Silverbrow on Food

Francis Mallman 1884

The one thing I kept hearing about Francis Mallman's restaurant 1884 was that it was the seventh best restaurant in the world. It seems such a strange thing to make a virtue of and not really something to brag about. I think it is fair to say that we never remember which song was at number seven in the charts, or which country came seventh in the World Cup. My confusion was only compounded when I discovered that for the last three years, 1884 Francis Mallman has not been ranked at all by Restaurant Magazine. It was last ranked 7th in 2002, by 2003 it had dropped to 45th. However, just because it is not ranked does not mean it is not good.

The restaurant is housed in Bodega Escorihuela, a beautiful building, the size of a small fort, just outside Mendoza. You enter the restaurant through a well-stocked, although not very imaginative bar. I noticed that behind the bar were several cocktail books, although tellingly, the only cookbooks were The River Cafe Cook Book and The River Cafe Cook Book Two.

The River Cafe Cook Books set the tone for the meal: very high quality, delicate but robustly flavoured Italian food. Although the food itself nodded towards Italy, the menu layout was a bit more Spanish: Tapas, Starters, Main Course and Desserts. Me and Silverbrowess shared four tapas: eggplant bruschettas with tomatoes and mozzarella; ricotta bruschettas with anchovies and black olives; grilled polenta with tomatoes and basil and burnt fennel with grilled tomatoes. They were all good, but the ricotta was outstanding, exceptionally fresh, creamy and milky in equal measure. I would guess it was homemade, if not, it could not have travelled too far from its producer. If only the rest of the ingredients had lived up to the cheese. One of the things we noticed with Argentina, was that the fresh ingredients is not always that good. If we had been in Italy, or the River Cafe, the tomatoes would have been sweet and juicy. At 1884 they tended to be a bit pulpy without much flavour. They were not the floury pap that often passes for tomatoes in London, but these were not astounding examples of their kind.

Silverbrowess' main course of grilled salmon steaks with baked potatoes and onions was excellent. The salmon had a bit of char on the outside, but was only just cooked in the middle. It had a very delicate flavour. I did not find out how local the salmon was, but the I would have thought the rivers through the foothills of the Andes would have provided excellent conditions for the fish to thrive. The potatoes and onions were basically dauphinoise: creamy, layered, unctious. At the time, I enjoyed my main course of mascarpone and pumpkin ravioli in fresh herb butter. The pumpkin was sweet, the ravioli, sufficiently pillowy and the sauce a little too rich. However, later that night I began to feel my ravioli return for a second round. I hasten to add that it never actually resurfaced, I just had a nasty feeling that it might. I cannot blame the ravioli, or any part of my meal at 1884 for certain, but I know that the thing that made me feel most queasy, was the thought of the ravioli. Which is a shame, because I enjoyed it whilst I was eating it. I am slightly concerned that it was the richness of the meal that got to me. It does not bode well.

Luckily, I was not blighted until after we left, so I was able to share with Silverbrowess a refreshing dessert of berries with mint ice cream. It was fine, that is about it. Judging the meal on how we found it at the time, it was very good. However, with a couple of hours hindsight, the quality paled. Having said that, my abiding memory of the meal is not that I felt unwell, it is of the beautiful surroundings, the generally well executed food and the River Cafe Cook Books.

I had expected Mendoza to have lots of very good restaurants. It is one of the largest wine making regions in Argentina, home of Malbec. I had thought a bit like Napa or Bordeaux, good wine would be matched by good food. I was wrong, decent places are too scarce and 1884 is one of the few that can be considered good. On our meal it was not anywhere close to being in the top restaurants of the world, but it is a very good restaurant and generally, I believe lists are overrated. I think I was unfortunate with my upset tum, but, it was the experience I had, so you can take warning from that if you so choose.

1884, Belgrano 1188, Godoy Cruz, Mendoza, Argentina
Tel: +54 261 424 2698

What others think

Frommers - With fine Argentine meats and fresh local produce, his carefully presented cuisine combines his Patagonian roots with his French culinary training.
New York Times - ...widely considered the premier restaurant in Mendoza.

Taming the evil empires

An interesting article in the Financial Times (registration req'd) today, suggests that maybe supermarkets are not quite as evil as they are often portrayed, especially for the small producer.  Talk about counter-intuitive.

The article focuses on Gü, W. Jordan Cereals and James White Drinks as case-studies of small companies that have focused their marketing efforts on supermarkets and thrived as a result.  In the three examples given, the CEOs argue that for small producers of high-quality food items, supermarkets can be the ideal outlet.  The most attractive element of supermarkets for producers are the potential sales.  These are helped along by the more-or-less centralised procurement process: If a supermarket wants to stock a particular line, the producer is assured of sales in multiple stores around the country.

