64 Goodge Street - review
A flawless victory for the Woodhead masters, and a new potato champion of the world
On Saturday, we made a belated anniversary trip to 64 Goodge Street, the French-inflected newish opening from Woodhead Restaurant Group, the magicians behind the Quality Chop House, Quality Wines, Portland and Clipstone. Having essentially made a second home out of the former two in my time working in Exmouth Market, I had a combination of high hopes and complete trust. Fortunately, my trust was founded. After that meal, I would trust Woodhead with the nuclear codes.
The restaurant itself is rather handsome and cosy, slightly reminiscent of Noble Rot Soho in its deep green panelling and warm, conspiratorial intimacy. We started with some deliriously light gruyère gougères, rich with the funk of the black truffle hiding inside. The snail, garlic and bacon bon-bons which followed were hot, crisp, dainty, punchy masterworks. In their total spherical textural precision and infinite garlicky savoury depth, we were at Michelin-level hors d’oeuvre game. I have rarely wanted to prolong a mouthful’s worth of food as much.
It was hard to restrain myself from slightly filling up on their crisp, fudgy, serious and light sourdough, blessedly free of charge and seriously close to my platonic ideal of restaurant bread, but I was well distracted by the arrival of an immaculate starter of asparagus, crab and hollandaise, freshened up by slivers of tart green apple. I am intensely predictable in asparagus season and can be relied upon to order it on any menu at any time; so far this year I’ve yet to have a more delicious take on it, with its mineral qualities rounded out beautifully by the chive-flecked crab and rich hollandaise.
My main of turbot à la grenobloise was predictably impeccable, but it was the side of Pommes Anna that absolutely blew our minds. As veterans of the Quality Chop House, I expected we were essentially going to get a rebadged, rejigged take on their famous and much imitated confit potatoes, which admittedly would hardly have been a disappointment. Instead, we ended up with a contiguous oven-blasted dish of potato layers, impossibly golden brown, with a shattering crispness concealing layers of buttery softness beneath. It seemed to concentrate the irresistible essence of all crispy potatoes, achieving an almost fruity level of depth, speaking for all potato-kind and making an unanswerable argument. In its textural extremities, it made QCH’s confit potatoes feel like steam-softened chippy fare. I’m struggling to think of a better potato side in London.
The by-the-glass list was sufficiently interesting and creative to draw us away from the bottles. With the asparagus, I drank a glass of Thorne & Daughters Rocking Horse 2022, a curious blend of Roussanne, Chenin, Sémillon, Chardonnay and Clairette. The green, kiwi-like acid contended nicely with the dish, though I quite wished for something with slightly more character; it felt a little smoothed out in the blend, though I’d certainly recommend it as a good all-rounder. By contrast, the 2005 Billaud-Simon Chablis 1er Cru “Montée de Tonnerre” (by the glass?!) was sticky with candied lemon and hazelnut. I would have loved a touch more acidity to balance out the near-butterscotch qualities and I expect it would have peaked for me a few years ago, but it was a rare treat for someone with no cellar, no patience and no decades of wine collection behind me to get a taste of something so mature. The other half’s glasses of 2021 Aldinger Gips 1. Lage Riesling and 2021 David Moreau Santenay Rouge were supremely competent and satisfying.
We finished with a heavenly Paris-Brest and a fun, tooth-threateningly sweet Baba with pistachio cream, lemon curd and raspberry coulis. Service was consistently charming, attentive, and utterly lacking in pretension. We felt profoundly sated and profoundly looked-after; as in all of Woodhead’s restaurants, the essential brief of hospitality is met with complete commitment and understanding at every level.
The best restaurants often feel like they’re offering a new, self-contained idea of tradition, one that may have little basis in reality but makes perfect sense in the warm embrace of their carefully constructed universe. Most French restaurants in France are not this welcoming or finessed. 64 Goodge Street imagines that they are, and it’s simply providing more of the rare same. You feel alive emerging from their bubble, carrying with you their optimism for what a restaurant can and should be.
The last-minute palmiers provided with the bill helped the admittedly sharp pricing go down; then again, if you’re going to pay over £100 a head for dinner, it’s hard to complain if you walk out feeling as though you’ve communed briefly with perfection.