As you've now heard, this is what truly creative cooking can taste like. Utterly, utterly delicious, exiting, and amazing. The menu only has a few choices, but they all look so good - and the portions are small and the prices are decent - so why not have them all? (When does this ever happen?)
The set menu at £24 or the tasting menu at £49 is a snip for such really haute cuisine. This is the new Heston Blumenthal, without doubt, and without all the faffing.
Ollie Dabbous just really understands finesse, subtlety of taste, colour, and texture. It shows in every dish, like the barbequed Iberico pork served with praline of acorns and turnips. So simple, so delicious, so inventive. Peas with mint also sounds so simple, yet somehow it explodes with taste and looks divine. Lovage granita - oh yes - and yummy it is, too - we can start to think so much more wildly about herbs after that (no pun intended). And with beautiful rose petals decorating the dishes that actually had taste, all our senses were being wowed. It was a great experience.
But it was a bit sad to see that the actual surroundings were a bit bleak. I'm tired of the Industrial Hoxton look. What's so wrong with a bit of comfort and a few nice pictures? The downstairs bar is fun, though, a speakeasy if ever you ever saw one, and taps that would make you laugh.
Maybe if the place is busy for the next few months, which I'm sure it will be (and as it much deserves to be), Ollie Dabbous, the genius in the kitchen, will be able to afford better art for his walls.
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