Restaurant review: BRASH AND FLASH

I realize that this is a food column, but please bear with me whilst I describe the décor of the new Market 8, as it is the restaurant’s most outstanding feature. So picture if you will, a riot of mismatched pastel shades painted onto stone walls and all protected under sheets of glass. Add to that bespoke made furniture of a contemporary Italianate design and you have the best restaurant design I have seen here for years.

The desk informed me that the restaurant is a working showroom and everything, but everything (including architectural design) is for sale. I had to applaud them for their initiative, but I found it less easy to applaud them for their food!

The menu revealed a pleasant surprise, namely that there were only four starters, three salads and six mains. This is fine because the chef should be able to fine hone his skills on that small menu, and better still – there will be no ‘not available’ items. But the menu was not perfect as most dishes contained descriptions in French. If the House thinks this adds gravitas to the dining experience, they are mistaken, for it is irritating and pretentious.

Equally irritating was their old communist practice of hiding your wine. We ordered from a well thought out wine list. But I groaned in disbelief at the sight of a modern restaurant wine waiter walking away with my bottle after pouring my first glass. I retrieved it and placed it on my table where it belonged.

So let’s eat. For starters there was prawn tempura and Thai consommé with vegetable tempura. Do not be impressed by the Japanese term “tempura”. It is nothing more than a batter made from egg, iced water and flour. Thereafter the food is dipped in it and fried. We passed on those dishes together with prawn wontons which are equally easy to make. But we had to have their ‘steamed scallops with a ginger and spring onion emulsion’.

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It was beautifully presented with three Queen scallops on a thick green bed of sauce. But the scallops were not freshly prised from the shell, and the sauce was almost flavorless. Inexplicably this hot dish was virtually cold. Furthermore we waited a full fifteen minutes for it, with nobody else eating at the time.

Away we went to a mushroom soup with truffle oil. It was foamed soup which other chophouses refer to as “mushroom cappuccino”. Again, it was weak in flavor and, in a gesture of pure meanness, there was a pin head drop of truffle oil which, at that size, did nothing to enhance the flavor of the dish.

Off to mains, and my halibut with miso and lemon risotto saved the day. The halibut was perfect. Miso is a Japanese soup made mainly from soy and fish sauces with onion and water. It was an inspired addition, but it came only as a tiny drizzle. I would have liked it poured liberally. Again it was all beautifully sculptured, with the risotto

packaged as a tennis ball sized, round dish but with no lemon flavor. You should never cook lemon juice, only squeeze it over a completed, cooked dish. Alternatively you

can cook with thin slices of lemon skin.

We passed on their tuna Teriyaki, and here we go again with more Japanese names out to impress. Well don’t be impressed because Teriyaki sauce is a simple thing you can make at home with soy sauce, sugar, fresh ginger and garlic – all boiled with water or white wine. Easy.

In a similar fashion we passed on their Argentinean beef and settled for their white chicken on a bed of fried spinach with a soy and ginger dip. Yet again I have to admit its presentation (chefs call it “plating up”, and believe me it is a skill) was good. The chicken came as a ball with a fried breadcrumb exterior. But the fried spinach let it down. Frying spinach kills the flavor. Far more exciting if they blanched rucola in chicken stock instead.

Market 8 is a triumph of design over functionality, and of presentation over flavor. However with the shallow, superficial riffraff of what laughingly passes as Bucharest ‘society’ on their doorstep, I will confidently predict that it will be a huge success.

BRASH AND FLASH Market 8. Str Serban Petrescu. Tel 021 231 5143

Michael Barclay

mab.media@dnt.ro