Picton & Co, Mermaid Quay, Cardiff: review
On July 20, 2024 by The Plate Licked Clean‘The only Godfather line I know is ‘Say hello to my little friend,” she says.
Clearly, today’s trip to Everyman Cinema is both educational and long overdue: and lunch will be here at Picton and Co, on the edge of Mermaid Quay in Cardiff Bay.
Historically the area has been a byword for slim pickings, with just a smattering of interesting independents competing with bland chains. What it lacks is somewhere chic. A name to drop.
Diversifying can inject new blood into a business- I can’t be a love god all day every day, for goodness’ sake, and occasionally need to pick up a pen- but Ken Picton’s pivot from in-demand hairdresser to deli/bar/restaurant is one of the roads less travelled. (I can only think of one other similar project, and that’s in East Sussex, so answers on a postcard to the usual place.)
Picton & Co’s light, airy space is very much set up to appeal to capital ‘f’ ‘Foodies’. Window displays and shelves artfully display the kind of stock to draw squeals of excitement from the kind of people who reply obrigado in Portuguese restaurants or roll the ‘r’ in burrata as they browse the Sous Chef catalogue. On second thoughts, they’d probably peruse a range like this. So: take your pick from pasta by La Tua and Rummo, and Belgian ketchups and tins of foie gras and caviar- if you find your stock of Royal Beluga is running low, you know where to come- and both black and white puddings by Fruit Pig (one of the vanishingly few producers using fresh blood in their products, fact fans).
There’s a healthy smattering of Spain via Ortiz tinned tuna, Torres crisps, pickles, olives and cured meats from Brindisa. Tinned fish from Mitch Tonks’ Rockfish is a welcome sight (B, whose nephew is a chef at The Seahorse and loves a pretty addition to the kitchen cupboards, adds several to the inevitable heft of her basket).
Decide whether you need your soy sauce aged to two, three or five years as you size up truckles of Baron Bigod. Spot the beef dry ageing cabinet and the pouches of Hard Lines coffee, and browse the wine room’s £150 perfumes from 19-69 and tools for the Big Green Egg in the window and in your dream kitchen. Lynx Jungle Fresh and Jam Shed Malbec, this is not: this is a carefully-assembled (not ‘curated’. Can we please bin ‘curated’?) collection of aspirational ‘foodie’ lifestyle tropes to browse while you’re deciding on which Anthony Bourdain line to post next to your Instagram stories.
Or, as their site puts it, ‘a sanctuary for food enthusiasts’.
Parts looks modishly familiar- is someone punting a job lot of black wire cages to every new chi-chi opening in Cardiff, I wonder? A central bar dominates: with just one beer on draught the emphasis is very much on wine and cocktails. None of the latter are available when we arrive- ‘It’s our barman’s birthday, so he’s having a day off’, we are told. Good for him: I’ll drink to that. We’ll live, though the unavailability of the three things I was most looking forward to- Negronis, flatbreads and tartare- at midday on a Sunday is a disappointment. On my second visit, no cocktail menu is visible.
It’s an eye-catching display. The stage is set. Does it all come together, though?
Well, in part.
‘Embrace the dual essence of our establishment, where the joy of eating and the art of drinking coalesce’, they suggest.
Or as I find myself wondering: am I eating in a shop, or shopping in a restaurant?
The level of produce on show raises expectations: surely this extended foreplay of shelf, cabinet and chiller means the earth will move when you’re served? There will be an effortless transition from the quality of produce on the shelves, to the plate in front of you, won’t there? When there’s some actual cooking involved?
Sadly, this is where things go a little awry.
Front of house is personable, sparky and warm. Everything it should be: downright lovely, at times. Any issues here have nothing to do with them. Jugs of iced water brought as standard are a nice touch, and Gavi di Gavi and a Navarran Garnacha slip down very nicely.
Pricing can be punchy. Olives- Spanish Gordal from Brindisa- are ten for £6 here. Plump, briny, very good, though I can’t help comparing them to the eight (larger) examples you get at Asador 44, which come in at £4.50, even after their additional in-house marinade of extra virgin oil, lemon peel, parsley and black pepper, rather than just being decanted from a tin and plated.
Make no mistakes: there are good things here. They have recently switched their oyster supplier, Menai replacing their usual Carlingford. Lovely, they are too: fat and sweet, with a yuzu butter dressing the standout. Grilled peaches and burrata (Apulian for ‘bland’) are pleasant enough.
A pork skewer (£9) catches the eye- cherry ketchup promises an interesting twist- but it disappoints as a whole, the fat a little flabby, the flesh bearing little trace of the promised open flames. File under ‘missed opportunity’.
Second time in, a flatbread brings ooze and ‘nduja heat, and beef tartare is one of the better ones you’ll find locally. But overall, it feels unevenly executed. ‘It reads like a menu they’ve seen in London but don’t quite have the skill to deliver here’ says a chef friend.
Four prawns are happily meaty but edging into overcooked territory. We pry and tear and dredge and suck. We keep the gremolata, because it’s a lovely thing- thick, rich, tangy- and because we know chips are on their way, and we anticipate some back of the fork smooshing.
We wait. And wait. And wait. ‘Triple cooked’ promises the menu, with everything that implies. They come a lovely shade, but that’s as good as it gets. I go hunting for a great one, even a good one. It doesn’t take long. Limp and listless, they disappoint, coloured a beautiful shade but with limited crag and ruffle and precious little evidence of any snap.
That stings, but not as much as the price, which rubs salt into the wound. They look the part but don’t deliver: and if you’re thinking, ‘I spy a theme here!’, then congratulations and give yourself a pat on the back. It’s worth telling you there were just three tables in, and a couple at the bar, at the time: this wasn’t a kitchen straining at capacity.
‘£7? Was that a pound a chip?’ asks a friend, later, as we recall Hawksmoor exemplary beef dripping chips: and closer to home, Tom Simmons’ are exponentially better. Both will set you back fifty pence less in Knightsbridge and Pontcanna respectively.
The chicken gua bao which are offered to make up for the wait are wildly outsized. The buns are made here, we are told, which should be a good thing: but what should be trim one-handers come as unwieldy hippo’s yawns, a misstep of scale and practicality.
Yes, there are busy shelves and cabinets here. There’s nowhere else in the city which can tempt with such choice and quality. But there’s a disconnect here, between aspiration and reality. Whatever my reservations, Picton & Co is certainly an improvement on Death by Chain. It will be interesting to see where it goes next, whether they can start to work from a more secure foundation of nailing the basics.
It’s just that, right now- and yes, I’m going to bow out in the most obvious way imaginable, and you knew it was coming- Picton & Co doesn’t quite make me an offer I can’t refuse.
Picton & Co, Unit 9, Mermaid Quay, Cardiff CF10 5BZ
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