Confederacy of a Dunce - Locally-sourced food

Friday, August 25, 2006

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Earlier this week Mrs. Dunce and I went for a birthday meal (hers) to Konstam at the Prince Albert, a London restaurant with an interesting gimmick: food served there is sourced from London (within the M25, and/or within the area covered by the Tube Map; I'm not exactly sure where the line is drawn). I'd have to say I thought this was quite a gimmick, overly gimmicky perhaps and surely the food would suffer (especially after seeing a number of uneven reviews). After all, most people don't think of London as an especially productive region for restaurant-quality food. Sure, years ago it was all fields, full of livestock and crops of various sorts. And plenty of eels; all you had to do was drop a horse's head in your local river/canal. Not to mention other river/canal dwellers not requiring decapitated bait. But these days, hmmm. Most people probably think of "London-sourced food" as food you get from London restaurants. Perhaps fried chicken from the popular London restaurant "KFC" or any of the numerous knock-offs (Dixie? Dixy? Hentucky? Kennedy? Kent's Tuck Inn? Kansas? Mississippi? Tennessee? All real chicken places documented HERE). Or perhaps from a more upscale restaurant (I don't know any of these as all my meals come from chicken places). Or maybe something made from rat or a cannibalistic treat of London-sourced human flesh, both of which are quite readily available London ingredients. OK, perhaps I'm being a bit excessive; after all we did see some episodes of the BBC2 documentary which followed the man behind Konstam as he traveled around London trying to source products that were truly produced in London (here's a BBC link). But it still seemed very gimmicky.

Nonetheless, Mrs. Dunce's particular interest in Konstam at the Prince Albert (higher than any other London restaurant, which is saying something) became quite clear as her birthday approached. So she was quite happy that it was our destination for the evening (I kept it secret until earlier in the evening, even resorting to telling an outright lie). The place doesn't look like anything special from the outside; it's a converted pub on a very busy street (I ride right past it when I cycle to work, and hadn't noticed it at all). The interior is a very aggressive green color, but the most noticeable aspect of the decoration is the light fixtures. I can't really do them justice with a verbal description, so check out this Flickr photo. The string-looking bits on the light fittings are tiny chains, of the sort that are most readily associated with dog tags. "But what about the food?" I can almost hear you asking. I was sort of dreading that part, because I didn't pay close enough attention to remember the exact details (and we did not take our menu along with us, as apparently you are meant to do if you're of the "foodie" persuasion [it's not stealing; it was that day's menu, with the date on it and everything]). We decided to go headlong into the "locally sourced" aspects of the menu, choosing an English red wine (not from London, but close). A bit on the "cheeky" side but unexpectedly tasty. To start I had some sort of very nice smoked fish with blinis and sour cream, Mrs. Dunce had a salad of some kind featuring a soft-boiled duck's egg (exact provenance of the main ingredients unknown). For the main courses we swapped sides of the non-meat menu: Mrs. Dunce had the fish (sea bass, presumably from the Sea of London, with some kind of sauce possibly including some rather unusual tarragon leaves), and I had the veggie choice, pierogis with chard, cheese and some other something-or other (see what I mean about not keeping track well enough?), with a green salad (mint, parsley, and a few other flavorful, small-leaf greens). Everything was prepared extremely well, and both the starters and main dishes were quite nicely designed to be eaten with their accompanying vegetables/etc. in the British manner: a little bit of everything on the plate stacked onto each forkful (I am usually a strong "separatist" in matters concerning the diverse contents of plates of food). And they left us with enough room for dessert: I chose a very tasty plum-and-something tart (which was quite tart indeed, but I'm a fan of tart tarts), while Mrs. Dunce went for the cheese (a blue cheese and a very fresh goat's cheese). It was a fantastic meal, right up there with the best meals either of us could remember.

consume

Friday, August 25, 2006 12:51:58 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)