Artis
You’ll not have heard of
Artis unless, like me, you live in Blackheath. It’s a new bar/restaurant that’s opened in the building that was previously an outlying branch of Locale, tucked away in a side road. They don’t seem to have done any PR and their social media is refreshingly amateur. The Sunday lunch photo on Twitter looks like a photo taken by a food blogger and captioned “I bloody hate Sunday lunches”. Now I’m here, I’m not sure whether they’ve even redecorated? So with low expectations we stop in for a bite of supper.
And they manage to limbo right under our already low bar. I go for salmon with wilted wild garlic and nduja roast jersey royals. The char-grilled asparagus, potatoes and ransoms are actually pretty decent. But the salmon has been mercilessly cooked to a steaming hot uniform off-white, a bit dry at the edges. It’s edible, but then so is a tin of spaghetti hoops.
Sad burger
Maureen goes for the wagyu burger with truffle fries. I think they forgot the truffle oil. Nevermind, I’m sure it would have been nasty. So what I’m really intrigued to know is how you manage to make a burger taste like its been boiled? My hunch is that it’s quite a thick lump of beef, and yet the texture is very finely ground – more like a McDonald’s patty – so perhaps all the liquid gets trapped inside and steams the meat? Or something? I dunno, whatever, it tastes utterly wrong. Edible, but then so is a McDonald’s burger.
And with all this, I might have cut them some slack. It’s a new place, the staff were friendly and keen to help. But they’re taking £17 for that lump of salmon and £18.50 for a burger that Gourmet f*cking Burger Kitchen would be embarrassed to serve. So Artis is just taking the piss. They’re going to have to massively up their game or I think they might not last.
Salmon
