Review of the reviews
I can’t help but be rather enam- oured of Daroco. It’s silly, yes, but it’s fun, to quote the title of my favourite episode of The Good Life. After all the bluster, I was expecting very little from the food, but I’ll eat that cynicism immediately: this was a more than decent lunch. First, that big, blue and ridiculous pizza oven is churning out possibly the best pizzas in Soho. These are huge, sloppy, soft-based and floofy-edged, and made with good-quality produce at more or less the same price as the nearby PizzaExpress. The “par- migiana” with tomato sauce, fried aubergine, stracciatella, grana padano and basil is very good and serves two. The “mor- tadelight” is littered with fior di latte mozzarella and comes with mortadella, more strac- ciatella, a rather wondrous pistachio cream and crushed pistachios. The arancini are plump, crunchy-coated, stuffed with well-seasoned braised leeks, scamorza, hot peppers and pecorino, and pretty much as good as arancini get. As well as that mousse, we
Grace Dent is enamoured of Daroco, London
had the tiramisu for pudding, a generous, unregimented stack of espresso-soaked savoi- ardi biscuits and mascarpone
Jay Rayner heads to South Shields for Colmans Seafood Temple We order the whole fish of the day. It’s a sea bass the length of my forearm for £29.95, roasted in a caper butter. They tell us it’s for one, but this slab of crisped salty skin and pearly flesh just sliding from the bone would do for two, alongside their chunky chips. A Malaysian seafood curry has a thick, spiky broth which dares to speak its spicy name, but for £21.95 feels light on content. There are mussels on this menu. A few of those wouldn’t go amiss at the price. We attend to the essentials,
which means ordering the chip- shop curry sauce for £2. The fear is that some ambitious chef, who knows a few things about roasting
10 | The Caterer | 24 November 2023
spices, will have tried to “improve” it. Happily, that’s not the case. A proper chip-shop curry sauce should taste like it’s staining your insides while raising your blood sugar, with its mix of rough spiced heat and sweetshop rau- cousness, just as this does. It’s the Ultra High Processed
Food we can all get behind. A round of applause, too, for their mushy-pea fritters, which are fat discs of thick pea loveliness in a lacy batter overcoat which leaves behind chip-shop scraps on the plate, there to be picked at. The impact of all this is cumulative. They’ve devised a menu that is part bargain-priced Bentley’s or Scott’s, part kiss-me-quick-and- kiss-me-again. You can come here for something light and dainty. Or you can come here for something that will harden your arteries at 20 paces. If you’re planning a walk on the beach afterwards leaning into the wind, do go for the latter.
“This was a more than decent lunch”
splodged dramatically in a bowl, with no sharp corners and almost like a trifle. The staff are lovely and the
menu isn’t that pricey, con- sidering where it is. Leave your family staring at the 50m screens playing Beyoncé and treat yourself to a Napoli pizza with capers, white anchovies and taggiasca olives with a £6 glass of montepulciano. Cen- tral London is befuddling, but there is some wonky sanity at play here.
Felicity Capon sees how No 42 by GuestHouse, Margate, has updated the traditional The hotel feels snug and inti- mate, while also offering 21 spacious, sumptuous rooms, a lounge bar, a rooftop bar, a downstairs café and spa, and the pièce de résistance – the Pearly Cow restaurant, which is really quite hard not to rave about. The overall vibe of the hotel is a mod- ern update on a traditional, Vic- torian seaside stay, with original Victorian columns in the central Pearly Cow restaurant, leafy pot plants, stained glass windows and black and white checker- board floor tiles. The rooms have been gor-
geously designed, all dreamy neutrals and creams and proudly
boasting beautiful local art. Records curated by a local record store play softly in the background on a Crosley record player. There are handy beach bags, espadrille flip flops and sumptuous beach towels to take to the seaside, and coffee and tea-making facilities hidden in a miniature beach hut, but the overall feel of the décor is classy rather than seaside cliché. The bathroom is also gorgeously luxurious, with a roll top bath, spacious shower and Frette robes to snuggle into. The Pearly Cow restaurant is
proud of its local suppliers, which are all listed on the website, and the food is exquisitely presented. There’s also excellent wine by the glass. Nothing here has been overlooked; even the small bites. The Field Trip spa, on the ground floor of No 42, is well worth a visit, with friendly and professional therapists offer- ing tailor-made treatments in a wonderfully relaxing setting.
www.thecaterer.com
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DAROCO.COM
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