24 The Oval

Modern British

24 Clapham Road, SW9 0JG

££

Sister to Steakhouse Knife, 24 The Oval is a modern British restaurant, with a selection of both excellent meat and fish options. I have cycled past the Clapham Road location countless times and always thought it looked more like a hippy flower shop than a restaurant due to the vibrant words painted on the windows. Turns out that 24 The Oval did in fact transform into a Farm Shop for local, quality produce during the pandemic, however it is now fully back in business for diners near and far.

The location isn’t pretty but is convenient, the rather hectic road is this is made up for by the warm wooden interiors and lovely back terrace with hanging pot plants, which we were sat at on a warm summers evening. The staff were all super friendly, even the busy chefs behind the counter popped their heads up to say hello. This might be due to the fact that we came on the day of reopening after the owners had given all staff August off to recharge and relax – something almost unheard of in the hospitality industry, and a fact which made me immediately like this place even more.

Onto the good stuff: to drink we went for the Picpoul (£33) which was lovely and light – perfect for a hot day. To start, we ordered the Crab Pate Salad (£9), some Truffle Arancini (£4.5) and some Fish Croquettes (£4.5) to share between 4. The best of these was definitely the arancini: hard to go wrong with cheesy truffley rice deep fried in batter really… The croquettes were nice too, but the crab was just ok. It had a lot of decoration on the plate, almost too much, with not actually a lot of crab and some weird pairings like corn on the cob and popcorn. It looked confused when it arrived, and I looked confused after eating it.

For mains, we all decided to go for fish – two of us chose the Skate Wing (£22) and the other two a Seam Bream topped with Scallop (£24). The Skate Wing was cooked to perfection: easy to shred off the bone and tender. It was served with cauliflower puree, capers and crispy onion bhaji, all of which were nice, although the bhaji was slightly overdone and chewy. The piece of Sea Bream was similarly cooked really well, but also came alongside some very hard potato hashes which fell victim to the chewiness the bhaji’s had too. We ordered some garlic and rosemary fries which were tasty, if not also a little bit too done (maybe the fryers were working overtime after having a month off). There was a considerable lag between the starters and mains, but this was probably due to the fact that a group of 10 turned up around 40 minutes after us and dominated the orders. This didn’t matter too much but meant that by the time we had finished mains we were definitely too stuffed for desert. A shame, as they have some of my favourite British classics (sticky toffee pud, eton mess etc.)

24 The Oval is a really sweet, comforting place to come and eat. It had a real neighbourhood feel to it and wouldn’t be out of place in a small country village. The fish was of really good quality and cooked well, however, the sides and starters were not all that inspiring. It’s a shame as this is truly such a pleasant place to dine. I would recommend for anyone wanting a casual meal out with a splash of sophistication: you will be well looked after and feel good for it afterwards.

OVERALL RATING: ***

www.24theoval.co.uk