Temper your expectations

Temper is a new pizza restaurant in Mercers Walk, Covent Garden, and it is as glib and polished as you could wish. Temper is the third of that name; it follows restaurants in the City of London and Soho, which served BBQ and breads, and did them well enough to merit a sister. (The founding chef, Neil Rankin, was at Barbecoa, Jamie Oliver’s failed meat barn in Piccadilly.)

It lives on the ground floor of what appears to be a new building, or development, made of bright orange bricks, with bright green false balconies, above an L-shaped court that runs from Mercer Street to Langley Street. On the ground floor, on pale grey tiles, is written the word, in lower case: temper. It’s a good name. It’s an emotion, in a district that once had much — Gin Lane is slightly to the north — but increasingly has none. Almost no one lives in Covent Garden anymore, and the Victorian-style carriage lamps feel like a taunt, because this is no Narnia and carriage lamps on beige bricks — the lamps have spread to the opposite wall — are ridiculous. It is a tidy piece of capitalism, open and available but in no way charming. There is an enormous H&M opposite Temper — it sells dresses — and slender metal trees with plastic fruit are nailed to the walls. Metal trees are a fresh hell, but I should like to see a metal magnolia tree before I die. These are sterile lands.

Inside, it is long and light, with greys and woods and tiny bright blue chairs for tiny people. It is generic of course — generic is safe, and it sells — but well finished and well done; a comfortable restaurant with a kitchen open to the eyes, and vermouth and pina colada on tap for those who still have the ability to feel joy.