February, 2011

Yeah, so Yotam Ottolenghi has an epiphany at the age of thirty, comes to London from Israel in 1998, and within four years sets up Ottolenghi - bright, distinctive, searingly beautiful plates of heaving salads, joyful blazes of colour festooning his shops like a culinary wake-up call.

Stints at The Capital, Kensington Place and Baker and Spice preceded this lightning progression, and with a weekly column in the Guardian weekend magazine, a book, and now his first full blown restaurant, Ottolenghi the brand has resonance on the London dining scene.

NOPI is “North of Piccadilly” I’m told. Bold. NoHo in New York must be close by. Head Chef is Ramael Scully, the concept is all-day dining, Middle-eastern and Asian, with an emphasis on sharing plates. Yep, on-trend.

The space is beautiful, a blizzard of white,with a Scandinavian vibe.

A flurry of small plates arrive:

Beef Brisket Croquets, Asian Slaw - Three dense and tender bullets of meat, haunting back-note of coconut. Punchy. Slaw is a bit wimpy, and like an after thought. Brilliant brisket however.

Twice -cooked Baby Chicken, Lemon Myrtle Salt, Chilli sauce - Scintillatingly tender, genius citrus kick of lemon myrtle salt, lime heavy chilli sauce enlivening all. Pick up that infant chicken and bite through bones and all. Corker.

Slow cooked Pig Cheeks, Celeriac & Barberry Salad - Obscene slabs of dark, sticky meat, falling apart to the touch, cooked in Madeira, Iranian Barberry zinging everything up with a cranberry-like red berry twang. The WOW dish.

Sea-Bream, Fresh Coconut, Mint & Peanut Salad – Pan-fried, crisped, cashews frolicking in the salad too.

Burrata, Blood Orange, Coriander seeds - Excellent Burrata, a big, oozing, cream laden overload. Citrus crackle of coriander a great addition. Not enough orange, more needed to cut through the monster Burrata.

Pineapple Galette, Pandan, Coconut Ice-cream - Forced to order this by enthusiastic waiter, thin layer of grilled pineapple galette, sticky in the right places, and a delicate coconut ice cream that triumphs through not being cloying

The wine list is one of the most carefully constructed, and well sourced in London. Wine wizard is Gal Zohar, most recently of L’Anima, with quirky bio-dynamic Italians alongside some of the most exciting wines coming out of France right now. “Domaine Isle St Pierre” white is the best house white in London, £5 a glass here, from the innovative Guillaume Aubert at www.aubertmascoli.com.

Plates are between £6-£12. Get carried away, and you’ll do some damage to your bill, as dishes are small yet perfectly formed.

I’m gonna use this baby as a pit-stop, a drive-by shooting when trawling round the rest of Soho’s small plate dining crawl. For this, NOPI fires the right shots.

NOPI

21-22 Warwick St

London W1B 5NE

www.nopi-restaurant.com

Relentless. Restaurant openings in London continue unabated. Like a crack addiction.

London is groaning under the weight of a slew of new and impending openings at the start of 2011, with some big impact, high profile additions on the scene.

Celebrity chefs, first-time restaurant owners, chefs from across the pond: there is still a voracious appetite for new openings in London at the start of the year.

Culinary alchemist Heston Blumenthal arrived in London at the Mandarin Oriental with Dinner, a historical waltz through the forgotten dishes of Britain through the ages. Each dish has a historical date alongside, and is referenced to its origin. First week of reviews were nothing less than gushing, and securing a table is already needing military planning. A signature dish has already emerged with Meat Fruit (c.1500), chicken liver parfait masquerading as a mandarin. The highest profile opening this year has already happened.

Jason Atherton prepares to dazzle Mayfair with Pollen Street Social in April, the ex-Maze chef opening his first solo venture, containing London’s “first ever dessert bar”. We expect some whizz-bang El Bulli-esque dishes, where Jason spent time in the kitchen, alongside classics “Escoffier Style 1900, 45 day old Côte de Boeuf”.

5 Pollen Street opens opposite Atherton with Stefano Cavallini in the kitchen, having gained a star at The Halkin. The restaurant will be open all day, serving modern Italian dishes, such as Slow Roasted Loin of Veal with spring onion and porcini.

José Pizarro, co-founder and former executive chef of Tapas Brindisa opens José in April in Bermondsey Street, styled as a sherry and tapas bar evoking the aura of the Boqueria market in Barcelona. A larger restaurant, Pizarro, will follow later in the year.

Claude Bosi of Michelin starred Hibiscus opens The Fox and Grapes in Wimbledon, a gastro-pub he will run with brother Cedric and Head Chef Patrick Leano.

St John Hotel with its restaurant, which was due at the end of 2010, is imminent, we are promised. Prominence will be given to breakfast and in particular the “breakfast bun”, both sweet and savoury versions.

Spuntino will be the latest offering from Russell Norman, who has already achieved astonishing success with Polpo and Polpetto in Soho, a New York inspired Italian diner with just thirty seats. This follows the opening of the Campari Bar at Polpo, a basement space focusing on Campari and Aperol Spritz, alongside Italian small bites of cichetti.

Zetter Town House in Clerkenwell, or ZTH as it will be known, will house a destination cocktail bar run by the team behind 69 Colebrooke Row in N1, alongside an all-day bar menu. Bar menu will be decided by Bruno Loubet, whose restaurant is already a part of the existing Zetter Hotel. Due April 2011.

