No. you’re not seeing things. That is a butchers counter at the back of this restaurant. Which tells you that this is going to be an unusual place to eat.

This long-established butchers shop in north St Margarets (in the shopping parade near the junction of St Margarets Road and Talbot Road) has recently branched out to be a cafe during the day and a restaurant by night (open Wed through Sat up to 9pm).

They also do catering, which is how Mr Riversniffer heard about it. At a function, on enquiring who had made the delicious party food, the answer came back “Thomas the butcher, and they’ve also opened a restaurant in part of the shop”. Well, that was intriguing, so we just had to try it.

A friend was staying with us, and she generously declared it would be her treat. So three of the Riversniffer family and our friend lost no time in booking.

Having had their party food previously, Mr Riversniffer had a hunch it would be good. It turned out to be faultless. From the moment the free pre-starter nibbles arrived (see picture above), through 4 starters and four main courses it was absolutely delicious.

I hope they won’t mind me reproducing a couple of exerpts form their menu:

Three of us had the avocado with crab, which was fresh and very tasty. No 1 son Riversniffer (being almost completely carnivorous) had the beef carpaccio, rated first class.

The main course menu is fairly (but not exclusively) meat orientated:

Three of us had various forms of steak, one had the lamb shanks. The steaks were predictably top notch, and the lamb shanks had that unctuous texture that they have when they’re done really well. Chips with the steaks were big, real, home made and very tasty.

And the wine? Well, they’re not licenced at the moment, so one must make the arduous journey (all of twenty yards!) to The Good Wine Shop on the corner of Talbot Road. There we bought a bottle of red and a bottle of white and took them back to Thomas. The wine proved outstanding. So you get the best of both worlds – a great meal and a shop stuffed full of great wine twenty yards away…

I think you can tell by now where this review is heading. From our experience you would never have guessed it was early days for this establishment. From start to finish the food and the service were very assured. V Thomas is a brave and original venture, which absolutely deserves to succeed.

The bill? Just under £90 for the four of us (we didn’t have puddings because we’d done too well on the earlier courses). The government gets about £12.50 0f that in the form of VAT,  so for the calibre of food we thought it very good value indeed. Wine, of course was separate, but the Good Wine Shop has some outstanding wines for under a tenner and Thomas generously do not charge corkage.

Given its position, surrounded by long-standing residents and the more recently arrived residents of the former Brunel site, I hope and believe V Thomas will soon be beating the customers off with sticks.

Book  early for a unique dining experience.

V Thomas

387 St Margarets Road

Twickenham

TW1 1PP

Tel: 020 8892 3725

The fit-out must have been expensive. Rustic Italian, it has a relaxed, urban feel (if that’s not a contradiction in terms).

Starters were slow-cooked cannellini beans with Tuscan sausage (intense flavours) and prawn and crayfish cocktail (utterly refreshing).

Main courses were tagliolini with crabmeat, and calves liver, both perfect. We also had a bottle of white wine, Verdeca, Puglia 2008 (approx £16) which was modern, clean and intense, with a long finish.

The service was charming, professional but also relaxed.

All of this will be no surprise to those who’ve been to sister restaurants Osteria Pulcinella and Pincho, those very professional Church Street establishments.

But at Brocca, chef Pasquale Spaziano has raised standards to new levels. Despite the mid-market positioning Riversniffers has no hesitation in tagging Brocca under “fine dining”.

For a fine Italian meal, the lucky residents of St Margarets can now choose between Brocca at one end of the village, and the more formal A Cena at the other end, near Richmond Bridge.

Let’s hope we don’t get spoilt by too much choice. Who’d of thought it would ever happen to St Mags?

Oh, almost forgot – the bill? Including a couple of coffees  and a generous tip, £65 for two.

You owe it to yourself to go. But book early – the word is spreading.

Brocca Antika

139 St Margarets Road

Twickenham

TW1 1RG

Tel: 020 8891 2644

Riversniffers bumped into two seasoned restaurant goers who ate at Brocca on the first Saturday. Their verdict? The best meal they’d had anywhere in 2009 – at any price – absolutely fabulous.

She had bruschetta followed by a calzone. He had aubergine and mozarella bake, followed by crab tagliatelli. They had a good bottle of Italian white. The bill? £46 including a tip.

The next day the couple went to the Wolseley. They said that the meal, although really enjoyable, was “nowhere near as imaginative as Brocca on the Saturday”.

Riversniffers can’t wait to try it out and is booked in there in the next week. There will be a full write-up here shortly afterwards.

Looks like they’ll be beating the customers off with sticks.

Book early for Christmas!

Brocca Antica

139 St Margarets Road

Twickenham

TW1 1RG

Tel: 020 8891 2644

Parvinu has now been open for a couple of months. Mr & Mrs Dipsophile visited on a recent Friday evening to see how it was getting on.

We’ve remarked on the wine list before (see below) but now we’ve found something we like drinking (the Chilean chardonnay, £18.50) and we spent a relaxed half hour getting the feel of the place.

It was fairly full, with a very pleasant crowd eating and drinking in a relaxed atmosphere. There were even groups of people drinking and chatting at the great oval dining table, which made it look like a party in some vast Italian villa – really unusual.

Parvinu is a very distinctive place and there is certainly nowhere like it in the area. Given the current economic climate, the upmarket positioning is brave, but it was busy the night we went and we hear that it is generally well frequented.

We hope it continues to do well; in the interest of Parvinu moving from good to great, we put together a (last) list of things we thought could be improved:

The bar. We’re not sure it’s a good idea to have people eating there because it makes it difficult for people to buy a drink – and when they do get served the transaction tends to annoy the people eating at the bar. We would remove the bar seats to give drinkers a clear run.

