Paradise (By Way of Kensal Green)
Above: Paradise (By Way of Kensal Green), W10, is ‘quite clearly going to be one of the neighbourhood’s very best places to eat and drink’
When is a terrine not a terrine? This was the question running through my mind as I chomped through my starter at the recently-revamped Paradise.
When it’s ‘potted oxtail’, apparently. The dish itself was good – a little fridge-cold, and a tad undersalted, piquantly paired with capers and onions – but it was definitely a terrine. It was even wrapped in cavolo nero and dressed with some very good olive oil, just to confuse things.
For years, British chefs would make meat paste and call it rillettes, so it is amusing (and rather gratifying) to note that culinary cachet is now to be found in English, not French.
Mind you, the new chef at Paradise is the estimable Tim Payne, whose lengthy association with Marco Pierre White has given him both a rock-solid classical French technique and a healthy disregard for the excesses of French menus.
The new owners of Paradise have, thankfully, spruced the place up but left it much as it was. The high-ceilinged, beautifully-proportioned dining room is panelled in pale wood, with chandeliers and (I presume) random portraits in gilt frames adding a baronial feel.
Both cooking and produce is of the highest order. A starter of sea scallops with crispy pancetta and seaweed featured notably sweet, tender bivalves, not the bloated, fibrous monsters – diver-caught or otherwise – which turn up on too many dinner plates.
The lamb was heroic. Perfectly rosy rump of Herdwick lamb, old enough (and hung long enough) to have acquired a slight tang of the farmyard in its fat; yet supremely tender, and perfectly paired with good tapenade and a sinful, rather salty potato galette (not ‘potato cake’, you notice.
Menu language is still in flux: mind you, they did spell it gallette). A forkful of lamb and a slurp of wine, and I really was in Paradise.The lamb was so good I had to rebuff several attempted incursions from my companion’s fork, which had already polished off a nice, but small, fillet of sea bass, sitting on a nice, but huge, mound of lentils. The tamarind and coconut sauce surrounding the fish and lentils was superb.
The wine list is short – I suspect it will grow – but well-chosen: our bottle of Huia Pinot Noir from Marlborough showed just how well New Zealand is doing with the noble Burgundy grape: rich and flinty, raspberry-scented, elegant, spicy… and bloody good with the lamb.
Puddings were a bit of a let-down: a decent, but unexciting chocolate marquise; and an espresso crème brûlée which tasted burnt (or ‘overcaramelised’ as chefs are wont to say) and bitter. We consoled ourselves with a fine bottle of 6 Puttonyos Tokaji, which is pudding in a glass.
My trip to Paradise was the day after the chef’s 40th birthday celebrations, and thus had probably been marked as a ‘day off’ in Mr Payne’s diary for the last couple of decades: this may account for some minor glitches in seasoning. Even so, it is quite clearly going to be one of the neighbourhood’s very best places to eat and drink, and a pleasing reminder that food doesn’t really taste any better in French. Bill Knott
Dinner for two, with wine, around £85
Paradise by Way of Kensal Green, 19 Kilburn Lane, Kensal Green, W10 4AE
020 8969 0098