Style over substance at XO
XO does not stand for kisshug, as I read in some puff piece. Or maybe it does. XO is Will Ricker's fifth restaurant in a group that includes Notting Hill's E&O and a lot of kiss-kiss or, as maybe they say in Thailand, mwah-mwah, goes on there.
XO also refers to a deeply savoury sauce based on dried seafood, ham, garlic and chillies that was created relatively recently in Hong Kong and named in homage to the prestigious cognac.
Australian Ricker is a canny operator, as much property developer as restaurateur, and Belsize Park is an affluent area in sore need of an independent restaurant.
But when does a group become just another chain? The menu at XO will be familiar to customers of Cicada, Great Eastern Dining Rooms, E&O and Eight Over Eight. Head chef Simon Treadway has worked at three of them.
A glossary supplied explains food terms from Chinese, Thai, Japanese, Vietnamese and Korean cooking styles. The assumption is that a customer would be happy to eat a meal that might include, say, black cod with sweet miso along with Indonesian rendang made with lamb shank and sweet potato.
Surely Ricker's target clientele will have travelled, be it on a gap year, an exotic holiday or spending the kids' inheritance, and would find such a culinary clash of cultures slightly absurd and vaguely unappetising.
Three of us had a meal where the best of our eight choices was snow pea leaves sautéed with ginger and garlic. We might have chosen badly, but that shouldn't be a possibility. Edamame beans, prawn crackers for the healthconscious, had been kept too long in the fridge after being tossed with chilli soy and mirin.
Chilli salt squid, the item Ian Pengelley made his signature dish at E&O, was OK but meanly served in its cone of paper for £6.50.
Our waitress, glamorous enough to be a resting model, tall enough to be refused admission onto a London bus, urged us to try bursting chicken long bau. Four little dumplings differently garnished had rather waxy dough containers which spoiled the impact.
Chopped salad at £9 was as overwhelmed by its heavy-handed sesame and soy dressing as we were by its price. A special of "Grand ma's bean curd (spicy)" I thought, perhaps foolishly, would be a version of Sichuan ma po tofu complete with chilli-hot minced pork and black beans. What arrived were wrinkled ( like grandma?) cubes of fried bean curd in a sauce with the look of sump oil.
Just to reinforce the notion that this concept has everything to do with fashion and little to do with authenticity, one of the desserts, iced berries with white chocolate, is the confection made famous by The Ivy.
The makeover of the spacious Belsize Tavern has been done by Ou Baholyodhin Studio. I wonder if the Fifties-style kinetic overhead lamps are ironic reference to the art and design conscious traditional denizens of Belsize Park. Probably not.
Xo
Belsize Lane, London, NW3 5AS
