Evernight, Battersea

Knowing we would be having dinner at Evernight I thought aperitifs at Homeboy Battersea, just around the corner in the same building, would be a nice way to kick off the evening. I was at Homeboy a couple of years ago just after it had opened, was treated to a very decent burger and ice cold martini and left thinking that, well, perhaps this weird overdeveloped bit of Legoland Embassyville with its floating swimming pools and Thamesview gyms with floor-to-ceiling windows was worth the occasional visit after all. I've always had a soft spot for Darby's, too, also nearby.

But a strange thing happened when I tried to Google the Homeboy location - it kept redirecting me to Homeboy Islington (also worth visiting, on Essex Road), the Battersea branch seemingly wiped from existence. Of course, it turns out it had closed at some point in the recent past, and though it's probably not a good idea to draw too many conclusions about the entire area from the closure of one flagship bar - hospitality is in a very tricky place right now generally - it feels like if this very smart and mature operation couldn't survive more than a couple of years with so much money around (I refer you to that floating swimming pool, and the river view gyms) then maybe the problems run deeper than just knowing your audience.

I hesitate, then, recommending Evernight due to a perverse combination of a) not wanting it to get so oversubscribed that I'll find it impossible to get a tablein the future, and b) worrying that like so many of these flagship openings in new developments, it won't last until the end of the year. For now, though, I'm going to assume neither of these things will happen and instead draw your attention to these lovely and colourful house pickles, a great little palate cleanser we kept coming back to between nibbles of other dishes.

A silky smooth whipped cod's roe spread inside warm brioch-y ageban buns like salty seafood butter, and made another top class snack. It was also noted with some satisfaction that the pickles that came attached to this dish were both (carrot and cucumber) different to those (radish, chilli and celery... I think) that arrived with the separate snack. I always appreciate a lack of overlap.

It was about this time that we bumped into Shaulan Steenson, executive chef at the wonderful Temaki in Brixton, on his way to serve 6 lucky people an omakase menu in the Evernight private dining room. Anyone who's ever been to Temaki will know it's one of the best - and best value - spots for Japanese food in London, and it makes absolute sense that given the opportunity to spread his wings a bit in this exciting new space he's jumped at it. Pictured here is an element of that menu, a stuffed katsu chicken wing - utterly lovely in every way - which he very kindly sent out. Anyway, more details here for those interested.

I didn't really love the scallop sashimi, but was persuaded to risk my own personal aversion to raw scallops because of the rather interesting sounding 'potato dashi'. In the end, this didn't live up to the promise either and what we ended up with was some rather wobbly, cloying raw scallop in a fairly bland and underseasoned sauce. Still, there's every chance a scallop fan would find a lot more to like.

Sake cured trout was much more interesting, the trout itself having a nice earthy taste and broad beans making a much more pleasant accompaniment than the more traditional edamame (come on, you know it's true).

But the real fireworks were saved for the next course. "Smoked eel, Potato Cake and N25 Caviar" is one of those rare instances where a dish reads like a dream, and still lives up to the promise. Whether the potato cake topped with caviar was a knowing or coincidental nod to the famous Quality Chop House dish is hard to say - the two restaurants couldn't otherwise be more different - but alongside this gorgeous mouthful, which would have been more than worth the price of admission by itself - was two dainty sticks of spring onion (I think - we shared this dish a little unevenly and I didn't try that bit) and a fantastic sweet-glazed geometric portion of meaty smoked eel. You will, if all goes well, be hearing a lot more about this dish in the future.

The savoury courses hadn't finished quite yet though - chawanmushi with morels and wild garlic was another staggeringly inventive and successful fusion dish, marrying foraged British ingredients with high-end Japanese techniques. It's going to be very interesting seeing how the Evernight menu evolves through the seasons as different local ingredients come and go. I wonder if they can be persuaded to do something with grouse in August?

Before the desserts, three cute skewers of grilled mochi, smoked [Lincolnshire] Poacher [cheese] and chilli crisp. Enjoyable, certainly - particularly the fluffy cheese sauce on top - but I'm afraid we were still delirious from the smoked eel and the chawanmushi and I don't remember a great deal about these otherwise. Maybe I'm just not a mochi fan.

Desserts continued mashing together British and Japanese flavours and techniques to the standard of that in the best of the savoury courses. This was a strawberry custard affair topped with shiso granita and I think sake ice cream, and if you can't enjoy those things together on a plate there's really no hope four you at all.