We regularly hear that supermarkets are not good for small producers.  However, as I have written previously, producers, especially farmers, need to take some responsibility for their problems.  As the examples in the FT article demonstrate, savvy marketing goes a long way.

None of the producers quoted in the article say that dealing with supermarkets is a walk in the park.  One of the biggest problems appears to be the ability to scale-up production to meet supermarket demand.  However, they also make clear none of the problems are insurmountable, they simply require careful thought.  The rewards for this seem obvious.

I was particularly interested by a quote from Bill Jordan, CEO of W. Jordan Cereals, in the article, where he cautions against allowing supermarkets to walk all over suppliers.  He suggests that "There are some situations where you have to say:'Sorry, I can't do it.'" If you read books like Joanna Blythman's Shopped, you get the impression this is all but impossible when dealing with a supermarket buyer.  However, if a cereal maker can do it, surely a farmer can as well.

The Magdala

It first dawned on me when I tried to read the menu through the dirty glass.  It then hit me like a thunderbolt as I ate the warm bread, flecked with onions and dipped in home-made herby olive oil: I rarely eat anywhere by chance. Wherever I am in the world, I make sure I know the good places to eat.  I don't mean just those recommended by Michelin, I mean the places where I know I will get some decent nosh.  That is particularly true for London, my city.   I was therefore surprised to end up having an excellent lunch today in a pub that at best looks grotty from the outside, that I pass fairly frequently and that I had never heard of.

I had strong-armed Silverbrowess into a trek across Hampstead Heath, following a weekend of eating, drinking and CSI watching.  So it was that we were in South Hampstead (that nether region near The Royal Free Hospital), and nowhere was open.  If I am honest, one of the reasons we took the route across the Heath that we did, was because I was salivating at the prospect of a pizza at Fratelli la Bufala, having watched Heston Blumenthal make the perfect pizza (you have got to love Sky+).  I was therefore disappointed FlB was shut, along with virtually all the other cafes and restaurants.  Somewhat dejected, we set out back across the Heath in a vain attempt to get a table at Kalendar.  Just before we strode forth onto Parliament Hill, Silverbrowess pointed out the aforementioned grotty looking pub and suggested we at least take a look.  I thought I should humour her and so went to investigate further.

The menu was tough to read given the filth encrusting the display the case.  But from what we could make out it looked interesting.  I particularly liked the look of the roast vegetable stew with cheese dumplings.  It is rare that such effort is put into veggie dishes.  So we went in and it soon became evident that effort is a watch-word here.

The bread was the clearest example of this.  We tasted a couple of different breads thanks to the speed with which we demolished each basket.  The first, was a white bloomer, with sweet, crispy onions sunk into the thick, crunchy crust.  The bread itself was pillowy soft.  This was good bread.  The next basket was more sour than the first.  It think it had some apple juice in it.  The crust was just as thick as the onion loaf and was crunchy enough to give the gnashers a work out, again very good.

I noticed that every so often the chef would put a hot loaf down onto the pass and it would be sliced by the waitress and served immediately.  There is an adage that you can tell the quality of a restaurant by the quality of its bread.  Although many such culinary adages are downright lies (just because locals eat in a place it doesn't mean its good, they might have bad taste) this one held at The Magdala.  You know that if a chef cares enough to be bothered to bake loaves of bread on New Year's Day, then he really does give a toss what he serves you.

We both ended up having what could have been dull omelettes, the veggie stew was not on the truncated New Year's Day menu unfortunately.  Instead I got a perfectly cooked (not too dry, not too wet) exemplar, oozing with salty stilton and earthy mushrooms.  Silverbrowess had a similarly good cheese and tomato.  The chips were clearly not out of a packet, although I reckon they only had a single fry, not the double fry that is essential for good chip.  As an aside, this is yet another example of where my grandmother was right on something.  If The Magdala's chips were fried twice, they were not cooked for long enough, as both Silverbrowess and me had chips that were not cooked through.  Usually this would be a heinous crime.  Today, given my New Year's good humour and ongoing delight at finding this gem, I overlooked it.  Our meal was not rocket science, but all it takes is to do the simple things right and the punters will be happy.

The realisation that my dining out can be so formulaic was a bit depressing.  However, I think it bodes well that I found somewhere like this on the first day of the New Year.

Then again, this pub has its own notorious place in history.  It was the scene of the crime that sent Ruth Ellis to the gallows.  She was the last female executed in the UK.

Happy New Year everyone.

The Magdala, 2a South Hill, London, NW3 2SB, UK
Tel: +44 (0)20 7435 2503

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What others think

As far as I can tell, nothing has been written about this place.  If that changes, I will let you know.