‘Ran our fingers along the perforated cavity to get every last confusing mouthful’
If sustainability and style are pillars from which you construct your reality (I’ve heard of worse), Ivan Tisdall-Downes’s new venture after leaving Native Restaurant in March should be on your festive wish list.
Now, if you’re not already a Native devotee, you can take a wild guess at the vibe and size of the dishes just by the chef’s double-barrelled-plush-sounding surnames. Skirting the new Monohaus development after entering another restaurant and an office area, we finally found Helmsley Street as the beckoning warm light of our aimed-for destination pulsed prettily.
Concrete tangos with oddly demure white curtains inside; butchers tiles on one wall and a large bar in the middle. Bouncing 70s disco reverberates around the dark cocoon, and models-who-work encrusted in webs of silver jewellery beam blindingly as they welcome us in from the cold.
Over a Botivo spritz (tart and ice cold) and some Rathfinny blanc de noirs (dry and a little warm), the concept is elucidated: an ever-evolving seasonal, sustainable menu drawing from the chef’s time at River Cottage in Devon and Blue Hill in New York. It’s clever, a little self-satisfied, and focused (meaning small).
Starting with a conversely gigantic, creamy Porthilly oyster perched on a repeating circular tube-cum-silver-ramekin, like a tiny hollow Cyr wheel, and tinged with green tomato water and apple. Wake up that palate and gaze at the fanciful snack options: focaccia with confit garlic, stracciatella bagna cauda and walnut. artichoke like you’ve never had it before, cooked until sweet and succulent in the middle, balanced on a dark clump of mushroom mush with a feathered hat of grated Lincolnshire Poacher. Umami from the root vegetable and then somehow a shot of sugar in the melted interior: a perfect mouthful. That is, until the fish toast enters the chat. I was thinking a play on the Chinese takeaway staple prawn toast, and yes technically it shares some elements, but this nest of sesame seeds over God knows what, in apple hoisin sauce, defies description. An encrusted fishball of sea on the inside and ribbons of sea(weed) on top, we plop it into our jaws and instantly regret not dividing and taking it slower. I’ll have 10 more, please, madame!
They do love to confit, as the egg yolk, mushrooms and salsify form the poshest veg-pile I think you will ever have: a whirl of dark, spidering fungi and tubers, wet and soothing with that glowing sunset of an egg to whip in. We also plump for the eel, respecting the area’s history-a piquant salad with appropriately tiny dessert forks (we see what you’ve done there). The chunks of fish is equally hard to find amongst the lardons and pickled quince but does give a nice funk to the pile of curling endive, although the effect is a little too saccharine for me. Raw scallops from the Isle of Wight are soaked with bergamot and brown butter, so subtly, so carefully, that I tip the shell they are served in to snaffle all that lightly lemony liquid. There is risotto with Spendwood cheese for those wanting something more predictable and vegetarian, although veganism seems to have slipped Field Notes sparking mind.
One VickZip (a freshly created mocktail) and a glass of Tempranillo (a low-intervention red wine) later, and we dig into the mains-although if you’ve read this far you might guess that “pick” is a more fitting noun. Cauliflower is declined as a rather uninspired singular vegan dish. We want dear deer death. Two chunks of fallow, cooked perfectly, sit like dark maroon eggs: gamey, chewy, but milder and more delicate than its larger red-deer cousin. Smoked carrots and the Middle Eastern bharat spice blend make this main a wintry sensation.
Now, I think including where the animal lived is rather a macabre way to describe a plate, but dry-aged chalk-stream trout marinating in lobster bisque and turnip is sublime-a king of river-dwellers in its soft eggshell-hued sauce and crowning green leaf. Next time I visit the chalk streams of the Chilterns I’m bringing a net or a very sharp penknife.
I valiantly try to overcome my hatred of rice pudding, and even the addition of meadowsweet doesn’t help, but the poached pear chunks on top is very good. The pièce de résistance, however—adorning the memory of this offbeat little restaurant—sits across from the cursed bowl of rice. Looking like a threat from the gay mafia, an animal bone is deposited between my best friend and me. Romantic, I know. Inside the centre is a carry-over from the Native days, Marrowmel: caramelised white chocolate and bone-marrow mixture. Meatiness and chocolate crafting this deeply dense, confounding, savoury and yet also richly candied dessert. We lady-and-the-tramp-ed into the middle and then, avoiding eye contact, ran our fingers along the perforated cavity to get every last confusing mouthful.
Yes, the trip to the toilet is through a strip-lighted, WeWork-ish interior courtyard, and yes, for the high price the food is almost outlandishly small. But where else can you share a bone with a dinner date and somehow still know that you’re saving the planet one gnaw at a time?