Camille, on the edge of Borough Market in London, is one of a flurry of restaurants with great pedigrees to have recently opened close to this hallowed ground for foodies. Here, I’m using the term “foodie” to denote anyone who gets terrifically jolly at the mere thought of heirloom carrots, Swedish coastal honey and robatayaki skewered whelks for brunch. Not to mention the 500 people making social media content by throwing a peace sign next to the chocolate-coated strawberry stall and the other 10,000 or so, influenced by that content, now meeting seven friends outside Padella at noon on a Saturday.
If you think that sounds like utterly unenjoyable chaos, you could very well be right. My advice for visiting Camille, which is on the periphery of this bunfight, is to plan your route in advance, write the address on your arm in case the 5G drops out the moment you leave London Bridge station, and walk swiftly and purposefully to Camille and order a stiff drink immediately. Also, rest assured that, once you’re safely through the door, the place is a little slice of calm with not one influencer draped over their Humble Crumble creme brulee. Rather, it’s a gratifyingly traditional, classy dining room that could be from the 1950s, with a tiny bar, counter seating and a little service hatch at the back sending out a short, meaningful menu influenced by provincial French dining.
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Camille is run by Clare Lattin and Tom Hill, founders of Ducksoup in Soho, Little Duck The Picklery in Dalston and, most recently, Emilia in Ashburton, south Devon, alongside Ratnesh Bagdai, co-founder of Brindisa. It is also a showcase for the skills of chef Elliot Hashtroudi, who seems to have taken his experience from St John, packed it into the boot of a Citroën 2CV and driven the back roads all the way from Bayeux to Marseille while smoking Gauloises and trying to work out what everyone’s grand-mère is cooking. Disclaimer: there will be copious amounts of garlic in the sauces and dressings, and you will leave whiffy and unsnoggable.
Also expect snail butter, boudin noir, trotter in the terrine and poached ox tongue. If you’re the sort of person who went on a school French exchange, avoided the pig’s jowl, chicory and mysterious lumpy sausages and survived on smuggled Penguin biscuits, you may find Camille a little testing. Lately they’ve had atriaux on the menu, or, as I call them, “mystery sausagemeat meatballs”, because you never get the same answer twice from any French or Swiss chef as to what, exactly, they contain, although pig’s liver and parsley seem key; at Camille, they’re served on a soft, rich slick of puy lentils.
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On first impression, there is nothing all that remarkable about Camille; it seems like a rather anonymous, unplush room serving langoustines, devilled eggs and butter tart, all of which you can get in at least 10 other “hot” London settings right now. But, as Hashtroudi began feeding each plate through the wall from his hectic kitchen, I suddenly got the sense that this is a truly great little restaurant. First up, good, mustardy devilled eggs with vibrant orange innards topped with pungent, smoky eel to eat alongside a basket of fresh baguette slathered in salty butter. Next, an unwisely generous portion of buttery roast jerusalem artichokes piled high with a feathery, light mountain of grated Lincolnshire poacher: so delicious – although this is your biannual reminder from me that the jerusalem artichoke, albeit one of the most delicious vegetables on Earth, is neither an artichoke nor anything to do with Jerusalem; it’s the tuber of an American sunflower and creates wild amounts of methane in the gut. The quantity of garlic in the sauce with the langoustines off the specials board and the punchy yeast dressing on the grilled Tenderstem broccoli were similarly antisocial. Thankfully, I have nothing on this week.
Even the ice-cream of the day, should you desire a palate cleanse, was made from rollright, a pungent, oozy British cheese. I ate two whole scoops of this salty, cheesy, oddly soothing stuff. Before that, as a main, we shared a Hereford onglet, served rare-ish with Cafe de Paris butter (which seems to be on menus everywhere right now) and a side of potato pavé with hay mayo. Pavé is a bit like a taller, more thinly sliced, drier dauphinois, and Hashtroudi serves his in thick blocks that resemble custard mille-feuille, to scrape through lamb’s liver with crisp bacon or charred calçots with anchovy hollandaise.
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The pudding list, meanwhile, is an equally wild ride. Alongside that rollright ice-cream, there’s Yorkshire custard with rhubarb, chocolate bun, bergkäse and canelé with prune. I really didn’t need an extra pudding, but I tolerated a slice of exceptional burnt milk tart.
Camille is simply a good restaurant. Take your influencer buddies, leave them doing star jumps by the falafel stall in the market, and go and get yourself some proper dinner.
Camille 2-3 Stoney Street, London SE1, 020-3794 8958. Open lunch Tues-Sun, noon-3pm, dinner all week, 5.30-10.30pm (9.30pm Sun). From about £50 a head à la carte, plus drinks and service
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