Fourth and Church

When I’m finally laid to rest, my rigor-mortised fingers still clutching a fork no doubt, I have stipulated full honours and a pyramid in which to lay my head for all eternity. Just a small one, mind, nothing ostentatious. Taking the necessities with me into the afterlife might well involve the entire stock (and staff) of Fourth and Church, such is my regard for their craft.

It's an intimate, elegant little place, its walls lined with bottles – a proud Amontillado here, a ravishing Riesling there – the sort of things to beckon and demand an hour or two of your time. The drinking is good here: they make a mean cocktail but I am usually swayed by the sherry selection. There’s even, unusually, a Blanc de Noirs by the glass which I’d be having had I not my nose in the Manzanilla en rama. The rest of the wine list stretches away to the horizon largely, and for your purse thankfully, keeping away from pricier regions in favour of, say, Lagrein from Alto Adige.

There’s à la carte with smaller and larger plates but give in to the gravitational pull of the tasting menu. It follows the well-beaten path of snacks then starter, fish, meat and pud but a little cheese course had been inserted (correctly, à la française, before anything sweet) without whiff of additional charge. As if cheese were de rigueur. Which it is. In this instance, a gorgeously sticky, stinky piece of Munster expertly paired with baked fig. Someone in the kitchen is fond of pickling, preserving and fermenting: they are a dab hand at it, too. Cubes of pressed ham hock studded with pistache are enlivened with the vinegar hit of red and golden beetroot – at once fresh and deeply porky. The main course usually offers something slow cooked and unctuous: cheek or short rib with a little offbeat coffee and chilli perhaps. And there’s always excellent home-baked bread. Overall, it’s stimulating, well conceived and executed.

I had unfortunately come a cropper back-wise the evening before my last visit (unbridled limbo, frenetic Houla or some such) which rendered our allocated bar stools rather too Himalayan in aspect. Despite being chocka, the caring staff found us a more trad table with neither rolling of eye nor gritting of teeth – the sort of flexibility and bonhomie that many a starched ‘n starred place would do well to note. Bravo!