Ham, London NW6, restaurant review: a by-the-book Brit brasserie

In brief | Hām

So, first things first: Ham's actual name isn't Ham; it's Hām, but I can't put that in the online headline for reasons of Search Engine Optimisation. What’s up with that?

(If you’re not interested in accents and diacritics and suchlike, we can regroup further down if you like. Conversely, if you are interested in Search Engine Optimisation, then just try working round here for a few weeks is all I can suggest).

The line above the A is called a “macron”, like the French president, and it’s relatively little used in modern languages – it tends to imply a transcription into the Latin alphabet from some other one, and it has the effect of lengthening the vowel underneath it. So the Greek letter ōmega (“big O”) is pronounced a little like “Ermahgerd!” in that funny meme of Seven Super Excited Animals that did the rounds a couple of years ago.

In fact, Hām ought strictly speaking to be pronounced “Harm” rather than “Ham” – but they say “Ham” on the phone. And no, there’s no ham on the menu, though the brunch menu (they have a brunch menu) features some sort of impeccably sourced bacon.

Hām is a modern rendering of one of a number of Old English words that denote a settlement. (Hampstead, to the west of which lies West Hampstead, though it’s a very different sort of place, means “settlement settlement”; Hampton Wick near Richmond upon Thames means “settlement settlement settlement” – it’s so good they named it thrice).

It’s also cognate with our word “home”, as they are keen to point out, not just on the website but also at the bottom of the bill – though I’d have thought one of the hallmarks of eating at home rather than in a restaurant is not getting a bill. Plus, of course, if you were a real Anglo-Saxon, you wouldn’t need to put a macron on the word – you’d just know.

People only started using accents when they wanted to standardise the wildly divergent spellings found in the old texts. So while the name has clearly been chosen to conjure up all that Beowulf stuff, mead-halls and hearth-fires and loving-cups, it bears on its back a chilly splinter of dislocation and exile.

Or maybe their graphic designer just thought it looked *really* cool, like the one on well-liked Scandi outfit Rōk, or the umlauts adorning the albums I used to listen to, which I affected to believe were real, so I’d say “Moteurgh-head”, “Blue Eurghyster Cult” etc, to the mounting irritation of my friends.

Speaking of which: welcome back, the rest of you. We arrived for a late midweek supper and the place was jumping: a mixed crowd of mates, dates and food bores Instagramming small plates. They have gone for that slightly odd luxe-industrielle look, with plush seating, art deco-inspired carpentry and plenty of bare brick, like a long-established Parisian neighbourhood bistro that’s been lovingly restored after sustaining heavy bomb damage.

We ordered two smaller plates and two larger ones, though an additional half a quail appeared (they said there had been a mix-up in the kitchen) and was almost the dish of the night, with perfect early artichokes underneath, nutty and butter-soft. Although I’m not sure halving a quail isn’t more trouble than it’s worth.

Otherwise, dinner was pretty good, if somehow eluded by greatness: fairly simple, a few Asian ­accents (which might have been more pronounced) jazzing up mostly British ingredients. A by-the-book Brit brasserie for the late 2010s, we thought: a less fancy-schmancy counterpart to somewhere like Portland or Anglo.

Mackerel tartare with fresh mint and ajo blanco was a mixture of textures and tastes you might not expect to march in step with each other. But the slippery, coppery fish worked brilliantly with the velvety roughness and garlicky kick of the soup. Less of a triumph – though it looked enchanting, with tiny discs of radish strewn over it – was a little bundle of raw chopped beef with slow-burning horseradish mayonnaise and crispy, violently salty shallots.

Courgettes came in a sort-of risotto with toothsome barley kernels, tomato and tapenade, which all played nicely together but tended to gang up on a timid scattering of shiso; chicken with Jersey Royals (just the two of them, as if we were living through some post-apocalyptic catastrophe of root vegetable cultivation, a Spud Event Horizon – and who knows, perhaps we are), braised rainbow chard and a wild garlic purée that had lost much its fresh-foraged zing in the cooking and tasted, we thought, of nettle soup. Cheese was a good, unfussy mixture of British and French.

Over two glasses of monbazillac (in general I thought the wine list was excellent – though no horses had been frightened in the making of it – and, like the menu, fairly priced) along with a proper Date Night pudding of chocolate tart with gariguette strawberries, we ruminated, both literally and metaphorically.

It’s not a part of London I know well, though my ex-wife’s cousin used to live there, and I am very fond of the Czech bar down the road. It is sturdily unglamorous, more bourgeois than Kilburn to the west, less plutocratic than Hampstead itself has these days become.

The eating-out options along West End Lane are dowdy and chainy: a Gourmet Burger Kitchen, a Rosa’s Thai, a Banana Tree. Hām ought to do well in such a setting, and deserves to: even if the cooking’s not flawless, it’s done with verve and originality. And despite my qualms about the décor, on the night we were there the room buzzed with the delirious jabber of grown-ups enjoying themselves, out on the town for a change, kids and cares parked safely – for a couple of short hours – at home.

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