GLC plays Hide and Seed in Putney
The Lodge Hotel where you can find Hide & Seed (pic taken from their website)
Like most Londoners, I’m fiercely loyal to my patch and those parts of the capital I can easily navigate without resorting to the blue dot of Google Maps.
This one-sided and quite blind loyalty is matched, with equal verve, by an acute dismissal of those places in which I never set foot.
I’ll be blunt…I’ve always seen Clapham as the a**ehole of London, with other south-west-of-the-river districts, like Putney, not far behind.
Perhaps with Putney it’s the lack of transport options (the one option they do have is run by South West Trains so can barely be described as transport at all), or the way people look (seriously, they look different), or the fact that some of the relationships I’d most like to forget have made me travel too frequently to SW London, or just the fact that ‘Putney’ sounds a bit stupid. Who knows.
But lured by the carrot of a voucher from the lovely people at Zomato and resigned to very personal renaissance-style tragi-comedic fatalism of never being able to say no to free food, a very glamorous co-eater and myself strapped tennis rackets to our feet, got the oxygen tank ready, hopped on a train from Waterloo and ventured to the wild south west.
Perhaps it’s not all bad…come out of the station, turn left and left again, and walk for ten minutes and you’ll get to the Lodge Hotel – two great big old detached Victorian suburban villas, stuck together with a modern extension which would have Kevin McCloud banging at the door with a Channel 4 film crew in tow.
From first sight, both outside and in, it is clear someone has thrown a whole bucket of cash at this place and the result is a suitably elegant boutique hotel.
The Lodge Hotel Putney – picture of the restaurant courtesy of their website
But we were here for the food, specifically that of Hide and Seed – a name, which, according to the website comes from ‘perfectly balanced’ dishes, as “attention is lavished equally on vegetables and plants as it is on meat and fish.”
Hmmmmmm.
However, the food really did hit the mark.
Pork belly
To begin, we chose the pork belly (served with a couple of swooshes of sauce and very little else) and the octopus (tapas style with baby potatoes and a generous dusting of paprika). The ingredients were clearly top-notch – the pig had obviously been allowed to wallow with abandon, and a very contented cephalopod had given up its tentacles for my enjoyment. Both proved triumphs of succulence and simplicity. Someone in the kitchen has a mercifully light touch.
Special cod
Moving on, both the ‘special’ cod with cabbage and sugar snaps came very close to fitting its billing and the 24-hour lamb with sweet potato and celeriac was also in a similar league.
Dessert, as seems to be becoming more standard the older I get, was one dish shared – the ‘chocolate arrangement’ – which basically did exactly what it said on the tin, but remained unfinished – not a total success.
Chocolate arrangement
All three courses were washed-down with a decent medium dry Picpoul de Pinet.
So…food: good.
But here’s the thing…Hide and Seed seems unfortunately very good at hide and seek. For the duration of our sitting, only three other people were dining. For the last half-an-hour we were there on our own. It felt necessary to talk very quietly. This was on a Saturday night. We didn’t take another drink at the end of the meal because heading to another bar down the street – or even home – appealed that much more.
I thought it may have just been one of those days, but a quick online search shows other people have felt like this too. It’s all a bit head-scratching. This is a decent place with good food and service in a pleasant environment. Ok, it’s in Putney, but surely not everyone feels the same way as me about this – so why is it so quiet?
I hope I can do my bit here by saying… “go, you’ll like it.”
Hide and Seed, The Lodge Hotel,52-54 Upper Richmond Road, Putney, London SW15 2RN
0208 874 1598
I was given £70 to spend by Zomato and paid for the rest. (My stomach can be bought; my opinions cannot)
