No wheat, no dairy | Review: Indigo, London

Despite an intolerance for intolerants, I have found it remarkably easy to develop one particular aversion myself. It snuck up on me, and whilst it’s not anything serious, like racism or homophobia or an irrational hatred of Donald Trump (although I confess that third one is true), I was rather taken by surprise. It’s that whole faddy thing about nuts and dairy and wheat and so on, the whiney bleating of the pallid, the meat-free and the stick thin (or obese) who’ve emerged from the health food store to make their demands, mostly by megaphone, about what they consider to be wrong with themselves and therefore the world.

I’ve spent my life eating anything and everything, alive or dead, still or moving

Perhaps because I’ve spent my life eating anything and everything, alive or dead, still or moving, my eyes tend to glaze over when I’m being lectured over dinner about saving the planet by giving up that sausage I’m eating. And spare a thought for the poor chefs who now have to take legal advice because a kitchen apprentice had a bag of dry roasted peanuts in the pub before coming on shift.

Indigo, One Aldwych, London

Some restaurateurs are even responding to this fussiness in their clientele. In Richard Caring’s new zillionaire fantasy, Sexy Fish, it’s quite difficult to lay your hands on some actual bread, even those mini slices of rye that accompany oysters. And don’t even think about asking for chips. (Harrumph.) In the interests of fairness, I have to confess they do a pretty mean chocolate pudding – made from tofu.

No, the idea of forever eating brown food that has the consistency and flavour of conference centre floor matting doesn’t appeal, and therefore those who volunteer to eat that junk don’t appeal either. So there.

That remained my position until a close relative, who had been suffering random migraines and vomiting, and ended up taking a day off work – in New York! – underwent a series of extensive tests before being diagnosed with an allergy to dairy, plus a gluten intolerance thrown in for good measure. The real thing. Not self-diagnosed. No whiney me me me. (“Give up pasta?? Cheese?? Are. You. Joking!?”)

“Give up pasta?? Cheese?? Are. You. Joking!?”

So when said relative paid a flying visit to London, I looked into the options for lunch. We could, I suppose, have picked our way through the familiar landscape of The Wolseley menu, asking the waiter if the bread sticks might be fatal, or dived into the uncharted waters of Sexy Fish. But to my surprise the solution was handed to me on a plate. (my own personal deficiency is a weakness for very bad, obvious puns. Sorry.) And it wasn’t in the form of some cranky, holier-than-thou hairshirt hellhole either: just a normal restaurant, called Indigo.

It sits on the mezzanine overlooking the bar of the hotel that Gordon Campbell Grey founded, One Aldwych, and is a workaday no-tablecloths kinda place with an attractive little menu.

Indigo’s executive chef Dominic Teague has an eye for detail, and for a trend. A few months back, he did something quite remarkable: he made the whole menu dairy and gluten free. Without telling anyone. And you know what? Nobody noticed.

Chef Dominic Teague, Indigo

The expression on my relative’s face while perusing the menu ‒ “I can eat anything?” ‒ was spirited, if a little exaggerated: as a skinny New York fashionista she was never going to make the third course anyway. But joy of joys, I could eat everything. No beige!

The first surprise was the bread – yes, bread, Sexy Fish, we’re looking at you. These two dinky loaves, tasting of onion and samphire, were made with buckwheat flour which isn’t related to anything wheaty at all, in fact, but is a sibling of rhubarb. They came with a dipping rapeseed puddle which wasn’t really necessary since our “bread” was succulent to the point of moistness, with a consistency approaching cake. I wolfed it down.

Watercress soup, poured at table over a softly poached Burford Brown, was a ferocious emerald green last seen in The Gramercy Tavern’s iridescent wild garlic chowder, but with the peppery fire turned down a notch. A spanking fresh seafood mix of Dorset crabmeat, potted shrimp and pickled mackerel came with a contrasting crunch courtesy of two dark tuiles tasting treacly and biscuity. What they are made of remains a closely-guarded kitchen secret, as does the exact way shrimps can be potted without butter… oh, all right, I was so busy yakking and enjoying lunch that I forgot to ask. Sorry. Mains of Dulux-bright white halibut over marinated heritage toms, and a juicy pheasant breast with celeriac three different ways enriched with port jus, were both surrounded by modern bits and pieces, dots of flavour bombs and crispy contrasts which served to emphasize the whole normalcy of the place. A final dish of polenta orange cake with sharp mandarin sorbet was sweetly climactic.

I had gone in with low expectations. My dislike of faddy pickiness is based on the notion that there’s something missing, that the food’s going to be a grey doormat of bleh. Without shouting it from the rooftops, Dominic Teague has achieved the very opposite, rejecting dry worthiness and delivering, as they say on Masterchef “a real plate of food”. C

Indigo, One Aldwych, London WC2B 4BZ
0207 300 0400; onealdwych.com