Weekly Review: Camille
A modernised, energised tour of classic French countryside flavours. Stunning. But there's a problem.
Quick hit: The best modern, regional French fare, inspired and energised, in a bustling bistro setting.
Details: Booking essential. Borough Market. £££.
Restaurant website. More on Instagram and a zillion other reviews linked below. Find it on Google Maps. 2-3 Stoney St, London SE1 9AA.
The full picture: Great restaurants have opinions, points of view, even personalities which they share through their food, drink, and service. The French Laundry pushes culinary boundaries, but there’s a joke in every dish. Noma taught us about foraging. The Fat Duck does crazy science and makes it fun. St. John re-introduced most of us to offal and made it a delicacy.
Camille says that “Head Chef Elliot Hashtroudi’s menu captures the rustic energy of a regional French table.”
Through his food, he and his team cajole, convince, and persuade. You can feel that energy behind their ideas in every plate. They are striving, and their efforts are rewarded.
There’s a reason that Tom, Jimi, Grace, Tim, and Giles all raved about Camille’s food. The team has done the thing that sounds easy but is actually incredibly hard: Taking familiar things and making them extraordinary.
Perfect example: Smoked eel devilled eggs. Now, I make devilled eggs myself. They couldn’t be easier: Boil some eggs. Peel and halve. Scrape yolks into a bowl and mix with mayo, mustard, and seasoning. Spoon back into the eggs. Dot with paprika. Done and delicious. At Camille, elevated: The salty, smokey note of the eel takes the whole thing up and delivers a delightful discovery.
How about snails? Usually like eating an eraser / rubber from a pencil with a hit of garlic and butter. Instead, at Camille, stinging nettles are puréed into a thick, green sauce delivering roasted garlic and the maximum dose of butter allowed by cardiologists. Sauce so good that I had to ask a nearby waiter to “urgently” bring us bread so we could sop it all up.
Then there was cured pig cheek — served like Spanish jamón or Italian prosciutto but with way, way more fat. Sound over the top? It wasn’t. Over the top is yet to come. Because those were the snacks.
Of our starters, which included “crab toast” with wild garlic and a bisque, mussels with bacon (!), Jerusalem artichoke with Lincolnshire poacher (!), and Ox tongue with cauliflower fungus (!), the mussels were the consensus favourite. The bacon sauce was an entirely new concept for me, and we had to place a second “urgent” bread order for sopping. The ox tongue was my runner-up, and I tried to order more of it, but was restrained.
Shareable mains were arriving.
And we hadn’t messed around: A “Great Pietrain Chop” plus a gigantic Onglet both served with sides of “Potato Pavé” and “Boudin Noir en Croute.” I argued strongly for also ordering the day’s duck special, but was firmly dissuaded by my companions. They were both right and wrong. The meat and potatoes were extraordinary. Both raised to levels previously unknown to me. The two big plates were perfect for five of us, and we were all pleasantly full. But I should have ordered the duck anyway and made it work somehow, just for the experience. I wish I had.
Still, there was always dessert. There were five of us, and five desserts, so we ordered one of each. But then it turned out Karst (which is some sort of rock formation according to our on-hand geologist) was, in this case, a cheese. So we ordered one each of the desserts and two of the cheese.
And I confess: I was expecting a slight come-down. For the pastry section to deliver at the same level as our prior courses was simply impossible.
Wrong.
If anything, the desserts were the most energetic of all. There was a gigantic profiterole moulded into a pastry Pac Man chowing down on an ice cream ghost. And there was “Rollright Ice Cream.” That’s ice cream flavoured with cheese. CHEESE. And it was absurdly rich and creamy and cheesy and delicious.
You might have concluded by now that I enjoyed my lunch at Camille. And you would be right. The food was genuinely among the best that I’ve had in the last year.
The service was also superb. Fun, engaged, and adding to the experience. Knowledgeable and knowing. Attentive and on-hand. In on all of the kitchen’s little messages and glad to steer you in the right direction.
The kitchen’s investment of energy and hard work to cajole us into seeing the world their way had been entirely successful. The food and experience were both elevated. The countryside of France was given new expression.
It was a complete victory.
But there was a problem.
Camille has a second agenda: Its wine.
Some of you know that I am passionate about wine, and one of my favourite things about wine is its variety. Wine offers something for every taste, palate, and price point and adds to just about any food experience. With enough exploration, I am convinced that anyone can find a wine that they love.
Camille says that they offer “a changing menu of wines by the glass and bottles from artisanal winemakers with a keen focus on French wines.”
But, as with the food, their agenda lurks below the surface. Rather than offering a wide cross section of styles and experiences, Camille pushes you to love an extremely narrow range drawn from on-trend winemakers producing so-called “natural” or “low-intervention” wines.
I will admit a bias: I despise these sorts of wines. I acknowledge that other people like them, and they are popular at the moment. I’ve even had a few (notably at Kol) that weren’t terrible.
Still, the result of Camille’s narrowness is, for me, a crappy wine experience. Looking for a nice, big red to go with our two lovely platters of meat, we ordered a young Crozes Hermitage. That should be a big, spicy red. It wasn’t. It was awful. Limp, empty, sour, and green. More importantly, it didn’t do any justice to the food. Our other wine selections were similarly disappointing and the wine prices higher than expected. So, while Camille’s message about its food succeeded in every way, its wine agenda didn’t. Really didn’t.
I find this frustrating because there are two simple fixes: Either provide wines that cater to a wider range of tastes or offer a generous corkage policy in the manner of Noble Rot. Or both. As of our visit, the Camille team hadn’t yet settled on its approach to corkage, but hinted they would probably be happy to accommodate a request made in advance.
I want to be clear: I loved Camille. Adored it, even. I would and will go back. I expect that Michelin will recognise it before too long.
And I am happy to recommend it for a Professional Lunch. The vibe is fun. The energy of the market, the team, and the kitchen fills Camille with joy. It’s not particularly expensive. Prices are in line with Bistro Union, which I reviewed last week, and with Thirty7, which I’ll review next week. And the food is light years better than either of those.
You should definitely go. It’s made for a Professional Lunch. And perhaps it’s a good excuse to dig out that bottle you’ve been saving and bring it along. Just make sure to book your wine when you book your table.
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It’s almost time for lunch…
Adore this. Particularly feel the wine pain.