Look, I’ll level with you. Where I really wanted to go this week was Sheesh, the Chigwell import that’s opened opposite the Wolseley and has a perma-queue of vajazzled Lambos outside. It’s getting rave reviews from the likes of, er, Ollie Murs, but I’ve fielded accusations of shooting fish in a barrel before and besides, what I suspect is spray tan in restaurant form hardly needs the publicity. And so instead, I found myself in Battersea, wondering who in their right mind would open a restaurant somewhere that by all rights should be selling second hand rugs.
In SW8, not N19, Archway is named for its vault under the Overground, which feels something of a last resort rather than a choice, but apparently isn’t, being the restaurant front for long-standing catering company Spook. Spook’s Emily Few Brown has drafted in Alex Owens to head the kitchen, who trained at The Ledbury and the Harwood Arms before putting in a four-year shift at the River Café, which means her boss is offering something of a novel proposition — might Battersea finally have a new opening that’s any good? Don’t even try it with the phone-it-in places at the Power Station.
The dining room — with its seaside-ish panelling, glinting kitchen and commitment to candles — is a beauty. Restaurants beneath railways tend to appear temporary; Archway is more deliberate. There is poise here, mood and a loud, laughing atmosphere — think Sessions Arts Club if it swam the Thames. Not an atmosphere available to anyone who went all in on the hot cross buns this weekend, it should be said. Tiny tables and chairs are crammed in together so small and close that no lucid diner would risk overeating for fear that the fire brigade might need ringing about the time the coffees come.
Perhaps this is why pints only come in two-thirds, to lessen the risk of anyone bloating up and ending up marooned. And yet, Owens’ monthly-changing menu seems hell-bent on impelling gluttony; it’s one of those lists where, in a daydream of increased income, you consider an insouciant wave to the waiter: “We’ll have two of everything”.
In a daydream of increased income you might consider an insouciant wave to the waiter: ‘We’ll have two of everything’
The River Café steer is evident in the Italian inflections, in the cavatelli and maltagliati and burrata, in the simplicity of presentation. It is not, perhaps, a menu to stir thrills — you’ve had anchovy butter on a flatbread before, I’d imagine. But it takes its place beside other recent openings, like Bouchon Racine, where novelty is set aside in favour of familiarity with finesse.
Yet where Racine does its chicken livers or tête de veau with bellowed enthusiasm, Owens is cooking as though on a leash. Deep-fried lamb sweetbreads should be brazen but here they come timid, hiding among a hairball of wild garlic. Prawns, themselves fleshy and satisfying, paddle in ’nduja butter that agitates with its indifference. A roast chicken leg laid on polenta is cooked beautifully, though what should be the star of the dish — the morels — are drowned, lost to an unwelcome sea of butter. This is true too for mussels that bob without hope of being tasted in the straightforwardly-delicious sauce of tomato and oregano that coats orecchiette.
But there is an adroit touch here: a mixed grill of rabbit, sausage and quail may not be a looker, but where most mixed grills suffer from their entire conceit — different meats cook at different paces — here each is faultless. Were there room to get up without knocking the tables over, the feeling is frustration, the urge to stand and shout to Owens to have more confidence in how damned talented she obviously is. In other words: let loose, live a little.
The wine list is meant to be a sell — and in fairness, the mark-ups are extremely reasonable — but the less said about our bottle of Gaglioppo, the better. Though in the end the fire brigade’s jaws of life were not required to exit the premises, there was the urge to call the police when the coffee arrived — every sip felt like an assault. But the feeling, on leaving, was not that heading here is a bad call; Archway may in fact still be the area’s best new restaurant. But in those glimpses revealing just what Owens is evidently capable of, something else sharpened into focus: a feeling she is being held back, as though there is a hand on her shoulder that does not push but restrain. She should shrug it off. I don’t suppose Sheesh is much into subtlety.
