One of the most obvious culinary attributes which our modern cookery tends to overlook is the question of texture. We like the textures of our food to be certain, crisply defined, and to avoid the very subtle and the very smooth. We use, in fact, a very restrained series of textures in our cooking, and, if we want smooth, then we want custard.
The really exciting thing, then, about Philip Howard's cooking in The Square, a super-stylish room on Bruton Street, just between Berkeley Square and New Bond Street in the gold-belt of the London fashion and art strip, is his enchanting use of textures. Right from the moment when dinner kicks off with a little cappuccino of ceps, he is busy playing with textures, here offering a super-smooth blend of mushrooms and stock, and then frothing it intensely on the top, so that the smooth texture of the soup is sipped through the cloud of aerated froth.
With something as simple as a stuffed cabbage leaf, Howard holds onto a fairly traditional stuffing mix, here using sweetbreads, pork and pork fat with breadcrumbs, but otherwise he dismantles the traditional idea by simply offering two leaves, one on the plate, the stuffing in the middle, another lain on top, with a perfectly fried slice of foie gras there to offer sublime smoothness alongside the robust textures of the cabbage.
My starter of risotto of lobster with rosemary butter was, in comparison, utterly simple, a perfect bowl of rice with a curled lobster tail, but its art lay in the fact that rice and lobster were
cooked to perfection, with the sweet shellfish slightly toothy, and the rice consolingly serene but enlivened by the rich butter. But if Philip Howard does dot his menus with high-roller items such as lobster and foie gras, as one expects of an expensive, central London restaurant, our dinner proved that the simplest things can inspire the finest, most subtle elements of his cooking.
With some roasted sea bass with morels and a Parmesan gnocchi, for example, he offers two tiny puddles on the plate of white onion puree. Every detail of the lavish ingredients was immaculate - the fish roasted to a slight crispness on the exterior, the morels earthy and satisfying, the gnocchi as good as I have eaten - but the white onion puree was extraordinary. Its texture was ethereal.
And, just to prove that the things of the ground bring out the best in his work, Howard matches a daube of beef with a truffleoil potato puree that defined the meaning of sublime. What was so perfect about it was that it condensed the three pillars of his craft - balance, seasoning and texture - into a single, simple dish. The volume of truffle oil was perfectly balanced within the context of the puree, the seasoning of the dish was expertly judged, and the texture of the dish was glorious: smooth with the slightest touch of mealiness to give it backbone.
But he can also do the crunchy along with the smooth. My chicken with a tarte fine of onions and ceps offered a thin, crisp pastry pie underneath the chicken, then some spinach underneath, and little pieces of foie gras on top, with perfectly roasted garlic cloves dotted around. This is as simple as Howard's cooking gets, but again such respect is shown to the potential which each detail can achieve that the dish was an utter success.
The tradition nowadays in London, said my friend, is to offer you an amuse dessert as well as an amuse to begin dinner. So, a tiny spoonful of pistachio creme brulee arrives, and when someone makes a pistachio creme brulee as well as this it just makes you go weak at the knees.
Our real desserts were a perfect creme caramel, the old warhorse invigorated, once again, by virtue of its texture: no wobbly rubberiness such as has given the dish a bad name, just a narcotically confected smoothness with a bitingly sharp caramel. My own strawberry trifle was a bold attempt to resuscitate another dessert warhorse, but was the only dish that didn't offer the explosive pleasure of everything else.
There is much talk in London right now about a new recession, but if your only evidence for current economic trends was to eat in The Square, you would think the tail of the Celtic Tiger was wagging in W1. On a Tuesday night it was humming, with people and energy, everyone enjoying Howard's magnificent food and perfect service.
The restaurant is owned by Nigel Platts-Martin, who started Marco Pierre White on his career in Harvey's, in Wandsworth, years ago (Bruce Poole cooks there now, and does so brilliantly, said my companion) and, as befits a wine-buff owner, the wine list is smashing. You will need to book to get a table - it's wise to allow a month in advance for the later days in the week - but Philip Howard's cooking is so convincingly enjoyable, that The Square should be on every London itinerary.
The Square, 6-10 Bruton Street, London W1 tel: 0044-171-839 8787 Open Mon-Fri 12.45 p.m.-2.45 p.m., 7 p.m.-10.45 p.m., Sat 6.30 p.m.-10.45 p.m., Sun 6.30 p.m.-9.45 p.m. Major cards. Three- course dinner £45, menu gourmand £65.