Terroirs in Time Out
Terroirs
*****
Artisan-made food and ‘natural’ wines
© Britta Jaschinski
By Guy Dimond
Terroirs, the wine bar near Charing Cross, has grown. It’s expanded from the single floor it used to occupy into a large basement two floors below (the same level as Charing Cross tube station concourse), thereby roughly doubling in size. This is excellent news for customers, because it’s been stupidly busy almost since the day it opened at the end of 2008, and securing a table could be tricky.
Terroirs describe the new basement as’the restaurant’, though in fact there’s not much to distinguish it from the original wine bar. The menu still has a selection of ‘small plates’, the magnificence of which has made Terroirs one of the best places to eat in central London within the last year.
The kitchen is still very much on form despite the extra workload. Potted brown shrimps are served warm, on toast, and tasted remarkably of the sea, but with a melting butteriness. Equally impressive was a slice of pork and pistachio terrine which had clearly never seen the inside of a supermarket deli counter: it was robust, coarse-textured, and exploded with flavour. Both of these dishes could be eaten as starters, or as ‘small eats’.
The main courses dishes are even bolder. We gave the pungent andouillettes (tripe sausages) a miss, opting instead for fillets of bavette steak, served with a cleft bone filled with warm bone marrow, topped with earthysnails. The combination of slithery, ethereal bone marrow and the more rubbery bite of the snails is a brilliant one, and it was beautifully arranged on a wooden platter.
Other delights include a very impressive collection of pungent French cheeses, a selection of crustacea, and charcuterie. This is wine bar food par excellence.
The wine list’s also exceptional. Terroirs is an advocate of ‘natural wines’, the ‘beyond organic’ wines which has proved controversial (for our blog on the subject, click here. I tried three of these ‘natural wines’, the first of which tasted exactly like a dry cider. The next one tasted of cider and smelt of damp cardboard; the third tasted of fermented grape juice from a home-brew kit. All the ‘natural wines’ on the extensive and interesting list are marked with a little icon of a horse’s backside, I noticed too late.
The staff are genuinely passionate about the wine list as well as the food, and very well-informed. When our waiter asked for our honest opinion of the final wine, and we gave our candid opinion, he knocked it off the bill. Top marks, but if I was you, I’d steer clear of the horse’s backside.
Time Out October 2009