Battersea Rise has always been a bit posh – well in my lifetime, anyway. Even when I was a teenager in the 90s there were lots of independent restaurants – probably French, if my memory serves me correctly. But of course, back in those days, if you were 19 you weren’t interested in food, other than the fast kind. Hell no! There were far too many clubs and bars to get lost in.
Fast forward to 2015 and this sloping SW11 street is a mish-mash of still-cool smaller places and more upmarket (but less exciting) chains like Breakfast Club and Cote. One of the former is Soif, which, I suppose, is actually really a micro-chain as it’s sister to some of the capital’s most respected French dining rooms, like Brawn and Terroirs. Inside there’s a pared-back dining room, all simple wooden tables and chairs, a wine shop, and a changing menu with an emphasis on charcuterie and simple flavour matches.
Better still, there’s a daily lunch option which is a tenner for a main, drink and coffee. Bargain! And good value evening options for £12, too, such as Tuesday’s Moules Frites night.
But for some reason known only to ourselves – perhaps it was the relentlessly sludge-grey August skies – old friend Louise and I, baby and Jack Russell in tow respectively, decided to splurge. The restaurant was entirely empty – well, it was a Wednesday lunchtime in high summer – but nonetheless we stuck it out on the small dining terrace out front, alongside which buses and lorries rumbled and screeched.
There are some decent aperitifs to lure you over to the dark side, if you’re that way inclined. And boy, were we – opting first for a negroni ‘sbagliato’: normally made with prosecco, here the barman used sparkling Vouvray, giving the “mistake” (as its name means in Italian) a more honeyed edge than normal.
A cocktail at one o’clock on a weekday is, of course, a road to ruin. So we notched things up a bit and splashed out on a bottle of Venetian sparkling red, Col Fondo Zanotto (a steep £36). And the rosso really put the fizz into two faultless starters. Big juicy prawns, grilled simply with chilli, lemon and garlic, arrived lounging in a pool of sauce, easily soaked up by the springy home-made bread slathered with salty butter from Normandy.
Better still – and the meal’s early highlight – was a plate of smoked duck. Although currently ubiquitous on upscale London menus, this was the best I’ve tasted all year, its tender earthiness, paired with walnuts and frisée, more than a match for the sweet acidity of the sliced black cherries. And the whole thing was tickled further by our blood-red bubbles. In fact, it made us go a bit funny; it was that memorable.
Mains were solid fare, but with less of a high-kick: a crisp-skinned fillet of sea bream perched on Israeli couscous came with a small, fragrant scoop of tomatoey sauce vierge; and buttery slices of onglet cosied up to moreish skinny chips and watercress, classically French right down to the piquancy of the red wine shallot butter. Nice enough – but not quite up there with that fabulous duck.
The only downside? A hastily chosen dessert – neither of us really being particularly keen for one – that underlined why the third course should always, if in doubt, be a cheese plate. Bitter chocolate mousse simply didn’t live up to its billing, a creamy but perfunctory affair not quite rescuable by a topping of salted hazlenut praline. It did, at least, provide a foil to strong double espressos.
And so we rolled out and clambered up to Clapham Common, with baby and middle-aged Jack Russell still happily in tow. Soif is a destination restaurant, for sure, and while it was fun to have it to ourselves that weekday lunchtime, I’d sooner return to see it buzzy and atmospheric – as it should be at those prices.
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