Reality check for starters

Peire's friendly face among the action pictures

Eating at FRONTLINE, the recently opened private members' club and public restaurant set up by Vaughan Smith, founder of Frontline Television News, an agency for freelance reporters and cameramen, puts the cost and everything else about food into perspective.

Gazing at a large black-and-white photograph of a blasted landscape in Chechnya which hangs on the back wall, it is hard to fret too much over the texture of a fishcake.

Other arresting photographs supplied by the agency VII (seven), organised on similar principles to Magnum, decorate the high-ceilinged room. There are pictures of children which wrench and melt the heart. It was therefore all the more welcome to be greeted by a familiar, friendly face, that of Fernando Peire, who used to be a manager at The Ivy. Apparently so invaluable was Fernando in setting up Frontline, he has been made a director of the holding company.

While Paddington might seem an appropriate location in which to open a business called Frontline, the immediate area around the premises has a villagey charm and the proximity of St Mary's Hospital is not just useful for emergencies; staff are discovering the good set-price menu deals at lunchtime and early evening of two/three courses for £10/£12.50. Next year Frontline could be a candidate for the 60 under-£60 list for the Evening Standard London Tonight Restaurant Award.


By what Bob Dylan would call a simple twist of fate, Lenny Walcott, the chef at Frontline, was working for the same eight years in the kitchens of Le Caprice that Fernando Peire ran front-of-house at The Ivy. This astonishing fact is not reflected in the menu, which has a Middle-Eastern slant. Three of us chose first courses of artichoke, fava-bean-andtoastedalmond salad, Turkish courgette fritters and organic salmon fishcakes.

The salad was a bit short on artichokes, long on leaves, but was fine. The Turkish element in the fritters was an accompaniment of yoghurt with chopped cucumbers. Forcing myself to forget the tragic destruction of Grozny and think judgmentally about the fishcake, I would say it was a bit pasty. In the main course, roasted breast and leg of pheasant with roast winter vegetables, bread sauce and juniper gravy read well but was a bit disappointing.

I had a taste of the wild-boarand-apple sausages served with spring onion mash and red wine sauce and liked them rather better than did their recipient. My cumin-spiced breast of chicken with roasted garlic and new potatoes was reticent with the spice and rather dull.

Upstairs in the club a dinnerparty for courageous war correspondent Janine de Giovanni to launch her book Madness Visible: A Memoir of War (Bloomsbury) was apparently diverting the energies and attention of the kitchen. That might explain the absence of bubbles visible or indeed any flavour of the wine in the Champagne-and-pomegranate jelly. Glazed lemon posset was more successful. Given another chance, I would choose the Bramley apple and blueberry crumble.

The short wine list kicks off with a Sicilian Borgo Selene white and red at £11.50. Should you be willing to spend a bit more, I can recommend the likeable Mulderbosch Faithful Hound, Stellenbosch 2000, for £24.

There is an agreeable, unpretentious, laid-back atmosphere at Frontline. The set-price deals are a definite service to the neighbourhood and Fernando Peire is just the sort of chap I would want to run my war.

Frontline Restaurant
Norfolk Place, London, W2 1QJ

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