The Gate, 51 Queen Caroline Street,
London W6 9QL
08/02/2014
She said: Wow. Not sure how this one
slipped my radar. Playing on his iPad one day, The Gate popped up in a new
restaurants section of a very old website; it’s been around forever. As a smart
vegetarian restaurant and fancying myself as a smart vegetarian, we headed over
to Hammersmith to see if it would offer up the stodgy stuffed vegetables and
hippie food of yesteryear or something different for the hungry vegetarian
(note to self: good name for a future restaurant). As we existed the tube and
wandered down a road full of housing estates, we stopped outside a mental
health facility sure that we were in the wrong place. We crossed the road as he
consulted Google maps and I noticed ‘The Gate’ sign by a Christian church of
some kind. As we approached the church and entered a gate I thought: ‘he’s
going to kill me for bringing him to a canteen in a church hall run by people
that are going to talk us into converting while serving us hot pot vegetable
stew from a cauldron’…But as we passed a lovely courtyard and turned up some
stairs, we entered a beautiful dining room in what looked like a former
artist’s studio, with large industrial windows and glass ceiling, creating a
lovely, bright space. I was beside myself when I got the menu. Usually I go
through a process of elimination in choosing what I can eat but this is the
first time in a long while that I was interested in everything. The menu offers
a wide choice of creative, tasty-sounding starters, mains and desserts. After
much discussion with him, I chose the Carciofini to start which was a
delicately fried artichoke filled with mushrooms, served on a bed of lentils
and with a garlic sauce. It was absolutely delicious. For mains I ordered the
Aubergine schnitzel but I had also wanted the beetroot ravioli. After another
diner received his schnitzel and I saw the massive portion which looked amazing
but beyond my capabilities, I was in time to change my order to the ravioli. I
did not regret this decision. A manageable portion of homemade pasta with a
sweet filling offset by a tangy topping of sundried tomatoes. I really wanted
to have a dessert as the many options were calling my name but I knew my
stomach would not oblige so had to pass. The Gate has been a real find –
probably THE find in a long time. Service was friendly and efficient, the food
wonderful, the menu changes every few months, prices are reasonable and the
room just lovely. I just wish it was closer to home but now I have a reason to
return to Hammersmith, over and over gain. Don’t miss this one – vegetarian or
not.
He said: Unless you live in that corner
of London you really, really have to want to go there to find The Gate. From
London’s core group of vegetarian grandes dames, this is probably the last that
we tick off our list; but it’s certainly not the least. The Gate definitely
rewards the determined veggie. It’s a bright, breezy haven just out-of-range of
the toxic fug belched-out by the thunderous traffic chugging ceaselessly along
London’s great open wound, the Hammersmith Flyover. It’s set on the upper floor
of what once was a large artist’s studio, with high ceilings and loads of sky
and light flooding through the massive windows. It’s decorated in a laid-back
style with not a single concession to vegetarian stereotypes: no pictures of
the Dalai Lama, no Peruvian horse blankets, no dream catchers, or baskets woven
by Biafran street urchins. Unlike most veggie restaurants which either try too
hard or try not enough, The Gate hit the cosy/stylish balance just right. The
only ambiance wrong note that I can remember is the coffee machine noisily
grinding away, echoing in the cathedral-like room. The totally expressionless
service from our East-European waitress was charming in its own way, and
certainly efficient. The food was a real surprise: full of flavour, texture and
colour – it wasn’t just ‘good for vegetarian’ but good by any yardstick. How
nice, for once, to go to a restaurant where the typically death-filled menu has
more than just the token concession to veggies. There was certainly plenty at
The Gate that I wanted to try, but I settled for the wasabi potato cake, and
followed with the wild mushroom polenta: at once familiar and inventive, and
very tasty. It may not be as clever and
sophisticated as nu-skool veggies like, say, Vanilla Black, but this is
the kind of thing I like. Out of the London’s various non-Asian vegetarian
restaurants, The Gate in Hammersmith is definitely the first one that I would
go to again.
