Buyers Club, Hardman Street, reviewed

What: Buyers club

Where: 24 Hardman Street

Type of food/beverage: Pasta kitchen and pizzas and a neighboring bar

When: Mon–Sat: 12–12 // Sun: 12–22

Independent or chain: Sovereign

An old, often misspelled line comes to mind: “I never want to belong to any club that has someone like me as a member.”

Woody Allen? Groucho Marx? No, it’s your old pal from A-level psychology; the cigar-chomping patricidal whisperer, Sigmund Freud.

But if you go by how many food and drink establishments have ‘club’ or ‘social’ in their name, chances are you’ll be a member of at least one of them, whether you like it or not.

They make great drinking holes, but the food can sometimes feel like an afterthought. Fortunately, not at Buyers Club.

Decor

Located just off Hope Street, so close to the Philharmonic you could hear them tuning in, the Buyers Club has slipped into the middle of Hardman Street into an industrial estate now alive with flowering plants and open skies. You’ll be scrapping space during the summer, and for good reason.

Inside, it’s laid out like similar ‘neighborhood bars’ – a legion of bottles on an open wooden bar, artwork on the walls, hanging plants and Song of the Pyramid Radiohead oozes across the room. All this, but not on his own ass.

There is plenty of room for the bar, which could fit almost the entire neighborhood, and the small kitchen outside the main room produces a slim, easy-to-manage menu. Speaking of which.

The main event

I started things off with focaccia – a classic breed with olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Partly at first, partly because I knew there would be sauce left over from what I came for, a bowl of pasta.

It’s fair to say that focaccia has been making the rounds in recent years under the “bread, but better” banner. But they don’t always work – too soft, too wet, too salty. It’s not as easy as it seems. This (£4.50 for three decent slices) was beautifully done. Soaked in rich, sweet enough olive oil and dried until then, it was wonderful on its own. Dip it in oil and balsamic and you get the best of both worlds. I left the slice on the other side.

Many places have made pasta song and dance, everything has been swept from the kitchen and served simply – where there are no frills are furbelow. It’s all very modest, but what about the cost?

I opted for a dish found on most pasta menus but rarely delivering what it promises – wild boar ragu with pancetta, red wine and pangrattato with pappardelle (£18). Yes, the cost. Almost twenty quid for a bowl of pasta. But I’ve paid the same for a cheap imitation and this was the real deal.

The beauty of the wild boar is that it straddles two camps; the pork’s tasty, fatty carrier of complex herbs and spices and the sweet, slightly foreign and unusual notes of well-reared and happy game. What the little beast has eaten while roaming the earth will sing through if treated with the respect it deserves.

The philharmonic would appreciate this simple quartet of wild boar, pork, soffrito and red wine. Liberally known as pangrattato – breadcrumbs poor man’s parmesan – You have a minuet for which you can dress up. Fantastic.

You’ll be forgiven for rolling your eyes until next week when somewhere describes itself as a “club”. So far socialist, but usually with bourgeois pricing. Buyer’s Club is wonderfully straightforward. The menu doesn’t tie itself in knots, and what it does, it does very well.

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Buyers club24 Hardman St, L1 9AX

Buyers Club is in the guides