Review: LPM, Mayfair

LPM remind me a lot of The River Cafe. Splendid produce. A real sense of place. A love of good, simple food. Eye-watering prices. I’m particularly bothered by the wine menu. It must be said that there are a handful of wines on there for under £100. But a handful just means you feel self-conscious when you choose one.

That aside, many of the dishes were satisfyingly good. The concept is absolutely meant to be sharing. If you chose the lentil salad for your starter and insisted on having it to yourself, you’d be chewing through a bowl of chilled lentils with a few small cubes of fresh apple and a few nibbles of grilled tomato in it. And then if you chose the veal chop for your main course, you would be served a nice big veal chop. And c’est tout.

This is exactly what I did, and it really was a splendid veal chop with a beautiful salty char. Of course I shared it, and I tried some of Maureen’s Dover sole in return, which was a lovely specimen correctly cooked. The lentil salad I mentioned was very good indeed, the apple and tomato lifting some of the loveliest puy lentils I’ve enjoyed. Oh, and a little snack to start – a pissaladiere – was a perfect specimen with very sumptuous sticky brown onions taking me straight back to Nice.

It wasn’t all heavenly. The gratin dauphinois was really a lake of baked cream with some sliced potato swimming in it, very indulgent I’m sure, but nowhere near as satisfying as one made with the right proportions. The chips were crisp enough but rather dry; not actively bad, but if you’re paying £9.5 for a portion they really should be top notch. Maureen’s escargots were criminally tiny. I’d have been a bit embarrassed for them if they showed up at a local bistro, but at £20 for a half dozen they should have curled up in their over-sized shells in shame. Which I guess they did.

Puddings did something to salvage the affair, with a splendid and generous creme brulee having divinely silky cream and the pain perdu carrying a good note of spice in its crisply sweet crusty edges. But really it’s not often I start throwing out the prices of individual dishes in a review. I only do it when they feel completely eyebrow raising. You can expect to pay £80 each before drinks for three courses and I could only really recommend that if every dish had been as good as the veal.