Review: The Falconer

Tucked away between a convenience store and a very yellow cafe named Boom Bannana in the heart of Oxford St sits The Falconer, a quaint and unassuming restaurant that was to be our setting for the night. The parties assembled one by one, albeit each with their own peculiarities. Mel proved once again that while she may have many fine skills, navigation is sadly not one of them, arriving roughly twenty minutes after she had said “I’m really close Google Maps says two or three minutes”. Whilst I waited outside the convenience store next to the Falconer (subsequently arousing the suspicions of the Asian man who appeared to own the shop) Tom and Toby arrived. Toby, in what I can only assume to be a misguided attempt to impose his masculinity chose to wear a T-Shirt and shorts on the sort of night that Bear Grylls would describe as ‘a bit nippy’ (i.e Fucking freezing). Tom on the other hand had decided to to take his apparel the opposite direction, sporting a very slick suit jacket, that he had clearly worn to further stake the pseudo-intellectual/vaguely cultured claims that he had established in his own blog post. He looked more like a guest judge on Dancing with the Stars. Nick also arrived.

We ventured two streets up to the Brighton hotel to have a customary pre-restaurant beverage (does doing something twice count as a custom?). Whilst there we took in the video clip that accompanied Paul Simon’s classic ‘You can call me Al’ and discussed whether it was indeed Chevy Chase in the film Clip and whether Chevy Chase is huge or Paul Simon was just really tiny (Both it turns out, Chevy is 6’4 and Paul is 5’3). Little did we know that this film clip would serve as such an apt visual metaphor for the meal that was ahead. You’ll see the immense amount of fun that both Paul and Chevy are having during and after Paul’s impressive and catchy Conga drum solo (around 3:27 onward), that was a pretty fair summation of our experiences at the Falconer.

As we walked in to the Falconer there was brief moment of panic as they struggled to find my booking. Was our trip to The Falconer going to be over before it had even begun? No, obviously not. They located my booking eventually and we sat down. The surroundings that greeted us were described by Nick as Art-Deco with several elements of classicism. I agreed. To the menu we went and much to my delight it appeared both delicious and reasonably priced. The fries with aoili and asparagus with  prosciutto and haloumi were selected as entrees and brought out fairly swiftly. Whilst perhaps not living up to the quality of the chips at The Book Kitchen the previous week both the fries and asparagus was great. For the main several different choices were made, I had the Papadelle with Confit Duck and a burnt butter sauce which was genuinely delicious. The duck that died for that meal should be proud of itself, it had truly outdone itself in becoming a meal. Everyone was relatively happy with their meal, particularly Tom who seemed to enjoy eating/making a mess of his seafood stew rather than tasting it.

After such a fine main there seemed to be little doubt that a desert was in order. The Tom Waits both appeased both my vanity and tastebuds. I enjoyed the fact that the Chef had named the Dark Chocolate Mousse, Whiskey Ice Cream, Meringue Powder and Tobacco flavoured sauce after the gravelly voiced blues man as much as the meal itself. It was really really fucking good. I can’t be sure but I’m fairly sure Warrant must have travelled into the future and wrote the song ‘Cherry Pie’ after tasting the Nick’s desert . Jokes really on them as it was actually a Cherry Tart (which I guess still would have worked in the song).  Regardless of whether it was pie or tart it tasted amazing.

This is what my desert tasted like!

The Falconer is a delightful little restaurant that provides the immensely pleasing combination of good food, a nice atmosphere and good customer service. They seemed to genuinely enjoy having you in the restaurant and  as a result we genuinely enjoyed being there. We started the night with Paul Simon telling us that we could call him al, well by the time we had left the Falconer I believe you could call the entire crew al-mighty happy(classic!).

6/7