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The Times Magazine ~ Eating out, Giles Coren

Giles Coren Review- Saturday Times
03/02/2024

Greenberry Hill

don't know how you think this works, the whole "choosing a restaurant to review" thing, but it's kind of like this: I sit at my desk all day staring at the sky, waiting for the most important British restaurateur of the past 50 years to text me and tell me where to go. I keep on waiting.I wait some more. Sometimes it can be weeks.And then: ping! It's Jeremy King, formerly of the Ivy and Le Caprice, subsequently the Wolseley, Delaunay, Colbert and Soutine, among others, soon to be of a load of other places that will also become household names, telling me that his old employee Morfudd Richards, of the excellent Greenberry Café in Primrose Hill, has a new place in Belsize Park that is struggling a bit and...Say no more, Jeremy. I am on my way! "She doesn't know I am asking, but if a word of favour might be possible it would..." I said, "Say no more!"And off I went. And that is how it works.

I was actually very grateful for the nod, because I did not know Greenberry Hill was there on Haverstock Hill, just up from the Everyman cinema, and that is possibly part of the problem. Greenberry Café on Regent's Park Road is a brilliant restaurant and absolutely spot-on for its swanky ravers-turned- bankers location. But Belsize Park is more difficult. It has never had good restaurants. Or anything else really (bar my old prep school). It's just a rotati of GBKS and Giraffes and Tootsies with good independent cafés down on England's Lane for local mums, but nothing independent of any culinary heft. It's a wealthy, middle-aged, high turnover property area, like Hampstead, where the locals go out in town if they want feeding and aren't very focused on the immediate community. But unlike Primrose Hill, which shares those problems, it isn't remotely cool. No pubs or anything. So gastrotourists don't come visiting either.That said, I am told by local café owners (for I drink a lot of coffee round there) that Greenberry Hill is "rammed" during the day (although café and restaurant owners always think that everybody else's places are always rammed, just like we writers always think that other writers are "everywhere"), so what is the problem?"The evenings," says Morfudd, when I dropped in with Esther and a couple of mates. "That's the problem." And it was true, there were only a couple of other tables in that evening and it's quite a big space: a double-fronted spot that used, I think, to be a Black & Blue among other things. It has big windows and uncovered tables and can feel a bit like the daytime café staying open after dark that it is. But it is very pretty and if it were full, or two-thirds full, and jamming, it wouldn't feel that way at all.

And it deserves to be, because the food is excellent and not expensive for the area, or indeed for London in general. We had Korean-style meatballs (£11.50) with crushed peanuts, and gochujang aïoli, and wild mushrooms with parmesan polenta and a poached egg (£9.50) that were both warming, friendly dishes, and a standout starter of roast piquillo pepper, dill mayo, anchovies and sliced boiled egg (£8) that was truly memorable. It had a floral, rosy flavour from the gently roasted pepper, a little bit of meatiness from the egg, the umami of the anchovy and I think there were little frazzled capers that gave an extra crackle. There was real intent in this small plateful, really new flavours in the mouth.I had a very good chicken schnitzel Holstein (£21), there was calves' liver with pancetta and mash (£19.50), a great-looking pan-fried fillet of bream with 'nduja butter on braised white beans (£23), Devon crab linguine (£19) and a house picpoul for £28. Best of all, there was a wonderful Italian waitress (or possibly manager) called Sara, who told me that I looked Italian and, when I said that I wasn't "but thank you", replied, "It's not a compliment."So, Greenberry Hill: come for the well- priced, very good local bistro cooking; stay for the titillating rough treatment.

Link to the article: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/fe3da0ad-e1fa-4ebc-95df-464c2216589b?shareToken=9108e7eb0fcd4cf85b426ef2195d8015