Nick Montagu finds the food at Libation uninspired

The West end of the High Road is, with a few honourable exceptions, more known for the quick turnover of its restaurants than for their durability and quality. So where do three people, desperate for a meal at 2.40 on a Sunday afternoon and finding the wonderful Taj (one of those exceptions) closed turn?

A few doors down from Taj was the relatively new arrival Libation, offering modern European-style food and open.

The first thing to say is that Libation may be great as a wine bar: the wine list is extensive and interesting (including more unusual items like a Georgian red). But we were strictly after fueling, and a bottle of the undistinguished but perfectly adequate Italian house red at £10.95, served the purpose.

The food didn't, really. There is a very reasonable-looking £7.95 two-course menu, and we went for that. For starters, gravadlax was commercial, rather than home-made; so too was the coleslaw, with which it came, in generous quantities, but on a bed of thickly-sliced beetroot. I would have settled for home-made gravadlax on its own. Mushroom soup was thick and a bit Bovril-tasting - distinctly on the cloying side.

For mains, two of us had the ravioli stuffed with veal and ricotta in a tomato sauce. The ravioli were under-cooked (when will people learn that al dente doesn't mean a bready consistency?), the stuffing OK but bland and without the ricotta much in evidence; the tomato sauce was fine, but fairly sparse, and it would have been nice to have been offered some grated parmesan.

The third had what were advertised as linguine with grilled chicken and a creamy sauce. Grilled chicken was there, and there was undoubtedly a creamy sauce, but the linguine turned out to be rather undistinguished gnocchi.

Service was efficient enough (a jug of iced water arrived to order), neither more nor less. The bill including service amounted to just under £39. So is it unfair to carp about the food at the price? I think not: good value doesn't just mean cheap, which Libation undoubtedly is, it means getting adequate food which represents value for money.

On this showing, Libation may be heading for that typical transitory existence of the Western High Road - unless, as said, it's good enough as a wine bar to stay longer.

Nick Montagu

October 27, 2004