Yottam Ottolenghi opens NOPI, his first stand-alone restaurant on Warwick Street W1, with Mediterranean, Middle-eastern and Asian influences on the menu and plenty of sharing dishes.

Jean-Georges Vongerichten, a legend in New York, heads up Spice Market in the swanky new W Hotel on Leicester Square, formerly the Swiss Centre. Two floors will serve up a menu inspired by “South-East asian street food”.

Another celebrity chef Silvena Rowe, opens her first restaurant in the celebrity filled Mayfair Hotel. Her stints on Saturday Kitchen will be familiar to many, as well as her books.

Other openings loom not far behind, a new Wolseley in Aldwych, a new Gordon Ramsay offering of Bread Street in St Paul’s, Wolfgang Puck of Hollywood fame with a steakhouse on Park Lane, and restaurateur Marlon Abela preparing to open A Voce to add to his empire which includes The Greenhouse, Morton’s and Umu.

So the openings just keep coming, and London is appearing to buck every financial trend out of the water.
Recession? What recession?

Oh Heston. Oh sweet, sweet Heston. Dear Willy Wonka. Arch-Mage of the culinary Dark Arts. What have you done? What have you presented us with? What is this Mandarin masquerading as Meat you speak of?

Dinner by Heston Blumenthal has landed at the Mandarin Oriental and has already encountered a feverish first week of reviews. Reaction has been almost universally gushing. Heston has been there every day, but cooking is headed up by Ashley Palmer-Watts, “it’s his restaurant” as Blumenthal is keen to remind us of.

Dinner is a historical waltz through the forgotten dishes of Britain through the ages. Each dish has a historical date alongside, and is referenced to its origin. The back of the menu is a bibliography for each dish, so the really keen can hook out A New System of Domestic Cookery by Maria Eliza Rundell, (c.1827). There will be those who do, I’m sure.

The glass walled kitchen dominates one side of the room and is pure theatre. Skewered pineapples for the Tipsy Cake (c.1810) can be seen raised above an unseen heat source. Three thousand chefs dance as if choreographed behind glass, with unnervingingly little sound. The insides of a giant clock tick silently on the wall.The rest of it feels like the hotel room that it is, although with a fine view of Hyde Park along one side.

The carnival unravels itself slowly:

Meat Fruit (c.1500) - It’s a bloody mandarin. See, it really looks like one. Can it be? No, silken chicken liver parfait is set, dipped into a jelly made of the mandarin skin at exactly the right temperature so the jelly “sets” around the meat, leaving a globe of meat enrobed by mandarin jelly. Clever, the stamp of Heston all over it, and this is as tricksy as the food gets. This could appear at The Fat Duck for the humorous, playful, sheer cocky technique. The “fruit” deflates with a soft sigh as the skin is punctured. Tangy jelly, rich, obscenely textured parfait, it all makes sense. Signature dish already.

Roast Marrowbone (c.1720) - Like St John with the work done for you and no scraping around for elusive fat, stomach-flutteringly rich morsels of marrow, parsley and anchovy, balanced by cutesy pickles, including baby white turnip.

Rice and Flesh (c.1390) – Saffron risotto by another name, and a very good one. Nuggets of calf tail nestled amongst the grains, underpinned by rich red wine sauce, used sparingly. Risotto lovers rejoice.

Spiced Pigeon (c.1780) – Pigeon breasts of such preternatural velvet texture they think they are Wagyu Pigeon. Only meat which has been sous-vided to perfection can behave like this, utterly compelling, cooked in ale, gently spiced and worth coming here for alone.

Black Foot Pork Chop (c.1860) – Solid slab of pig, cooked with seductive char, rose-pink within. Pig instincts sated.

Taffety Tart (c.1660) – Pretty little tart of thin pastry, encasing spheres of fromage blanc, pressed apple shot through with haunting notes of rose-water, punch of fennel seeds, and the best damn, dense blackcurrant sorbet ever. Ever. Like condensed Ribena.

Brown Bread Ice Cream (c.1830) – Ice Cream Hovis. Decadent. Luxuriously textured.

Wine boy Matteo is Italian and charming, and the Portuguese consultant sommelier has put together a tight list. House Champagne is Moët 2002, dull for being Moët, exciting for being 2002 (stellar year in Champagne and Burgundy). Burgundy lovers will enjoy seeing strong Domaines Etienne Sauzet and Louis Carillon on the list, and there is a particularly obsessive list of sweet wines by the glass. A good thing. Good names throughout, Shaw and Smith from Adelaide Hills, Australia, always good to see on a list.

Front of house are true professionals, not missing a beat when going through the considerable faff of ceremony with menu descriptions.

There it is. The highest profile opening of the year has already happened.

The Second Coming? Return of the Prodigal Son? Back to the Future? Return of the Mack? The answer must be somewhere in between all of these.

A couple of the dishes are truly startling in their brilliance, others are strong and decent plates of food that could more than hold their own in any restaurant. A Heston restaurant with food that is entirely normal and without gimmick (apart from a date and author name-check), is a fresh addition to his “mad professor” brand. Although it’s Ashley’s restaurant, ‘innit?

Part history lesson, part dining theatre, part playful wizardry, part perfectly normal food, all executed with savage accuracy.

The mark of a great restaurant is one that you helplessly end up booking again on the way out.

It happened.

www.dinnerbyheston.com

Set Lunch Menu £28 for three courses. Starters £12.50-£16.00. Mains £24-£32. Desserts £8.50-£10.