14th May 2007
Sometimes Seasonal Food, but no spring in service.
The advent of the Gastro Pub is something I've always held issue with. The vision of this happy medium is always somewhat marred by the nature of the combination; gastro in food (and price tag), pub in service.
So as not to risk seemingly tarring all with a similarly lackadaisical brush, there are exceptions- The Havelock Tavern in Brook Green, The Narrow in Limehouse, along with the Cod and a couple of others in East London, I've never found remiss in service. But they are unfortunately the exception and not the rule.
Nor, much to my disappointment, is the Badger. I live not a million miles from the corner of Portobello and Golborne Road; an oddly mixed area of the world, even by London standards. Alongside book collectors you can find wholesale Lebanese food sellers, antiques shops, edgy hair dressers and the (in)famous Trellick Tower.
The Badger seemed like a new proposition and welcome replacement to it's previous inhabitant, the Bed Bar. And from the outside it's certainly true. The pub is small and inviting, with soft lighting and comfy ready-worn-in sofas (is there a machine that does that?) and upstairs a small restaurant to seperate the pub-goers from the grazers.
All fine so far.
The menu is fine, with lots of unusually named Englishy sounding produce (tricklemore salad and saltmarsh lamb?), mostly seasonal (Rock Oysters in May?) and all well combined to give a limited, but tasty selection. The wine list does its job- I can recommend the Prosecco, which worked well with the oysters and is an affordable, sometimes preferrable, alternative to the champagnes.
The atmosphere was mute, particularly for a Thursday at 8pm, with few people other than our table of 4. This didn't seem to make an enormous amount of difference to the attentiveness of our waitress, who seemed to hold greater value in moving tables, or talking to her colleague than to respond to my frantic gesturing. Having wheeled my arms several times we did get her attention and her resulting manner was fairly indifferent to our plight, taking our order with a ruthless efficiency and indiscriminate lack of patience. My advice at this point is order everything you canwhile you have them, as subsequent attempts to order were even less fruitful.
My tomatoes on toast were fantastic... tomatoes on toast, and my fricasee of vegetables seemed to be little more than peas, mushroom and potato in a cloudy broth. To give its due though, it was tasty.
We attempted to finish off with some sticky drinks, 3/4 of them arrived and no explanation was giving as to the whereabouts of the 4th mystery drink. Perhaps we'd find it later somewhere, as a nice surprise!
And so we left The Fat Badger- one assuming he's Fat because he chooses to eat in places where he gets served, rather than his own establishment- with a somewhat heavier heart, moderately lighter wallet and slightly greyer hair than when we arrived; 4 starters, 3 mains, 2 bottles of inexpensive fizzy wine and 3 liqueurs coming to a grand total of around 150- somewhat conscientiously not including service- definitely left me feeling cheated, not being 5 minutes from Babes and Burgers, 10 minutes from Osteria Basilico and all that Kensington Park Road has to offer.
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