Review: Toklas, Embankment

Toklas occupies a very handy spot, just off the Strand in what is quite a wasteland for useful places to eat. So it’s been on our radar for a while. So having tickets to see Tom Hiddleston and Hayley Atwell in Much Ado About Nothing at the Theatre Royal gave us the perfect opportunity for a pre-theatre quickie. The play was brilliant, by the by, a most bonkers and over-the-top modernisation of a Shakespeare comedy, which is frankly what you need to do if you want a modern audience to actually find a Shakespeare comedy funny!

The dining room is relaxed and very with-it, classy old tables and comfortable chairs in a stripped-back space. We picked a couple of cocktails to kick us off, an accomplished calvados and benedictine concoction and a good sour based around mezcal. Then we got stuck into a starter to share; breaded and fried pieces of skate with buttered agretti – a kind of delicate spaghetti-like form of samphire from Italy – and dressed tomato. The skate was firm, excellent dipped into the aioli humming with garlic on the side.

For mains I went with a pork chop and Maureen picked linguine with crab and chilli. The linguine was splendid, perfect pasta and plenty of crab worked through it. Lush, and just a touch of chilli. My pork chop came with escarole, something from the chicory family which was braised and spiked with raisins and capers. I did like this veg a lot, great partner to pork. The chop was a solid specimen, good fat on it, some nice charring. For me it was a little over. In most pork chops there comes a point when you realise you’re just soldiering on rather than actually enjoying it. Only the best are enjoyable to the last bite and this wasn’t one of those. Not bad, but then for £30 perhaps I was expecting a faultless chop?

Their chips are amazing, though. Beautiful, salty, crunchy shards of potato. Shards is the right word, they looked like a potato had shattered into the perfect chips.

So that was our meal. A three-course meal will be in the £55 region and I personally think I can find equivalent three courses in London for a chunk less than that. Toklas is solidly good, classy, and worth knowing about… but it’s not going to become a regular for me.