Giles Coren reviews the Coal Shed, London SE1

I mean, Brighton. That’s by the sea. That’s practically France. And the people are mostly gay. And it has a green MP still, doesn’t it? That makes it basically Mars. Not as far away physically as the north, I grant you, but I don’t have expenses to go that far so Brighton, well, that was going to knock people’s socks off when they saw how committed I was to winkling out the best new places from Land’s End to John o’ Groats, wasn’t it?

But then something came up. I can’t remember what. I had to do the school run or film a cringeworthy corporate promotion for some poisonous soft drink. And when a half- decent pizza joint opened up in Camden Town, three minutes from my front door, I realised it was my duty to report on that instead.

The Coal Shed

And then the Coal Shed opened a second branch, calling itself the Salt Room this time, again in Brighton, now in a big hotel on the seafront, and I thought I really, really must go down there and say what an international centre of good, honest charcoal-grilling Brighton is becoming. But then, I don’t know, some other critic got there first or something. Or I looked at the trains and it was only those smelly tram-like ones with plastic seats and no first-class compartment. And anyway, there was a new dim sum joint up in Highgate to which I could literally walk, which really wanted writing up.

And then a month or so ago, I got an email saying that the Coal Shed had opened another restaurant and I said to myself, “Okay, I’m going. I’m just bloody going, I don’t care if it is incredibly hard for me to get out of town on a working weekday, what with family and broadcasting commitments and 8,000 words of comment to file every 5 days, I’m just going to pin my colours to the mast and say, yes, I am a national restaurant critic and if that means travelling by boat and train and packing crampons for the final, icy ascent then, by God …”

Oh. This one is in London. In a breathtaking reversal of the process by which established London restaurant groups eventually take a deep breath and bring their munificence to the regions (the process that led Hawksmoor, for example, to become the best restaurant in Manchester, or Pizza Express to become the best in Stoke), the Coal Shed was upping sticks, like Dick Whittington, wrapping its Josper grill in a handkerchief on the end of a stick and coming to the capital to seek its fortune. I hadn’t been so excited since Claude Bosi brought Hibiscus to London from Ludlow in 2007, allowing me to conserve my proud record of never having stepped into Shropshire. An accolade it shares with only 34 other English counties.

To make up for the restaurant now being not very far away at all, I decided to go with someone from as far away as possible. So I invited Michael Lynagh, the legendary Australian inside centre and fly half, grand slam and World Cup winner, captain and, at the time of his retirement in 1995, holder of a world record total of international points.

That’s in rugby. Which you possibly thought I didn’t know about, having, in 600 restaurant reviews, 1,500 opinion columns and more than 1,000 other features for The Times, totalling nearly 3 million words, never once so much as even mentioned the word. But that shows how much you know.

Michael works at Dow Jones now so I thought the Coal Shed would be a good call, being right by Tower Bridge and an easy walk for him. But he was on a week off so got there 20 minutes before I did, which is incredibly rare in an international sporting megacelebrity and noted scorer of goals (Gary Lineker, for example, was very nearly 11 minutes late for that Gordon Ramsay meal I reviewed with him back in November).

It is, I think, a wonderful location. The building in which the restaurant is housed is itself a horrid big glass shed full of lawyers like all buildings are now, in that development on the South Bank next to City Hall, but as you walk to it, the view, out over a lawn, then over the turbid river, the embankment walls, to the low walls around the Tower of London, the Tower itself and then Tower Bridge, is something of a miracle.

Michael had pitched into a cocktail called a bitterella before I arrived, whose lees in the glass looked like the end of a negroni. He likes a bitter drink, does the great kicker, choosing a Fernet-Branca at the end of the meal and inspiring our excellent waitress to crack out also the Amaro Montenegro, more or less a lighter version of the same and a bit less scary to me.

The menu is a cross between the new-wave posh steakhouse vibe of the past few years, with a load of cuts of well-aged steak written up on a board at some distance across the dark-wooded room, and the low and slow barbecue thing, which is slightly different, but not much, I grant you.

We ate 12 excellent Porthilly oysters (written up on another blackboard) while we thought about things, and drank, at our server’s suggestion, a bottle of Ktima Gerovassiliou made from the Greek malagousia grape and an inspired response to my rather lumpy request for a “sort of not too oaky chardonnay-type thing” for the oysters. It smelt and tasted of holidays.

Then while she explained the different beef cuts and kept reassuring us that “it’s not too big” and I chortled inwardly at the idea of a former Australian rugby captain worrying that he might not be able to finish his steak, my eyes lit upon the “goat to share” for £50, which was written up on the menu as “Moroccan spiced smoked goat, zatar flatbreads, aubergine, tahini, chickpeas, harissa yoghurt”, and, as far as I am concerned, is the kind of thing one can’t not order.

“It’s a whole shoulder,” said our really truly wonderful waitress. “Quite a lot to share but …” and I felt like shouting, “He’s Michael f***ing Lynagh. For ten years he ate mostly people! Whole people! For breakfast, lunch and tea!” But that would have been silly. So I just said, yes, we’d share the goat and, yes, we’d share the roasted shellfish platter to start because having one each really would be a bit of a stretch.

It had on it clams and crayfish and a couple of big prawns, mussels I think, and one big crab claw which Michael said I could have, so I did, and all of it had a good dry, smoky flavour and texture from the fire and went nicely with the Greek wine.

And then came the goat and it was a thing of beauty and all I could ever ask of a dish of food. It was slow-cooked for hours over wood, blackened and crispy, oozing its juices, scattered with parsley and pomegranate seeds, with two flatbreads that had been fried crisp and folded, and little saucepans of rich, tangy sauces. I ordered another set of the flatbreads immediately, for there were not enough, and then fell to ripping up the goat. Torn and then stuffed into flaps of crispy bread, slathered with tahini and harissa, the deep, almost petrolly charred goat meat, slippery with fat, sang easily through the tart spicy notes of its condiments and was the most epic of kebabs. Perfect with a good bottle of valpolicella from Roccolo Grassi, chosen by Michael despite our server’s heavy nudgings towards more of the Greek stuff.

It was a cracking meal. At its seafood and kebab heart, it carried something of the savour of Brighton but with a heft and seriousness that was pure Tower of London. I am resolved to be the first critic into the next Coal Shed and report on it exclusively to the world in its very first week of opening. As long as it’s in Kentish Town.

The Coal Shed
1 Tower Bridge, Crown Square, London SE1 (020 3384 7272; coalshed-restaurantlondon.co.uk)
Cooking 7
Service 9
Location 9
Score 8.33
Price £50/head sans grog.