Restaurant Recommendation: J. Sheekey

We took a chance on Friday night and walked into J. Sheekey, without reservations, at the theater hour, thinking we might be able to snag a table as people were heading out. And we did, though we were also warned not to count on this tactic: the place is usually fully booked. (A sign of the times that it wasn’t on this particular Friday night? Because J. Sheekey isn’t cheap: you’ll more than likely spend more than £20 for your main dish. But there is a nice list of half bottles of wine, so that helps.)
      J. Sheekey is supposed to be one of London’s great seafood restaurants, a place I felt I should visit at least once while living here. But I liked it well enough that I plan to go back next time I have some theater in the area. Because the food was just what I had in mind: standard but wonderful. (But was it better than Esca in New York? No.) Here’s what we tried: razor clams with chorizo and butterbeans, a soothing combo of smoothness and spiciness (though the razor clams could have been a tad more tender, and they made me remember some more succulent versions from Barcelona); fantastic spiced brown crab with garlic toasts (my portion was stuffed into one large crab shell, but I could have eaten a whole bowl); smoked haddock with mash and a poached egg, and this was certainly some of the best smoked haddock I’ve ever tasted (and I regularly taste it); cod wrapped in prosciutto on saffron risotto, which was good though not as good as the haddock, and the proportions didn’t entirely suit me: too much cod, too little risotto. See for yourself:


The atmosphere at J. Sheekey was sort of clubby and Old World, or at least earlier in this century, when money flowed more freely. Inside, with people drinking champagne in long, chilled glasses, and platters of oysters passing by, it didn’t seem, for a couple of hours, that the world was falling apart outside.

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