And finally, melon, vanilla and sansho meringue, a supremely light and gently peppery meringue sat in a wonderfully summery melon and vanilla soup.

Now, although the menu looks great value at first glance - and largely is - and we had absolutely no problem with our overall bill, it's fair to say that the dishes are often only mouthfuls and you'll often want to order one each (particularly the chawanmushi and smoked eel, as you won't ever have enough of those). Without a great deal of booze on our visit, and leaving not exactly stuffed, the bill came to £62pp, so you could realistically spend £100pp+ if you end up going for the big ticket items like the 'Turbot, asparagus and Yuzu-shu' (£26) or 'Cornish Lobster, Crab and Ikura Rice Donabe' (£52 for two). Oh, and final moan - the bench seating is way too low down. We asked to be moved to a high table, which was perfect, and though it was very entertaining watching other customers attempt to enjoy their dinner with their chins only just clearing the surface of the tables in front of them, you may not want the same experience yourself.

Overall though, Evernight impresses, delights and excites far more than it needs to. Yes, it's a strange, soulless and windswept part of town which demonstrates everything that's wrong with the London real estate industry, but it would be deeply unfair to blame the team behind Evernight for that. Japanese fusion food, in this city at least, is rarely done as well as this, and I think having to eat it in Nine Elms is a small price to pay for an experience so ultimately rewarding.

8/10

Sollip, London Bridge

Since I decided, in the spirit of solidarity with a struggling industry, to only write up positive restaurant experiences, I expected that resolve to be tested a lot more than it actually has. In fact, since the beginning of July, only one dinner (out of more than I'm comfortable sharing) was so disastrous a tiny bit of the old me wishes I could have given it a good pummelling on the blog, but in fact even that moment soon passed. Life's too short to dwell on poor meals, especially these days.

The result of this new policy, though, is that recent posts run the risk of being a bit smiley-samey. All I can offer in my defense is that just because I'm not writing up bad or mediocre restaurants, that doesn't mean that I'm being extra kind to the ones I am reviewing - anywhere that's made it onto the blog in the last few weeks really is as good as I say it is, and I'm constantly astonished at how well restaurants are responding to their changing circumstances, not wallowing in self-pity (though that would be more than justified) but innovating and adapting and somehow, through all the madness, serving some of the best food I've eaten at any time. With all that in mind, then, let me tell you about yet another incredible meal I had just the other day at Sollip, a brand-spanking-new restaurant in London Bridge.

I'm generally a bit suspicious of "fusion" restaurants, as for all their laudable ambitions (and the occasional gem), the result is far more often Sushinho than Sushisamba. My suspicion of Sollip's Korean-French concept though, such as it was, lasted exactly as long as it took these gougères to appear. A perfect match of French patisserie and Korean spicing, they were baked perfectly to a soft, cheesey interior and delicate crust, and seasoned with an incredible soy bean/chilli powder which somehow conspired to make these already dangerously addictive little snacks even more irresistable. What a start.

Then, a "gamtae" (seaweed) sandwich, cut with machine-tooled precision, containing a soft, silky filling of briney seaweed and rich Caerphilly. I think they'd fried the bread in butter, too, so the golden sheen on the toast added not just crunch but yet more dairy loveliness. I had never had cheese and seaweed before in the same dish, I don't think, but the match now seems as natural to me as cheese and chive.

You can probably sense where this is going. The food at Sollip is not just exciting and rewarding, but genuinely innovative at every turn while still staying true to the Korean-French mashup concept. It's also beautiful - look at this thing, a daikon radish tarte tatin which had layers of earthy vegetables encased in impossibly delicate layers of glossy pastry. It was accompanied by something called "chilli chive potato cream" and all I can say is I'm glad I didn't know there was a thing in the world called "chilli chive potato cream" before arriving at Sollip because if I did I probably would have had a few sleepless nights obsessing about it. I've had a few since, as well.

Main course was a slab of braised beef short rib, soaked in a complex Korean sauce, shapely and solid on the plate but soft and yielding when sliced. It came alongside and interesting bit of cured cucumber, cooling in the kimchi style, and - a heartstopping moment - a little pot of rice with a knob of truffle butter, releasing flavour and aroma as it melted down. There's only one thing better than buttered rice, it turns out, and that's truffle-buttered rice.

