Restaurant: Bistro Union, London SW4

The neighbourhood restaurant is a notoriously difficult concept to get right. Does Adam Byatt pull it off at his latest venture?The neighbourhood restaurant is a hard thing to master ? harder than it looks. Adam Byatt is a talented chef who has been on something of a journey in that respect. He mastered it with his first restaurant, Thyme, a serious eatery of about 10 years ago with one of the worst imaginable locations, on Clapham Park Road opposite the exit from Sainsbury's car park. He cooked multi-small-course menus at decent prices to happy locals, and was always busy. Then came a mistake: Byatt relocated Thyme to Covent Garden. Same food, higher prices, no more regular and local customers; this turns out not to be a formula for success. So he moved back to Clapham, to a restaurant by the common that, in its previous incarnation as The Polygon, was a strong candidate for the worst restaurant in London.I live nearby and used to give The Polygon a go at roughly one-year intervals. The last time we went, my wife took an 18-inch-long strand of hair out of her seared tuna. We looked over to the open-plan kitchen. There was a white rasta with 18-inch-long dreadlocks plating up food at the pass. We vowed never again. Then Byatt moved back to Clapham and The Polygon reopened as Trinity, and joy has been unconfined.Byatt is still cooking at Trinity, but he has now opened Bistro Union on Abbeville Road, a different take on the local restaurant. Where Trinity has tablecloths and fairly formal service (though in a friendly and informal atmosphere), Bistro Union has zinc tables and bar snacks. Trinity's is the kind of food that could (and should) have a Michelin star; Bistro Union's is the kind where the question doesn't seem relevant ? it's a place you might go for a glass of wine and a pickled quail's egg, or pork scratchings, or a fish finger sandwich, or steak and chips. They do high tea, and they do a children's meal between 5pm and 6pm: I'll be interested to see if that catches on.The chef at Bistro Union is Karl Goward, who was for some years head chef at Fergus Henderson's St John Bread & Wine in Spitalfields. That pedigree might lead you to expect an emphasis on British ingredients and recipes ? and you'd be right: that's exactly what they're doing here. The menu is a long list of things that are fun to eat, from radishes with smoked cod's roe for �3 to smoked sardines for �1.50 to ham and eggs for �6 and toad in the hole for �11.It sounds as if it should be perfect, for a neighbourhood place. It isn't yet, though, and I say that with some surprise, since Trinity is pretty much my favourite restaurant. The execution of the good ideas is competent, but not more than that. The toad in the hole, for instance, is a good quality Cumberland sausage set down on an agreeable batter in a hot skillet; that's all fine, but then a small boat of gravy is poured over, which sizzles to dramatic effect, but makes the batter soggy. Guinea fowl Kiev is a nice idea, on the basis that anything Kiev is so uncool it's swung all the way back around to being cool again. But the dish arrives as a large, sausage-shaped thing in a heavy, breaded coating, and really is so weighty that it isn't all that great to eat. Baked aubergine is served with mint and a cow's curd that, thanks to its dressing, ends up too sweet, without the cooling, sour twist you want. Chips are strong on potato flavour but a tad dry and heavy.Other dishes that have worked well: a rich, pretty and very satisfying fish pie; a dead simple but still lovely piece of bream, baked in paper and served with a fennel salad on the side (a trick there, since when you see bream and fennel on the menu, you assume they'll be cooked together); knickerbocker glory, the English apotheosis of jelly and ice-cream together, looks gorgeous and ticks all its sweet boxes. If the pace of Bistro Union were to pick up a little, and the kitchen does its best work more of the time, this place will be a real boon for its neighbourhood, but it hasn't yet hit its stride. I say again, the neighbourhood restaurant is hard.? Bistro Union, 40 Abbeville Road, London SW4, 020-7042 6400. Open all week, lunch Mon-Sat, 11am-3pm, dinner Mon-Sat, 6-10.30pm, Sun brunch 11am-4pm. Three courses with wine and service, from �40 a head.LondonUnited KingdomRestaurantsFood & drinkJohn Lanchesterguardian.co.uk © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

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