The flat lighting in the main room. We think that more upbeat lighting could make the main room an absolutely stunning space, rather than the rather gloomy one it is at present.

The soup posters. We still don’t like these, but totally accept that, as Homer Simpson said “beauty is in the eye of the beer holder”

Otherwise, that’s it – no more gripes. We look forward to future visits and will be actively looking to add the “cool” tag to this place as and when it achieves that hard-to-define status.

P.S. We still haven’t eaten there, but some people have added  comments at the end of this post. More comments would be welcome, both on the food and in general.

P.S.S. Parvinu’s wine list and menu are on their website, here

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The Riversniffers are divided on this new addition to the St Margarets drinking/eating scene. Some reckon it will be a great success. Others have their doubts. So Dipsophile hand-picked a panel of seasoned drinkers from the editorial team and paid a visit on a weekend lunchtime. These are the findings of the group.

 What we like

The space It is big – and the furniture, fixtures and fittings are of high quality and give an upmarket impression. Large gilt mirrors, burgundy leather sofas, zinc and wood-topped tables make for a club-like atmosphere.

The spectacular oval dining table – set in its own semi-private area, seats 15 and would be great for a celebrating a significant event.

The loos – magnificent

The photographs – fabulous, distinctive black and white photographs on some of the walls

What we’re not keen on

The lighting – is subdued to the point of gloom. The lighting is so dim that we found ourselves chasing round the room looking for a light to read the wine list by. We also found the little pendant lights over the tables irritating, as they barely enable the reading of menus and generally seeing what you are eating/drinking.

The Riversniffers thought that the lighting should be more dramatic, with pools of bright light contrasting with darker areas to give a more upbeat feel to the place.

The posters on the wall – we thought the pop art posters on the wall clashed with the club-like atmosphere of the rest of the space. Bare walls would actually be an improvement on what’s currently there.

The wine list – is extensive, but our panel found it to be pricey and to some extent obscure. What do we mean by that?

In the UK at present the most popular white wines would probably be sauvignon blanc, chardonnay and maybe Pino Grigio; in reds, maybe Rhone, Rioja or some variety of (ordinary) claret. These volume tipples may be regarded as something of a cliché – and our guess is that Parvinu are trying to avoid being clichéd. Indeed, their wine list is rich in regional varietals.

But if you’re out for the evening with a bunch of friends and you’re looking for something that is familiar to most of the group, what might you choose? Well in whites, the cheapest chardonnay is a Chilean at £18.50, the cheapest sauvignon blanc is £19.50 and the lowest priced French chardonnay (a Chablis) is £32. There isn’t a Pino Grigio. In reds, there’s a Cote du Rhone at £23, a Rioja at £27 and a claret at £62 (admittedly a Grand Cru Classe 1997!)

In fairness we should leave the fabulous claret out of this debate. But we suspect the rest of the prices are slightly beyond the range of most everyday wine drinkers.

They’re also more than the local competition. For example, in an establishment not far from Parvinu you can get a Chablis for £16, just half the price. I suspect the Parvinu example would be better quality but for everyday social drinking would you rather have one glass or two for the same money?

Conclusion (for now)

Parvinu is aimed firmly at an upmarket clientele, with pricing to match. Whether this positioning survives in the current economic climate remains a subject of debate among the Riversniffers.

Any comments?

We wish Parvinu success, but we feel they may need to tune the offering. Riversniffers would be particularly interested in your comments (especially if you’ve eaten there, which we haven’t had a chance to do yet).

For years Ches’s Café in Crown Road has been reliably dishing up early morning bacon sandwiches and fry-ups.

But recently the focus has changed. It’s still a very good place for an English breakfast, but it has recently adopted a different guise at lunchtime and evenings – Ches’s Trattoria.

Wikipedia states “a trattoria is an Italian style of restaurant, less formal than a ristorante. There are generally no printed menus, the service is casual, the prices low, and the emphasis is on a steady clientele…the food is modest but plentiful and is served family-style (i.e. at common tables)”.

This description is pretty much spot on for the new Ches’s Trattoria.

Ches’s is on two floors. Upstairs is the café, downstairs is a more intimate, restaurant-like room. On a recent visit, six of us were booked for 8pm, and on arrival we were shown to the downstairs room.

The choice of starters is quite extensive. Seafood salad, Parma ham and melon, mixed salami, tuna and cannellini bean salad, mushrooms with white wine and garlic are just some of the dishes on offer, all at about £6 to £8. For main course there are about a dozen different pasta dishes, and 15 or so different types of pizza, all in the £7 to £10 price range.

In the end we went straight for main courses, without having a starter. Four of us ordered pizzas and two ordered linguine. The kitchen was busy, and we waited for a while over glasses of wine (BYO, because they are not at present licenced).

 When the food did arrive, the dishes arrived all at once and piping hot. The pizzas were large, fresh and tasty, and the linguine had a wonderfully intense and genuine Italian home-cooked flavour.

A quick poll round the table for marks out of five for the food returned votes of fours and fives from everyone. And the bill, for six people? £65.50.

The Verdict

Italian home cooking served with real warmth, friendliness and pride. It gets very busy at times, so don’t expect to be in and out in twenty minutes. But for a relaxed evening out with friends at a price that won’t break the bank Ches’s Trattoria is very hard to beat. Highly recommended.

Other notes

Booking is essential on weekend evenings. They also do take-aways.

As mentioned before, they are not currently licenced so you are welcome to bring your own wine etc. No credit cards, only cash or cheques.

Ches’s Trattoria          48, Crown Road, St Margarets, TW1 3EH

                                    020 8892 4615