I overheard the table next to mine (don't worry, there was plenty of space between us) asking for an extra sample of the fig from the fig creme brulee, such was its effect on those who tried it. This of course, is an open invitation to return to Sollip and try all of the dishes, not just the fig, that I didn't try the first time. But I can hardly complain the dessert I did order - this perilla (a kind of Korean mint) ice cream - was in any way a disappointment. Side-by-side the oil-based ice cream and granita made an unbeatable combination, apple and dairy and mint oil combining to great effect, with a layer of sesame rice for crunch.

Too often meals that are as controlled and precise visually as the food at Sollip undoubtedly is, you pay the price in flavour. I can think of quite a few restaurants over the years that in aiming for geometric exactness and consistency, in taking too long teasing the ingredients into the required form and shape, some of the immediacy and personality of the ingredients is lost.

Sollip manages to produce food of love and passion at the same time as it looking good enough to hang on the wall, and for that no amount of praise is enough. The gallery-like space and the artful dishes on one level brings to mind other Asian-fusion superstar restaurants like Bao or Xu, and I've no doubt they would be very pleased indeed to be mentioned in that company, as they should be. But Sollip is both a prodigal student of French and Korean cooking traditions, and at the same time a trailblazer in something genuinely new - fusion food that finally lives up to the name, and isn't just an excuse for gimmicks and punning menu items. I do hope I'm not boring you with yet another wildly positive review, but this wasn't going to go any other way. Sollip is brilliant.

10/10

Galoupet, Knightsbridge

We were nearing the end of a rather humdrum meal at Galoupet, a newish restaurant in Knightsbridge apparently run by winemakers from Provence, and I quite fancied some cheese. I often do. And as the cheese was listed on the menu as just "cheese", I thought I'd try my luck and ask a waiter what it was.

"Yes, cheese."

"And... what kind of cheese?"

"It's, um, blue. A blue cheese." he smiled back nervously. I think he was hoping that was the end of the conversation.

"Right. Can you--"

"I'll go and find out."


I ordered it anyway, because to be quite honest even after six small courses from the main menu I was still quite peckish, and it turned out to be some kind of smoked Stilton. Smoked Stilton, by the way, belongs firmly in the "just because you can, doesn't mean you should" category - I don't much like smoked cheese at the best of times, but this was particularly wrong. It was interesting, certainly, and not something you see every day, but still wrong. A bit like much of the rest of the meal, in fact. Let's rewind to the start.


A heritage tomato salad was good. Not quite as mind-blowing as the one served with goat's milk I'd had at the Young Turks evening at Restaurants in Residence a week or two before, but thanks to some top-quality toms and a nice strong dressing, very enjoyable, and a bit of a steal at £5. But while I enjoyed most of the secondary ingredients in another dish of grilled watermelon, basil and fennel, the watermelon itself was a very strange texture, dense and fleshy but with no salty protein hit, and was quite off-putting. It was definitely unusual, and not like anything I'd had anywhere before, but as I've said, just because you can doesn't mean you should.


And I really didn't enjoy "corn-crusted aubergine, green tomato chutney, goat's curd" at all. The chutney was way too sharp and overpowering, the curd too bland, and the aubergine chips themselves tasted of dry cardboard on the outside and soggy wet cardboard on the inside. Not very nice at all. Later on in the evening, the head chef (who had appeared to explain/apologise for the appearance of the smoked Stilton, which was a nice touch) told us that he'd prefer to deep fry the aubergine chips but that the owners had told him not to because people round Knightsbridge way wouldn't like it, so he dry bakes them instead. Which I'm sure is the kind of thing that makes perfect sense if you're a restaurateur and not a chef.


Mains, thanks to the appearance of some cooked meat, were slightly more satisfying but still nothing special. "Chilli pork 'Rib eye'" was a kind of polite Thai salad, like something you'd get in a box at Marks and Spencer’s, with heavily marinated strips of lean pork and pleasant Asian greens. "Lamb, chilli pickled fennel, pistachio" was also SE-Asian influenced and would have been a lot nicer if the lamb had been hot - I can't be the only person to find cold lamb fat a bit, well, challenging. And a small portion of sliced pink Onglet was, as you might rightly expect from O'Sheas beef, very good indeed, I just could have done with a bit more of it for my £9.50.




