Smashed #19

The UK restaurant scene digested

At The Set in Brighton last Saturday night, something on the menu caught my eye. It wasn’t the milk bread with cheese burger butter, or the fact that they were serving dashi then chicken tikka masala and then Thai sausage with ‘not som tom’ salad, one after the other, like they were a complete bunch of maniacs. It was the price at the bottom: £90 for 13 courses. And not any old 13 courses either, but 13 courses of exceptional flavours, 13 courses that must have taken an extraordinary amount of time and care to create.

From top left clockwise: beef tartare; 'bearnaise': Thai sausage and 'not tom som'; dashi. All from The Set, Brighton's 13 course tasting menu.

But what really got my attention was that they’d separated out the VAT from the price and printed it on the menu. Seeing ‘Tasting menu £75, 20% VAT £15, Total Cost £90’ instead of the usual ‘all prices include VAT’ really brought home what I was paying for and what the restaurant was getting out of it. The Set effectively charges less than £6 per course for what is a truly memorable meal and a great night out. I’ve argued in this newsletter previously that customers shouldn’t be expected to understand the internal workings of a restaurant’s business model and I stand by that. But that simple yet effective menu wording made me even more appreciative of what I was getting for my money.

Last year, The Set announced they were planning to change their offering from the tasting menu format and do something more casual. Then they changed their minds again. I’m very glad they did. If anyone in the country is doing the tasting menu thing better than The Set right now, and offering more value, I don’t know about it.

The Reviews

Charlotte Ivers, The Sunday Times
Morchella, London (4 stars)

How has Morchella ‘happened’? I don’t mean, how has it happened, that’s obvious. The people behind Perilla in Newington Green, Ben Marks and Matt Emmerson, found a site in Exmouth Market, found some money from somewhere and opened the place in February. When I say, how has it happened, I mean how has it happened to be all over my Instagram feed like a bad case of hives. Nearly everyone I follow has been there. That’s not strictly true, I follow thearchbishopofbanterbury and they are yet to mention how incredible the salt cod churros at Morchella are, but I get the feeling that it’s only a matter of time.

Fay Maschler failed to rave about Perilla when it opened in 2017, awarding it three stars and using words like ‘undercooked’ and ‘wearisome’. Far more positive reviews followed but Giles Coren noted in his 2018 review (8.5 for cooking) that Perilla had opened to ‘good but not slobbering reviews’. Perilla doesn’t feature in the Michelin or AA Guides but is rated ‘very good’ by the Good Food Guide. It has been downgraded from 443 (food, service, ambience) to 333 in the current Hardens Guide and doesn’t feature in the National Restaurant Awards top 100 list. Ben Marks appeared on Great British Menu in 2019 but I haven’t seen him on TV since.

With Fraser Communications, Morchella have one of the top London restaurant PR firms looking after their hype. That has no doubt helped them secure Ivers’ and Famurewa’s attention and that there will be more reviews to come. But it’s still puzzling that the second restaurant from a relatively niche operator in an out-of-the-way location like Stoke Newington (apologies if you live in Stoke Newington by the way, it looks lovely but I don’t imagine it’s on the average London visitor’s radar) has made quite the impact Morchella has. I’m not intimating foul play here, or that Morchella isn’t worthy of the attention it’s been getting. It’s just that, with new openings in London continuing unabated, despite all the adverse trading conditions/end-of-the-fucking-world scenarios previously discussed in this newsletter, it’s difficult to identify exactly how one restaurant gets set apart from all the others.

Maybe Morchella is simply better than all the rest. Ivers’ has awarded the place four stars but says it’s ‘disappointingly grown up’ with ‘high ceilings that make cosiness impossible no matter how many candles they light’. Spanikopita and those salt cod churros that have haunted my Instagram timeline are ‘good, somehow’. Hake with sobrasada ‘needs a kick of something. You could eat half this thing without it troubling a tastebud.’ Parmigiana panzerotto ‘just tastes like pizza’ and ‘turned out to be a dull main choice’. On the positive side, egg, chickpeas and spinach is flavoured with paprika that conjures up ‘a thousand memories of sunny European squares’ and a blood orange portokalopita has Ivers declaring that ‘“Every cake should have olives in”’.

So, how has Morchella ‘happened’? I’m still none the wiser.

Best line: ‘The crowd here is young but not particularly cool, suggests the boyfriend in a vain attempt to draw my attention away from the fennel. Almost immediately one of my closest friends emerges from the toilets. He’s having dinner on the other side of the open kitchen. Oops.’
Worst line: N/A
Did the review make me want to book a table: My Instagram feed won’t be complete without my own picture of those churros.

Tim Hayward, The Financial Times 
Donia, London

We’ve already been to Donia with Jimi Famurewa so we won’t dwell too long in Kingly Court in Carnaby (formerly Carnaby Street). Hayward doesn’t like it as a setting anyway: ‘It’s like a ride in a Soviet theme park, designed to convey the vacuity and decadence of western youth. It can only apparently be appreciated in mobs of 40, clad in identical puffa jackets, sharing two vapes and a litre vat of bubble tea.’ I’m not sure that actually means anything but it’s got a good flow to it, and that’s the main thing. That’s the main thing in life in general come to think of it but we’re not here to talk about life in general. I rarely talk about life in general unless I absolutely have to. I prefer to talk about thing like Luke Haines’ new book Freaks Out:Weirdos, Misfits and Deviants – The Rise and Fall of Righteous Rock ’n’ Roll or the forthcoming Shellac album To All Trains but this isn’t a rock music newsletter so we’re stuck with Tim Hayward, who isn’t releasing a new album but does have a new book about testosterone or something coming out. Here’s some Shellac anyway, before we get back to Hayward and his so-called review.

