RIVINGTON GRILL
LONDON
http://www.rivingtongrill.co.uk/
The truffle-sniffing dogs and pigs have sensitive and acute noses, but to hunt down potential truffle restaurants you need vision like a hawk.
A vision that can see down grey, rain swept narrow, cobbled streets, spot crisp white table cloths behind old thick historic walls, a wine cellar stocked with the classics under tarmac roads and a dedicated chef in whites who has no interest in being spoken to.
It was an unconscious flick of my eye, as I crossed a small back street in Shoreditch while mounting the opposite pavement that my antenna reached out to my left, way beyond my gaze, and spotted The Rivington Grill.
I twisted on my heel mid step, like a champion tennis player and turned 90 degrees left down a boring side street, I was magnetically pulled in, by something I had not even fathomed.
Within steps I was peering inside, eyes cupped, into small lead windows set into an ancient London yellowed thick brick wall. I knew I had struck restaurant gold.
A traditional handsome dark bar, super crisp perfectly ironed tablecloths set waiting virginally for another round of ravenous dinners.
Wine glasses cupped towards heaven lined up opposite three bronze pig sculptures on a dark wooden bar set the tone of the menu. Fine British ingredients, uncompromised and solid fare had built us an empire, offered us comfort and consistency with not an Italian truffle in sight.
“Oooh” I said as I entered the empty dinning room with a few staff finishing off laying tables here and there.
I dragged my truffle case in behind me its wheels scraping the wood, and floorboards like a reluctant child.
“ Hi, where’s chef? I’m here to see the chef. If that’s ok? Will he see me?” I fired questions at a faceless young man behind the bar, who was the last obstacle between me, and the man who made this place spin.
In a few seconds a thin chef, about late 40’s with big blue eyes came hesitantly towards me and I could read his body language.
I was delighted to meet him and we were soon in excited conversation about Spanish pig farming, what the Chinese were buying, what he was buying and why. He offered me a coffee but he was going to start the lunch service soon so I respectfully declined but said I would take a ‘rain check’ come back and try the roast pork.
“It’s meeting such interesting people like you that keeps me in the truffle world Simon” I said as I grabbed his arm and he knew I meant every word.
“You need to look up Peter Gott to understand pig farming” and he wrote down the name as he made piglets sound fascinating and I promised I would research him.
Time is always short when you find someone so interesting and Simon had relaxed, sat on a bar stool but we didn’t have time to look at truffles, besides he didn’t use them.
“Some people put a cloth soaked in truffle oil into the bag or spread the oil around the top of the jar so you get the aroma,” he explained to my horror as I imagined all those damp smelly cloths. I would never entertain such an idea and he knew it.
It made sense, as smell was the first powerful thing to hit you with truffles.
It was an incredibly complicated business and that harmless faceless knobby tuber lump of black gold held plenty of secrets.
It had made my day meeting Simon Wadham who had been chef in this Richard Carlings restaurant for ten years.
“Who can I bring here for lunch?” I thought as I ran back down the street towards Old Street tube. “Who can take me for lunch there, which would be even better” I asked myself but drew a blank on both questions.
I was running late and had 15 mins to get to Angel so forgot about the bus incase the traffic was bad and descended back down in the bowels of London for one stop further up the Northern Line.
I wondered where they got those three black sculptures of the pigs? Did they put the suckling pigs on the menu before the sculptures of because of the sculptures? I must study the menu further and get my head around pork cracking, the Chinese and Spanish pig farming methods.
Finding Simon Wadham was like finding another hidden jewel under a pile of manure and I felt warm and satisfied that my truffle/restaurant chef nose was still sharp.
I sat on the tube and stared at my black suitcase filled with truffles wrapped up snuggly with no one around me knowing what valuable morsels I carried.
“I may be having a fascinating time but you guys have to got to go into a truffle dish and soon”. I mumbled, so my fellow passengers could not hear me.
They would eventually die in there and I had to find them a worthy new home.
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