Situated a hop and a skip from both the V & A and the Brompton Oratory, there’s little doubt that Marc Abela’s latest opening, Cassis Bistro, is firmly aimed at an upmarket and well-heeled clientele.
The impression is reinforced from the moment you walk in the door to find a tasteful collection of modern art (Abela’s own) decorating the restaurant, from such figures as Julian Opie, and the suitably suave yet accommodating staff prepare to minister to your every request. There is no shortage of high-end establishments round this part of London, but the emphasis on Provencal cuisine is a subtly original one; as with his Michelin-starred flagship The Greenhouse, Abela understands how to offer a twist on what his audience might expect.
My esteemed colleague Harry and I were pleased to discover, looking at the menu, that the highly talented head chef David Escobar had not attempted to become over-ambitious and ignore the central tenets of Provencal cooking, namely simplicity and sparing use of frills. Thus, a starter of three different kinds of pate with fig chutney and country bread was nothing short of rapturous, with delicate attention paid to the flavours of chicken, pork and liver, making the combination a beautifully hedonistic one. This was equalled by a fine beef carpaccio, given a kick by the well-placed addition of some aged Parmesan. A couple of glasses of Viognier made for fitting accompaniments.
For the main course, my eye alighted on a herb-crusted rack of lamb with the slightly eyebrow-raising addition of aubergine caviar, a combination I hadn’t previously encountered. Thankfully, it proved to be excellent, the aubergine’s subtle richness accentuating the tenderness of the lamb. One imagines it passed onto the great meadow in the sky happy. Harry, meanwhile, pronounced the duck breast with chickpea galette an excellent affair, and a shared olive oil mashed potato offered a decadently sumptuous experience that very nearly matched Joel Robuchon’s signature dish.
By this point, we were at belt-loosening stage, but we thought it would be rude not to sample a couple of the desserts, and we were exceptionally glad that we did. Raspberry millefeuille was as delicate as earlier dishes were robust, offering a refreshingly tart flavour in the raspberry that undercut the usual sweetness of the millefeuille. Meanwhile, a salted crème caramel was one of the best that I’ve ever tasted, being far from the shamefully floppy mound of sugar that this usually appears as but instead offering a punchy, complex mix of sensations that puts the usual drab mediocrity to shame.
It’s easy to praise Cassis Bistro to the skies. It’s been a massive success since it opened, and no doubt it will continue to be so. We’re looking forward to our next visit already.
