Lunch at The Victoria in Richmond

The idea of a walk in Richmond Park evaporated the second the clouds burst and my friend and I scurried for shelter to The Victoria.

A pub, restaurant and local guesthouse, The Victoria is owned by TV chef Paul Merrett and restaurateur Greg Bellamy, a very personable chap who greeted us in.

The breezy dining room makes like a conservatory with streams of natural light glancing off the dark wood furnishings, while rowdy chatter bounces off the glass. Make no mistake, the clientele here ooze the kind of casual wealth you find around Richmond and its environs: extended, polite families with well-behaved children in candy-striped leggings; a trio of silver-haired ladies lunching.

We stopped spying and started eating. My friend’s butternut chowder with fresh chilli, coconut and coriander was supreme, delicately balanced with exacting flavours  and great value for £5. As an experiment I was intrigued by the spiced chicken bhuna salad with grilled courgette, dried tomato, onion bhajis and minted yoghurt, but none of it held together and the bhaji/bhuna was a strange combo.

I couldn’t fault my grilled fillet of sea trout with English asparagus and crushed new potatoes – a technically perfect dish where the lemon foam defined the simplicity of the key ingredients with excellence. My companion waited for at least half an hour for her fennel, chickpea and apricot tagine with cous cous and coriander yoghurt (the only vegetarian dish on the main menu) only to exclaim: ‘where’s the apricot?’ It was true, we tasted only moats of tomato, a fact the accommodating Mr Bellamy swore to look into later.

For the kid in you dessert offers chocolate and peanut brownie cookies with white chocolate sauce and peanut butter icecream, which we washed down with a citrusy 2007 Els Pyreneus, La Cote de Flamant Picpoul de Pinet for £19 a bottle . There are over 90 reasonably-priced wines, from Champagne to dessert, chosen by Olly Smith, sommelier and wine writer.

On the whole,  The Victoria is tasteful, understated and confident. There are ethics underpinning this too. Food is mainly sourced from accredited schemes and fresh from the producer – fish from Falmouth, mussels from the Norfolk coast. The homemade bread is fresh and moist and with a blush of cinnamon, and as we began the waddle home, we stumbled upon The Priory clinic, a sign that everything in this area, from weekend boltholes to The Victoria itself, offer a little retreat from central London’s throng.

The Victoria
10 West Temple Sheen
Richmond
SW14 7RT

www.thevictoria.net