Saying No to Norma.

Posted by Nicky Richmond on March 7, 2024 in food | 4 Comments

I am delighted when F, a former client, suggests Norma as our lunch date.

“A place of joy”one critic described it, when it opened back in 2019 and we could all do with a bit of joy.

On my first visit, it is good in parts.

First visit : Burrata with radicchio, roasted winter tomatoes, carrot leaf pesto and Mosto d’uva (£16). I’m always a sucker for a bit of a radicchio medley and the burrata and pesto combo is great and the seasoning is spot on.

Pasta alla Norma (£19) feels like a fairly safe bet. I wonder whether they have (accidentally) brought me the starter portion. It is fine, although slightly sludgy towards its depths. The pasta is fresh and do feel free to kill me here, but my view is that dried would have been better, as the soft pasta and the pasty aubergine become indistinguishable as I go on. But the seasonings are on point and I am happy, mostly because I am going on way too much.

The seasonal leaf salad I order with the pasta (£6) is simply more radicchio on radicchio action. I’d quite like to have known that when I ordered it.

My client likes the food. He comes here a lot. I am going to have to hide this review from him.

I decide to come back and have another go, because I have seen some menu items which are worth investigating further. And to bring C.

I regret that now.

For those of you new to these reviews, C is my OH. He is wearer of The Face,^TM accompanies me to many reviews and has an excellent palate. His judgements are quick and brutal.

We go at pensioner-special, 5.45, which, as any fule kno, is the very best time to eat. Do not judge me. When you are old, you will see the light. Because it still will be light, when you leave, for much of the year.

Because he is a creature of habit, I know C will order the tuna and monkfish tartare. Or to give it the full menu fanfare, tuna and monkfish tartare, squid ink rice crisp, Kalamata olives, blood orange caviar, pickled fennel, black pepper, red sorrel. (£15).

I should have taken menu-control at this point, but my recent training as a coach has taught me how to allow people to come to their own decisions. Me. Can you even imagine?

The plate is busier than Piccadilly Circus. “Not what I was expecting” says C, when what he was expecting was a few simple marinaded slivers of fish. This is what comes of not paying attention to the words. He was also a lawyer once. There’s no excuse.

The fish is rendered all but tasteless by the cloying dressing. There is a confusion of flavours. I hate to contradict the late, great, Iris Apfel, but sometimes, more is not more. The squid ink crackers are good.

My burrata, green asparagus, wild garlic, red datterini and focaccia crostini (£16) is naked by comparison. Deep-frying destroys the flavour of the wild garlic. A good slug of olive oil would not have gone amiss. It looks like something I’d throw together at home if I had people over and needed to make a bit of effort. Compared to the trying-too-hard dish opposite, it is basic. But the ingredients are fresh, and it is otherwise fine. But not £16 before service fine.

So far, the food seems to have no middle register. It’s either bland or in your face. Spoiler: this is a theme.

One of my favourite store-cupboard meals is fusilli, red chilli flakes, some toasted pine nuts and rude amounts of parmesan. So when I order the wild-farmed fusilli , wild garlic, red prawn, yellow courgette, red chilli (£26) I’m thinking something similar, something comforting, something with a bit of bite and something a little more elegant than my store-cupboard special.

Something that is not a plate of stodgy, overcooked pasta, with a sharp unpleasant wild garlic punch drowning out the subtle taste of everything else. The courgettes are a yellow irrelevance in the face of the garlic assault. Raw prawn innards are draped over the whole, like a gelatinous fishy shroud. It does not work. The prawn is no match for the chopped chilli. It sticks to the pasta and the whole thing becomes a claggy mess.

I leave half of what is not a large portion.

Anyone who knows me in real life will understand the significance of that sentence.

Not to be outdone, I can see The Face ^TM across from me. WTF is this, he says, as a conch shell is placed before him. It’s the linguini, Cornish crab, chilli and lemon butter (£28).

A version of a classic dish he has ordered many times at many restaurants, it has never looked like this. A shellfull of noodles, drowning in what looks like cream. Crab flakes are not visible. There is a graininess to the gloop which we assume might have started life as crab, but we aren’t sure.

I know, I say, but does it taste good? I know already. Before the words.

I think he’s exaggerating after the words, because once he gets onto the train of disappointment, he makes it stop at every station.

He is not exaggerating. It tastes overwhelmingly of fish. Not in a good way. In an, overly rich, sickly sort of way. He leaves most of it.

Against our better judgement, but mostly because we are still hungry, we decide to try the desserts. C’s usual go-to would be tiramisu. Given that much of what we have ordered has borne little relationship to the anticipated dish, we ask about the dark chocolate and caramelised hazelnuts tiramisu (£14), just in case.

“It’s not a traditional tiramisu” they say. It’s more like a chocolate mousse.

There is no surprise on our faces.

Not wanting to risk the tiramisu à la Norma, C swerves to the Braeburn Apple Rose Tart, vanilla cream, wild strawberries, basil (£14). It is hard to find apple in the tough, overcooked pastry ‘rose’. It is hard to eat it with a spoon. It is hard to taste the advertised wild strawberries, which appear to have been blitzed into what tastes like watered-down strawberry jam. It is hard not to be disappointed.

I know all this because after one spoonful, C asks me to swap for the tiramisu.

He doesn’t finish that either. It’s a chocolate mousse with delusions. Some elements of tiramisu in there, a bit of sponge, but it tastes no better than something you might buy at M&S on your way home.

There is quite a lot of staring from the waitstaff and very little table attention. At the end of the main and dessert we have to tell them we are done. Because our plates are still half full. Because they are not looking.

Not a word is spoken. Not a did you enjoy it, or a was everything ok. Not a word throughout the whole meal. And for once, I wanted them to ask.

The bill arrives. Even then, tumbleweeds instead of words. I break the silence.

I ask them why they hadn’t said anything when they could see we had left a substantial part of the meal uneaten. There was shock. I don’t think they had seen. It was as if their only job was to put the food on the table. I said that the cooking was a real disappointment. That we had not enjoyed it.

She said she would tell the kitchen. I say that I’d rather she speak to the manager. I want to explain, to give some useful feedback. She comes back with a slightly discounted bill and an entirely missed point. No manager appears.

There is no point. They do not care. The place was buzzing.

On my way out I see two dead fish in the otherwise empty fish counter, its nakedness covered by clam shells. They looked past their best. They fitted in just fine.