Tredwells

Tredwells, from Marcus Wareing and Chantelle Nicholson, creates contemporary British cooking in the heart of Covent Garden and the West End.

Tredwells | Relaxed fine dining restaurant in Covent Garden

http://www.tredwells.com

Tredwell's, restaurant review: Has Marcus Wareing overstretched ...

Modern chefs create their own empires, whose rapid expansion is fuelled by several factors: the ever-more central place of food in our culture; the astonishing resilience of British restaurants through a recession; and the rise of the celebrity chef.

Of the "Pots & Jars", my mate Af and I have chorizo jam with charred bread (£4) and beetroot hummus with flat bread (£4).

The chipotle-marinated chicken wings (£5) are cold and slime-covered; the courgette and ricotta fritters (£5) in a batter much too heavy, especially when covered in pine-nut butter; and the warm baked beets with goat's cheese and walnuts (£6) aren't warm and don't have enough goat's cheese.

The latter includes a nondescript braised lamb belly with aubergine and tomato curry (£10), wherein the lamb hasn't been braised for long enough, and the rest of the dish tastes more like a bland caponata than either a sizzling or a subtle curry.

I am hopeful that, though he has already given the restaurant scene so much, Tredwell's will give it something more: a sense of humility, a knowledge of limits.

Tredwells Restaurant Review Leicester Square London

You don’t want to go somewhere where the food is too astronomically expensive, otherwise you may be laden with a huge bill and you certainly don’t want to end up in McDonald’s eating a double cheeseburger and fighting over the last of the salt drenched chips.

Most of all, you want somewhere where the food is so good, it doesn’t matter if the date isn’t.

Cocktails are of course, a staple of any good date in my mind so we started with the Fair Play – a mix of gin, Kamm Sons, elderflower, grapefruit, lemon and egg white – which was the perfect palate cleanser (and nerve calmer if you’re that way inclined) to start off.

For mains we both ordered the Monkfish, squid and prawn orzo and shared a portion of triple cut chips.

With all of that in mind, if your beau suggests heading to a dive bar for your next date kindly redirect them to the Tredwell’s website and make a booking on their behalf.

Tredwell's, London WC2, restaurant review - Telegraph

In a basement full of mirrors and black surfaces, it felt like eating in the corner of an overpriced Courchevel nightclub.

Astonishingly, the squid did not taste fresh to me: there was something unsavoury about its soft, almost mushy texture, the way it put up no resistance at all.

M had homemade salted caramel soft serve (£5), which looked like a Mr Whippy, coloured brown, with chunks of butterscotch.

It had an off-putting texture, full of ice-crystals, and a bland flavour – both interrupted but not improved by the lumps of butterscotch.

There are porcine delights a-plenty (porchetta with fennel, carrot and orange is a must, £17), to be washed down with lashings of artisan gin A short stroll away from the city’s theatres, this burly, bustling place deals in hearty British dishes.

Grace Dent reviews Tredwell's | London Evening Standard

Smoked sticky chilli chicken thighs, chicken liver mousse on bacon jam toast, chipotle chicken wings, pork chops on baked celeriac and polenta fries with a smoky tomato sauce.

Or rather would be a starter if you’re the sort of tragic retro-naut who still wants a menu divided into recognisable courses.

Read more about Tredwell's The chicken croquettes, we later found out, are in actual fact a bowl of perilously moreish deep-fried triangle-cut pulled-chicken sandwiches.

At one point my guest left to smoke a cigarette with a stern warning, ‘Please could you leave at least some of the smoked beef short rib if it arrives before I’m back?’

TREDWELL’S 4A Upper St Martin’s Lane, WC2 (020 3764 0840; tredwells.com) 1 bottle still wate £3 1 carafe Pinot Noir £17 2 pork belly sliders £5 1 confit cod   £12 1 chicken croquettes £5 1 large short rib £32 1 sweet potato fries £4 1 fruit nut parfait £6 1 olive oil cake £5 1 double espresso £3 1 Americano £3 12.5% service    £11.87 Total £106.87

Tredwell's - restaurant review | London Evening Standard

Tredwell’s also has an extended “allergy key” on the menu, a curious nod to health concerns when all the food here is so fatty, salty and sugary, so smoky, pickled and charred that it’ll prostrate you anyway.

Smoked pork cheeks, pickled cauliflower (£7) was nicely soft, very smoky pieces of pork with a creamy cauliflower purée but also vilely pickled cauliflower slices, plus pickled onions for good measure.

Lamb belly, tomato aubergine curry (£6) was again very salty and fatty meat — “Catfood,” said Katie — presented on mushy veg, strongly flavoured with cumin, coriander and chilli, while smoked chicken croquettes (£5) tasted like unhappy fish fingers (“more catfood”), not helped by more of the same barbecue mayo as the mange-touts.

Hoping for green relief, we ordered a house salad (£4) which turned out to be the most offputting dish of the lot: slices of candy beetroot, leaves of red chicory, ribbons of yellow carrot, bits of cauliflower and red pepper, plus scraps of fresh ginger, diced pear and lots of mustard seeds, doused in a sugary-sour vinegar pickle, again.

Latest restaurant reviews Latest restaurant reviews 1/128 Sackville's 2/128 Paradise Garage 3/128 Asma Khan's Darjeeling Express Daniel Hambury/Stella Pictures 4/128 The Trading House 5/128 Le Chabanais Daniel Hambury/Stella Pictures Ltd 6/128 Aqua Nueva 7/128 Les Deux Salons Adrian Lourie 8/128 Vintage Salt 9/128 The White Onion ★★★ Adrian Lourie 10/128 Chutney Mary 11/128 Social Wine Tapas ★★★★ 12/128 Berber Q 13/128 The Ivy ★★★★★ Paul Winch-Furness 14/128 Fu Manchu

Tredwell's, London WC2, restaurant review - Telegraph

In a basement full of mirrors and black surfaces, it felt like eating in the corner of an overpriced Courchevel nightclub.

Astonishingly, the squid did not taste fresh to me: there was something unsavoury about its soft, almost mushy texture, the way it put up no resistance at all.

M had homemade salted caramel soft serve (£5), which looked like a Mr Whippy, coloured brown, with chunks of butterscotch.

It had an off-putting texture, full of ice-crystals, and a bland flavour – both interrupted but not improved by the lumps of butterscotch.

There are porcine delights a-plenty (porchetta with fennel, carrot and orange is a must, £17), to be washed down with lashings of artisan gin A short stroll away from the city’s theatres, this burly, bustling place deals in hearty British dishes.

We Review: Tredwells

She first won me over when I attended her plant-based supper club last year and my return visit to sample the a la carte menu secured my position as a fan.

On the menu: Chantelle is a fan of plant-based cooking (her vegan cookbook comes out in summer) so there is a fair few vegetarian and vegan options available, helpfully marked out by the comprehensive footnotes on the menu that also include warnings of dairy, gluten, fish, peanuts and many others.

Onto the real food, salt baked carrots with pine nut crumb, freekeh and roasted garlic aioli doesn’t sound like something that I would usually care about but I have blind faith in Chantelle and it paid off, she somehow makes carrots delicious and interesting.

For dessert the peanut butter pudding with dark chocolate sorbet went down a storm when served at the supper club and I was pleased to see it again on the menu; another superb dish, the sorbet isn’t soft and icy like you’d expect but more in thick, hard chocolate buttons.

Final Word: I recognised a few of the dishes from the plant-based supper club and was pleased to see them in the a la carte menu.