Set in the heart of London’s historic Leadenhall Market, restaurant and bar The Factory House opened to some fanfare in September 2012.
The lofty ideas inspiring Executive Chef Sean Davies are: “the excitement of the Victorian industrial age, when people were intrigued to experiment, innovate and try new things.” Sadly, The Factory House puts British food back two hundred years. It’s as if there was never a revolution and this place desperately needs one.
The Factory House – time to clock out?
After clocking in upstairs (yes, you actually have to put a time card in the slot) guests descend a helical staircase surrounding a free-standing glass shaft lift, to a copper-faced bar with a long table of cantilevered seats and a huge 180-cover dining room. It’s early evening on a Friday night in the City and not even a mouse stirs at the bar. The place is deserted. Perhaps they’ve read the reviews?
The Factory House design alludes to the age of innovation and industry, with a contemporary and sometimes humorous nod to its modern-day City location – take a closer look at the oil paintings and the time keeping pieces. Key features in the basement setting include machines to echo the factory feel. Antique train station clocks – which have previously made an appearance at parent company Davy’s bars elsewhere in the City, along with gauges, pipes and valves and a Victorian coffee roaster renovated as a waiter station.
The soundtrack in the loos is the sound of steam trains but the music in the restaurant is bland. Amplified in the cavernous space muffled only by the drapes of the curtains around private booths and screening the dozen empty tables in the back. Beige fabrics, strung bistro-style, cut off the views of the centrepiece kitchen with its open grill and spit-roast sheltered by a copper hood.
The Factory House – Crackling Open Range
The thoughtful and reasonably priced drinks list has wines by the glass, carafe and bottle and a grown-up cocktail menu designed by the award-winning Fluid Movement is wonderfully executed by the entertaining Ilana. The lovely Lucy and Sarah, front of house, manage to keep our spirits up, too.
Nyetimber English Sparkling Wine – sensational taste!
Nyetimber is a bright, sharp English ‘champagne.’ Three times winner of the ‘Best Worldwide Sparkling Wine’ at the IWSC competition and from 400 acres in West Sussex and Hampshire. The bar will also serve a new craft beer made in the heart of London at Sambrook’s Brewery in Battersea. On the launch night the Wandle ale was presented by, I kid you not, Matthew Stout.
So the food?
Dishes have been devised by Executive Chef Sean Davies, previously from the Tate restaurant, who is committed to showcasing British food at its best each season. Sadly it’s him who should be committed. The kitchen gets it completely wrong. It pushes back British cooking, maybe even pre-industrial revolution. We were excited to eat here after the great atmosphere generated at the launch. We came away from dinner so disappointed. On the upside the plates were warm, the malt loaf and cardoman seeded butter were lovely. Cocktails and wine good. But the meal was the worst I’ve had in a British restaurant.
The Gordal Olives with Orange Sea Salt & Wild Oregano were a nice touch but cold in the middle – what are they doing in the fridge, anyway? Bacon & Thyme Popcorn nicely coloured and tasty and, on launch night, the Lancashire Rarebits were delicious.
To commence (the menu, sorry provender’s, words not mine) the grilled wood-pigeon was rare and edible with a generous zesty-dressed watercress but the accompanying fig tart was burned, tasted and looked like a tampon after the flow. The prune and bacon rolls were gritty, greasy and gross.
Wood Pigeon and Fig Tart at The Factory House
The other starter of a big dollop of roughly chopped dressed crab (£10.25) atop a tower built on remarkably razor-thin sliced tomatoes and a Bloody Mary emulsion. A middle ages construction rather like building your hut on mud. It’s bound to collapse, and it did.
Chopped Crab at The Factory House
12 hour cooked Lamb Shoulder (£17.25) was inedible. Overcooked, the bone was burned. It looked liked the decomposed prop from CSI. The lemon couscous was like shot.
Lamb Shoulder and Couscous at The Factory House
Another main dish of sage roasted partridge, smoked bacon, creamed celeriac and sloe gin (£17.50) had the texture and taste of boil-in-the-bag reconstituted chicken. Accompanied by a bland buttered beetroot from 1876 – we checked the rings for its provenance. Even a hobbit would push it to the side of the plate.
Pigeon at the Factory House
The roasted vegetables had the consistency of slugs. They even left that terrible silvery trail on the plate
Cheeses, fresh British ones, although dainty portions were delicious (three for £9.75). We couldn’t actually face a pudding. A shift down the mine would have been preferable. So a second cocktail to settle our nerves before escaping into the atmospheric and buzzing Leadenhall Market.
I get the restaurant’s ambitious reach but it falls so far short as to leave departing guests deflated. Foraged and wild ingredients such as cob nuts, medlar plums, damsons, wood-pigeon, guinea fowl and partridge are to be applauded but how about some seasoning and careful cooking?
For £90 a head it’s a rip off and those industrialists on the wall have a smug smirk. But it won’t last long. I’m agitating for a revolution. The opening menu runs from September to November 2012, if they have any sense they’ll go back to drawing board.
10 Lime Street, London, EC3
Next to the Lloyd’s Building; entrance in Leadenhall Place. Opp. Lloyds Building.
www.facebook.com/FactoryHouseUK
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