Ni L'un Ni L'Autre

Where do you go to eat in Mayfair with an hour to spare and much less cash – during a January of self-imposed sober spartanism – for a pre cinema meal?

We had no idea – we normally stick to our prescribed side of Regent Street (designed in the nineteenth century to keep the Soho scum out and doing a spectacular job to this day) – so we haplessly wandered into Shepherd Market near the Curzon. Pub grub seemed too grubby, the Indian looked loneliness in excelsis, a Mediterranean too starchy, and the Italian more like an estate agent’s than an enclave of conviviality.

Which led us, naturally, to a jam-packed Polish/Mexican hybrid operating under the French soubriquet L’AUTRE. I haven’t had special needs fusion since a disastruous experience in a Japanese/Mexican place in California, but the faces on the little people in its little window hinted at something special, or intriguing at the very least.

A joyfully cramped front room type place, L'Autra boasts an assortment of décor so wilfully barmy it would put a howling trolley-pushing street lunatic to shame. Black and white film posters peek out through their military hat collection; Tijuana junk statues smile distractedly upon a bed of foreign currency alongside a lone candle lighting a shrine to nothing at all. A smal fire crackles while halfway down the stairs an alcove bearing some dishes of Mexican and Polish cuisine turns out to be our dinner.

Once we’d made our way through velvet curtains that metamorphosised into someone’s anorak (it really is a small place) it was time for belly-filling, and fast. The girlfriend was predictably possessed by the gung-ho nihilism of a 6am Vegas gambler and ordered something she knew would be terrible (but might just not be, this time) viz. a Mexican option. Indifference prevents me from remembering what exactly it was supposed to be, but it slithered up the stairs a sloppy and creamy amalgamation of Eastern European perceptions of Mexican food, not pretending to aspire to even Tex-Mex notions of proper South American cuisine. It was the kind of enchiltacito you might imagine Travelodge Burnley to whip up for a wedding fiesta.

Polish food, on the other hand, these Polish people do well. Diners lapped Borscht with gusto and supermarket-looking bread and my wild boar with Polish hunter’s casserole came hot and steamy and sticky and filling. Quite what hunting the cassoulet was setting me up for I do not know but its gloopy mix of sausage, mushroom, bacon and cabbage worked a treat. The wild boar collapsed at the touch faster than Woolworths and the whole thing is done an injustice by the captured cowpat presented here.



Despite the hustle and bustle of the place and the quite obvious mark up their prices afford, the starched ladies in linen behind the bar looked miserable as sin. We didn’t care, we were in and out in 45 and (half)full of hope for bet-hedging restaurants worldwide.