Restaurant: Pharmacy

Spectator, The, Feb 7, 1998 by Hardman, Robert

DAMIEN HIRST has established a reputation for chopping up dead creatures, generating huge amounts of hype for doing so, and being feted as a genius. The experimental artist has done it with a sheep, a shark and a cow. Now he has done it with a familiar Notting Hill Gate landmark. Pharmacy is his attempt to make a success of one of the most ill-fated restaurant sites in West London.

For decades, the ugly, two-storey building was home to a language school and, below it, the Cleopatra Taverna, a mysterious Greek dive with blacked-out windows and a cult non-following. Everyone knew the place but no one ever went there. Eventually, the taverna succumbed to the inevitable. In its place appeared a glassfronted Italian restaurant called Cento 50 which soon flopped. It could never decide whether it was a pizzeria or a posh joint and, having spread itself over both floors, had a permanent feel of being empty.

Now, Mr Hirst has come along. Actors, musicians and models all have their own themed restaurants, so why not artists? Mr Hirst's problem was what theme to go for. He could hardly create his customary shock with a few easels and brushes on the wall, while his art is unlikely to make anyone order much food. So, he has settled for drugs. Tee-hee.

Not naughty drugs, of course. Good heavens, no. Mr Hirst has built his restaurant around pharmaceuticals: honest pills and potions which you might find at Boots. If trendy, chemically adventurous diners want to perceive a different subtext and flock here in droves, well and good.

It is certainly popular. Having sliced the place in two like his famous cow, Mr Hirst has a restaurant upstairs and a bar below. The two halves are very different. The restaurant is at present booked up several weeks in advance. But the bar is open to all comers, serving drinks and a range of things on toast (4.50 for Welsh rarebit) to a studiously hip young crowd plus the odd middle-aged interloper. Bob Geldof suddenly seemed rather old when I spotted him on the night of my visit.

The ground floor bar is pretty grim. The problem with drugs is that they are very dull to look at. They can do amazing things for patients but their packaging is deliberately utilitarian. I had expected a weird recreation of some mad apothecary's laboratory. Instead, I found an old Soviet food shop, bland boxes of this piled next to bland bottles of that below bland lighting.

We had a drink at the table next to a stack of Anusol. I suppose that blending aperitifs and piles cream deserves some award for originality. The bar staff wear grey gowns, tied at the back like hospital bibs, and look a little like asylum patients on a day release scheme (albeit very posh patients since the bibs are designed by Prada). The bar stools and the ashtrays are designed to look like pills. The room is noisy.

Upstairs is another establishment altogether. Diners are escorted through a fire escape door at the back of the bar and up to the restaurant. There is no escaping the drugs theme. The wallpaper is covered in pictures of every pill in the book. In pride of place, beaming out of the windows at passers-by, is a huge, multicoloured molecular structure. `It's Damien's sculpture of his own DNA,' explained a waiter. My guest pointed out that DNA is supposed to look like a helix, whereas this resembled a flesh-eating virus. Perhaps this explains the genius of Mr Hirst. At any rate, there will be no problem establishing his genetic fingerprint should he ever find himself embroiled in a paternity suit.

For all that, Pharmacy is an excellent restaurant. The menu is mercifully free of chemical jokes - I was half expecting `chicken Savlon with a Prozac coulis' and only moderately pretentious. I started with `tian of Dorset crab, toast poilane'. I could not work out why the 'poilane' made this toast any different from standard toast and could have done with more than three small slices, but the crab was delicious, albeit a little on the rich side, at 9.50 a go. My guest opted for `parfait of foie gras and chicken livers' at 6. Although we both agreed that this might have read `parfait of chicken livers with a spot of foie gras', it was light, smooth, nicely presented and accompanied by a tasty fennel sauerkraut.

For the main course, I chose confit of lamb shoulder at 12.50. Tender, full of flavour and accompanied by a pleasingly sharp dish of creamed cabbage, it was excellent. My guest was equally happy with her `spit-roast spiced gambas', wolfing them down shells and all. A generous helping won added plaudits for the touch of ginger in the coating. For pudding she had iles flottantes in vanilla sauce - `very marshmallowy, just like eating a Teletubby' and I had the pave of chocolate. The chocolate was bitter, crunchy and moist all the way through. We drank a likable 17 red Cote Chalonaise 1993.

The gents had a diverting collection of medical waste -- syringes, bandages, surgical gloves -- squashed into a glass case above the urinal. I am surprised Mr Hirst has not installed a glass pipe from the loos and through the restaurant so that everyone can see what they have eaten all over again.