Cloth is opposite St Bartholomew the Great on Cloth Fair. People call this place Farringdon, but it isn’t really: it belongs to the teaching hospital and the meat market and William Wallace who died a famous death here and has only a little plaque in turn. Smithfield embraces the dead. Sherlock Holmes met Dr Watson here and, for BBC1, jumped off the roof of the hospital. If Cloth calls itself a ‘neighbourhood wine bar’, which sounds less threatening than ‘restaurant’, its true customers are the dead, and that is no criticism.
The chips are marvellous, and this matters. I always judge a restaurant on the chips
I am early, so I sit in St Bartholomew the Less – this is how buildings fight! – and learn that Inigo Jones was baptised here, and that the warden – a chatty man – likes to play the wireless in the church, a pleasing eccentricity. ‘That’s the Police,’ he says, helpfully, when I say good night. Then I sit in the gaudy, brightly lit pub on the corner of Cloth Fair as a storm blows in. This is where I might complain about the absence of people in the City, but it adds to its charisma at night. Anything could happen. Of course, what will happen is that I will eat at Cloth and get the 46 bus to Hampstead. But it feels like I mightn’t, and that’s the alchemy of a good restaurant.
Cloth is the ground floor of a house that used to belong to John Betjeman – another plaque, they outnumber live residents – and now belongs to the Landmark Trust, who rent it to tourists who treat it like a shrine. If you don’t know the Landmark Trust, you should. They have a thatched castle in Dorset, which is unique even for English architecture: a self-hating fortress.
Inside, Cloth is Ebenezer Scrooge’s parlour. It has dark walls; wood floors; silver candlesticks; interesting art. It is busy because, fellow critics say, the menu is small, simple and doesn’t lie about sustainability. Human breath fogs the windows, as in a fairy tale: not enough of London is like this. It is Georgian pastiche – it must be, syphilis doesn’t sell – though I wonder why, when restaurants travel in time, they always stop here. Tudor was ruined by Charles Laughton, it is true, but what did Queen Anne, and the Incas, do? It must be the familiarity: Cloth’s ideal diners live in houses like this, or they want to.
It was founded by wine importers. You can drink all day if you need to, but the kitchen closes in the afternoon, as serious kitchens do: they still provide snacks for alcoholics, and the hungry. We eat: a pretty buffalo mozzarella salad with walnut, chicory and truffle; superb Westcombe Dairy salami, dense and lovely; Dorset crab and white cabbage salad; cured seabass with tomatoes and lovage; agnolotti of ricotta, roasted onion and sausage; Cornish monkfish, mussels, leeks and manzanilla; and marvellous chips. (This matters. I always judge a restaurant on the house wine and the chips.)
This food is loved, skilled and styled like a Vermeer and so, for me, Cloth is as good a London restaurant as Noble Rot. I would advise, as with all newly-fashionable restaurants, to dine early or late: at 8.30 p.m. it is so full as to feel reckless – we had to wait in the eerie pub, which was fine considering what happened when we were finally seated – but I can’t imagine a more charming place to eat at 10 p.m., ideally in a storm.
The prix fixe at lunch is £24 for two courses (white onion soup, Longhorn bavette) and £29 for three (add peach sorbet). With a meal at Pret a Manger, a restaurant so aggrieved it has lost its circumflex, wobbling dangerously at £13 I can only say eat here: with all the ghosts.
Cloth, 44 Cloth Fair, London EC1A 7JQ; tel: 0208 143 0345.
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