Baring gifts: the lunch deal here might be one of the best in the capital
(Picture: Matt Writtle)Not to sound like Downton’s Dowager Countess belatedly discovering the existence of weekends but, lately, I have been reacquainting myself with the joys of a bargain restaurant deal. Lebanese lunchtime specials that barely breach a tenner. “Kids eat free” lures scrawled on the chalkboards of rural pubs. Flagrant abuse of Dishoom’s bottomless chai. Everyone apart from the shareholders of energy companies continues to feel an especially vicious and prolonged financial pinch. But I’d say that, from where I’m standing, one of the more positive by-products of this crisis (if you are fortunate enough for restaurant dining to still be a possibility) has been the lifting of a collective haze around hospitality spending; a citywide awakening to the light violence of eight quid pints of IPA and an acknowledgement — written in hyped desi pubs, endless food halls and old school caff lust on Instagram — that budget-consciousness and brilliance are not mutually exclusive concepts.
Which just about brings us to The Baring: a fancily appointed new backstreet pub in Islington where, a little while ago, I found myself looking down at what may well be one of the best rotating lunch deals in the city. On this day it was a thick, luscious fillet of pork collar, masterfully seared and seasoned, beside a sharp clump of fennel slaw and a wakame miso mayonnaise. That it cost £12 (or £15 with a glass of house wine) for this level of composed excellence felt like it might have been a typo. And while it’s a piece of pricing that’s admittedly an outlier in the broader context of the menu here (regrettably, this is very much £7 pint country) I am leading with it because it’s instructive about the wider successes of this partnership between chef Rob Tecwyn and GM Adam Symonds. The Baring has both old-fashioned generosity of spirit and a nimble, timely progressiveness. Theirs is a policy of “if it feels good, do it”, touched by the kind of dazzling execution that prompts big smiles, fingers swiped through sauces and wordless grunts of deep, deep pleasure.
Charred mackerel and salmorejo, tried on the first of two trips to its austere, somewhat formal room, was continental summer on a plate: a raft of scorched fish set in a thrumming, zingy lake of the gazpacho-like Andalusian chilled soup. Quail shish — served beside garlic yoghurt and a seeping crimson pool of pul biber chilli oil — packed a great whooshing rush of smoke and concentrated, succulent poultry flavour. The chips, meanwhile, were the sort where you need a moment to gather yourself. Triple-cooked wonders of complex, stratified crunch, glowing gold as if tracked by their own spotlight.
Tecwyn, who met Symonds at Highgate’s mythic The Bull and Last and most recently worked at Kerridge’s Bar & Grill, cooks with the hearty finesse you’d associate with that CV. However, there is an effective livewire unpredictability to lots of the dish ideas here; an embrace of culture-splicing that feels pulled from a distinctly British, decidedly London emotional terroir. Which means there is falafel, cockle vinaigrette on steamed seabass and, specific to what we tried, rosy slices of salt marsh lamb that nod towards ocakbasi culture via blackened friggitelli pepper and an adorable little accompanying kofte.
True, there was a slight loss of momentum with a suckling pig loin and spring green main that all seemed to clang the same repeated note of salty richness. But pudding, a warm, sugar-dusted almond financier with cherries and glossy vanilla cream, proved a balm. And, again, there is that loss-leading lunchtime special, which has recently also comprised thick coins of morteau sausage on white beans, and the sort of hulking croque monsieur that requires the happy unhinging of one’s jaw.
The residents of the handsome townhouses that overlook The Baring’s corner site don’t look, on the face of it, like they are in need of any additional life advantages. But my God, have they got one with the arrival of this new spot. It is left to the rest of us to make the journey, sink into a chair and pretend, for a few blissful hours, that our local was anywhere near as elegant or immensely likeable as this.
