nearby artisanal bakeries, was golden, fried in God knows what. I’m suggesting the rendered buttock fat of Titian’s putti. The lamb — some unspecified complex joint — was simmered down to pulled rags in its own fats and connective tissue, packed into a squat cylinder and drizzled with a creamy anchovy sauce the colour of a Calabrian grandmother’s stockings. It was worth a pilgrimage. No, more: it was worth an eight-volume hobbit quest.

Other stuff was great too, though. “Bbq cucumber, almonds, salt lemon” undersells a young cucumber, scorched and dressed in ajo blanco, the Spanish soup made of almonds. The duck and espelette sausage was fat and meaty, without mitigating fillers, relying purely on the hot slash of Provençal chilli to cut back the lipids. Served with white beans and radish, it was as carefully balanced as an inebriate cyclist passing a police car.

The rest of the duck returned in magnificent force. It was a single breast, but not one of those ghastly pre-millennium, flash-grilled and fine-sliced jobs. It seemed to have been cooked slow but rare, possibly roasted on the crown, then lopped into generous quarters. Alongside was “green garlic”, which read as an assertive but ultimately prepubescent leek, and brown oyster mushrooms. I usually give oysters a miss as they combine an off-putting soft texture with no redeeming flavour. The chef here, though, knows enough to have shown the absorbent little buggers some of the duck juices in their time of need, perhaps some of the fat and sauce, which they sucked up greedily and in consequence took on the plump, moist forest-floor seductiveness of a dryad’s ear lobe.

In some ways, it’s a shame to see a place as exciting as Ploussard empty on a Thursday lunchtime. But if le tout Wandsworth really have decamped to their places in Cornwall, I suppose it at least means I can get a booth, and the lovely front-of-house guy gets a couple of quiet shifts to find his feet. These are early days, and rough parts rub down to a polish.

Meanwhile, back there in the kitchen, Harris the chef plays a solitary blinder. Every course spot on. Old-school skills, superb ingredients, creative ideas, excellent presentation and some of the best flavour and seasoning work I’ve encountered in way too long.

Follow Tim on Twitter @TimHayward and email him at [email protected]

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