Marcus Wareing +Tredwell’s Covent Garden London

 Walking Carefully

Turnmills. Treadmills. Tredwell’s, It’s rude to name drop but we haven’t been to a Marcus Wareing restaurant since lunch some time ago with a heritage architect, an architectural historian and a museum dame at The Gilbert Scott. So how thrilling to be back at one. Despite it being the second of two school nights out in a row. The previous evening was dinner at the O+C Club with a Country Life contributor. It’s rude to place name drop but we haven’t had such good John Dory since dinner at Cliveden, back in its Von Essen heyday. Incidentally the name John Dory is derived from the French Jaune Doré which means golden yellow, the colour of the fish. Anyhoo, Tredwell’s it is. Thankfully this restaurant is far enough along Upper St Martin’s Lane not to be illuminated by the neon nightmare of Leicester Square. Ignore the critics; the place is fab. Especially so in the company of a hotelier soon to be hotelier and restaurateur, a restaurateur, a realtor and an interior designer. “A dash of Art Deco is the whole rage” apparently. Blah blah blah. Inchbald naturally comes up in conversation. When worlds collide, past and present merge. We’re full of the joys tucked into an intimate booth. Fresh, colourful and photogenic, the food is pretty decent too. Sometimes, there’s art in simply living. After a negroni aperitif on the rocks, two courses turn out to be filling enough.  The usual Malbec, this time 2010 Flechas de los Andes (£51). Chef Marcus Wareing comes up trumps with fish cake, confit egg, roast garlic aioli and salsa verde (£8.50) followed by roasted monkfish, squid, prawn orzo (£26). Favourite line of the night, “I’ve packed a suitcase in my suitcase for shopping in New York.”