Clifford’s restaurant review: 1970s revival food softens the blow of eating underground

Proprietors are drawn to basement restaurants by the lure of saving money, but, asks Ed Cumming, is this how restaurateurs will survive in 2019 and beyond?

Being sent into the bowels of a restaurant always feels like a mild diss, but at Clifford’s, high ceilings help ease some of the psychological dread of eating without natural light (Clifford’s)

Basements are tricky. Restaurateurs are drawn to them because you get more floorspace for your pound. Natural light is not absolutely essential to a good meal. In this respect they are unlike artist’s studios or greenhouses.

If the food is sufficiently distracting, diners will overlook almost anything.

Le Gavroche has endured for 40 years despite being a subterranean old peoples’ home. Gordon’s Wine Bar on Embankment continues to draw a mixture of naive tourists and alcoholic accountants down to its menacing crypts. At least when the bell finally tolls they’ll only have to change the sign on the door to turn it into a catacomb.

A few restaurants manage to make a virtue of being below ground. At the original branches of Temper and Blacklock, it feels right and proper to eat piles of big-flavoured meats in the gloom of a smoke-filled Soho basement.

Despite being in a huge cavern without natural light, Brasserie Zedel always has a jolly atmosphere, like the dining room of a grand ocean liner whose guests have no sense of the icebergs.

But give a chef the choice and they’ll pick upstairs every time. On split-level ground/basement restaurants, being sent into the bowels always feels like a mild diss. It’s good to be able to see what you eat. Instagram makes natural light even more of a priority, for those who like their lunch with a side of lens-flare.

All of which brings us to Clifford’s, a new-ish basement restaurant off Fleet Street behind an unobtrusive entrance and down a surprisingly welcoming flight of stairs. It is on the site of the Clifford’s Inn, which was built in the 12th century but destroyed in 1934. On the February lunchtime I visited, a thick curtain separated the chilly air outside from an invitingly toasty dining room.

As at Zedel, surprisingly high ceilings help ease some of the psychological dread from eating underground. This used to be a wine bar, 28-50, where barristers could pop down for a glass of old Baileys after a long day in the Royal Courts of Justice. Shades of its former life are visible in the decoration and layout: empty bottles here, cork there. It still takes drinks seriously, too. There is a short list of appetising cocktails, some made with the by-product from the cooking. A daily “mystery wine” is offered at £7 a glass: if you guess the grape and country correctly, you get it for free. “Red and Britain” doesn’t count.

The menu, however, bears little resemblance to anything you might find in a wine bar. No grim platters here. The chef-proprietor, Gemma Ellis, trained at the much-loved Harwood Arms, in Fulham, and has brought a similar “modern British” modus operandi to her new gaff.

It’s a mix of modern British and food from 40 years ago, like this updated oozy and crispy egg

From an appealing list of bar snacks we had some venison gyoza, made with cuts of meat that don’t make it into the main dishes, which proved that Ellis studied in Japan. This was followed by a crispy egg, which came served nesting in a dollop of smoked cod’s roe and whose crunchy exterior gave way to ooze in all the right places.

The rest of the meal was joyful 1970s revivalism: prawn cocktail, duck a l’orange, salmon with samphire, rhubarb trifle! It was as if the kitchen had set itself a challenge to prove that even these most abused of dishes could be redeemed with proper ingredients and attentive cooking. The prawns were fat and juicy, as if rolling around gleefully in their sauce rather than being drowned in it. The citrus cut through the fattiness of the duck without the any of the dreaded sickliness. Nobody eats enough trifle.

The consensus is that 2019, and beyond, will be pretty harrowing for restaurateurs. We have seen already that the overexposed chains run by moneymen are especially vulnerable. It’s all the more reason to seek out places like Clifford’s, giving new life to an old site in an old part of town. Even if they’re downstairs.

Would I go again? Yes, perhaps not in midsummer.
Should you go? Yes.

Clifford’s, 140 Fetter Lane, London EC4A 1BT; 020 7242 8877; cliffordsrestaurant.co.uk