Look at me, I’m a plane (if you clicked on the link above you’ll know what they means. Bet you didn’t). Meanwhile, back in Carnaby, Tim Hayward is busy trying to make Filipino food happen (everything is ‘happening’ this week, isn’t it?): ‘Adobo is regarded as a national dish of the Philippines . . . . It’s a preparation of meat, poultry, fish or vegetables browned and then braised in vinegar and soy. . . .Here, rather than a vast bowl of stew, they’ve made a smart little adobo of mushroom, which they’ve then used to make crisp fried croquetas. They were extraordinary, prompting me to reassess my life goals radically in favour of spending more time eating adobo.’ Sounds alright doesn’t it. Maybe Filipino will happen this year. Look at me, I’m a plane.

Best line: ‘I’m not usually troubled by the acoustics of restaurants, but Donia’s are challenging. It’s a cruel and unusual battering with random fragments of unattenuated but enthusiastic food conversations. Probably what it’s like living inside Gregg Wallace’s head’
Worst line: ‘the fresh grilled half lobster, “ginataan”, humming with the scorched-shell redolence of a beach barbecue. It’s hard to do it justice. Imaging two alien xenomorphs wrestling naked in a drench of delicately fragranced coconut curry sauce. Lots of ferociously dangerous bits but strangely erotic’. It’s either the worst line of the week or the best, I can’t quite decide.
Did the review make me want to book a table: If I did, will anything happen?

Jimi Famurewa, Evening Standard
Yuki Bar, London(3 Stars)

In which former Noma sommelier Yukiyasu Kaneko opens a 20-cover natural wine bar serving Japanese small plates in a railway arch in Hackney with mixed results. ‘It doesn’t seem to be sure whether it wants to be an expansive restaurant or merely a place for high-impact drinking snacks,’ opines Famurewa. There are ‘moreish sansho crisps’ and ‘obliging’ raw rump steak tataki but also sesame mayo eggs that are ‘underdeveloped in both flavour and form’ (embryonic perhaps?) and grilled onigiri (rice balls) that ‘wanted for some other central, animating essence’. I sometimes think I want for some other central animating essence, but we all have to work with what we’re given don’t we? Famurewa signs off by saying ‘this is one that will make more sense if it is given time to develop’. I bet Kaneko really wishes Famurewa had done just that.

Best line: ‘then came a tinned fish dish, a mound of tuna belly beside cabbage salad, that frankly, could only have been more redolent of a Whiskas pouch if there were a cat yowling at my ankles’. Meow.
Worst line: ‘the room (filled with Moscot-framed couples talking about their Planque memberships)’ - if you’re a hick from the sticks like me, you probably need to Google that sentence to make any sense of it whatsoever. Don’t worry, I’ve done it for you. Moscot is a trendy (‘trendy’ - see, told you I was hick from the sticks) eyewear brand and Planque is an £880-a-year private members club for pissheads, sorry ‘wine-drinkers’ club-house and community’ where you will find ‘like-minded individuals to eat and drink with’. Doesn’t sound sinister at all. How do they know if you are ‘like-minded’? Maybe they base it on whether or not you are sporting a pair of Moscots in the mandatory profile picture you have to upload in order to apply for membership.

I don’t believe Yuki Bar has ever been filled with Moscot-framed couples talking about their Planque memberships. I don’t think Famurewa expects us to believe that either. He’s using the phrase to illustrate the type of people that frequent Yuki Bar. I’m never comfortable when restaurant critics do this sort of thing. It’s sneery, patronising, reductive and impersonalising. I doubt Famurewa would enjoy being reduced to a type in print. I imagine legal proceedings would ensue if anyone tried it. Given that Famurewa has already told us that Yuki Bar is in Hackney, serves natural wine and Japanese influenced small plates, I’m not sure he really needed to say anything specific about the clientele it attracts. We get the idea, thanks.
Did the review make me want to book a table: I’m just waiting for my Planque membership to be approved. I was wearing Ace & Tate in my profile pic. That won’t matter will it?

Tom Parker Bowles, Mail on Sunday
Arlington, London (5 stars)

Scandal in London restaurant land! TPB hates Arlington and says he thinks Jeremy King is a complete c….Of course he doesn’t hate Arlington and of course he didn’t say that about Jeremy King. It would have been fun if he had thought wouldn’t it? Less bloody predictable than the five stars and the admission that ‘King is a friend’. Well, blow me down, quelle surprise.

TPB goes on to say that King is ‘a master restaurateur, a man who not only understands the art of dining but the science, too. God, it’s good to see him back, working the room, as immaculate as ever after being so rudely ousted from The Wolseley.’ TPB describes the shepherd’s pie as ‘immaculate’ too. The place is obviously so good that it has completely exhausted TPB’s supply of superlatives.

Face it, no one is going to tell you the truth about Arlington (the Mail on Sunday claim a meal there costs ‘about £35 per head’. I haven’t stopped laughing yet), you’ll just have to go yourself.

Best line: N/A
Worst line: ‘I pretty much grew up in Le Caprice, have celebrated, deliberated, cogitated, digested and bidden old mates farewell’ - I suppose most Mail on Sunday readers will be old enough to spot the reference to Loyd Grossman’s Masterchef catchphrase, last uttered nearly a quarter of a century ago, but why?
Did the review make me want to book a table: Yes, because I really want to sit at a bar and eat Lobster Thermidor Soufflé at eleven fifteen on a Sunday morning, which is pretty much the only reservation I’m going to get at the moment (JK is not am old friend).

To continue reading Smashed #19, my review of the reviews and to discover where the critics were eating 1, 5 and 10 years ago in For Old Dine’s Sake, please subscribe.