We ended, thankfully, not just on that weird smoked Stilton (which remained largely untouched) but with a portion of sweet English Strawberries and a glass of Pedro Ximenes. It was fine. Perhaps you'd get more out of Galoupet if you were a wine buff - every single wine they have is also available by the glass thanks to one of those fancy Enomatic machines that keeps even opened bottles in suspended animation, and it's probably a great place to go if you want to try a 125ml measure of Vosne Romanée 1er Cru for £18.20. I had a medium-sized glass of Chianti for £11.70; none of them were that cheap.


I am intensely aware I may be on my own in not really enjoying Galoupet much, as a quick scan at the London Eating page reveals professional critics and happy punters alike falling over themselves to lavish praise on the place. I'm also sure the issues with service are just opening months nerves and not a permanent feature (one poor waitress in fact was so terrified and spoke so quietly we could hardly hear a word she said. I felt too sorry for her to ask her to repeat herself). But from the strange minimalist décor, which was like eating at the back of an estate agent's, to the inoffensive cooking, it was all deeply underwhelming. Restaurants like this, polite and subdued, seemingly more concerned with their upscale surroundings and diet-conscious clientele than producing exciting food, well, they're not for me. But then, I don't live in Knightsbridge; I have a feeling that more because of my reservations than despite them, it will do very well.

5/10

Kopapa, Covent Garden

"Good in parts" was how the curate famously described his egg, the humour (such as it was in 1895) deriving from the fact that if any "part" of an egg is bad, the whole thing is spoiled - poor old curate was just trying to make the best of a bad situation. Ho ho ho. "Good in parts" is also a phrase that quite accurately describes a lunch I had at Kopapa, Peter Gordon's new gaff in Covent Garden, although how well the curate metaphor stretches in this situation is up for debate. A restaurant probably can be partly bad without the whole thing being ruined - one lousy dish may not necessarily spoil an entire meal, especially if there are enough interesting and tasty bites elsewhere to offset the disappointment. And with that in mind, I am happy to describe Kopapa as "good", despite one disastrous dish that never should have left the kitchen and nearly derailed the whole meal.




It being opening week, and with 50% off the food bill, there were many issues with timing it would be unfair to dwell on - I'm sure in the fullness of time everything will settle down and future guests at Kopapa will not have to wait quite so long between courses as we did. Service otherwise though was friendly if a bit elusive, and perhaps we are as much to blame as anyone for turning up as a party of eight then ordering two of everything on the tapas menu - a challenge for any restaurant, never mind one a few days old. First to arrive were three styles of New Zealand oysters, and were classic Antipodean fusion food - reading badly (oyster and miso gazpacho, oyster and sake broth) but tasting good. Padron peppers didn't look "deep fried" to me, just prepared in the traditional Spanish way, lightly salted, and were no worse for that. And a breadcrumbed chunk of butternut squash was firm inside and crunchy out, delicately spiced and served with a refreshing cucumber raita.



Chorizo beignets were surprisingly flavourless for what is normally a strong and spicy meat - perhaps it was lacking a little of the main ingredient, because a separate order of "grilled chorizo" demonstrated that there was nothing wrong with the meat itself - these were crispy and rich and moreish. Parmesan and bone marrow on toast was fantastic - silky and beefy with a good sharp blob of beetroot and horseradish to fight the fat, but a duck liver parfait was fairly one-dimensional and hardly better than anything you could buy ready made from a supermarket. There were a number of other dishes that ranged between OK and good that it would be too tedious to list here, but overall I got the impression that this was a competent kitchen cooking innovative and interesting food, the kind of thing we could do with a lot more of in London. That was, until the "steamed buns" arrived.


They were basically raw. Not just undercooked, not merely past their best, completely and utterly raw - sad, soggy sacks of claggy dough that coated the mouth like putty and tasted of nothing other than bitter flour and water. We mentioned this to a waiter, who apologised but didn't appear to take anything off the bill - a detail with the 50% off offer you may think, but even at half price these were still £2.40 and a second glance from anyone checking the food leaving the kitchen would have immediately spotted something was wrong. It wasn't just that Kopapa can't do Chinese food, either - prawn siu-mai were very nicely done, with delicate thin coatings and a firm seafood filling. So who knows what story is behind the production of those buns - all I know is they were a disaster.



Looking past the catastrophic steamed buns though, Kopapa is still a restaurant that shows promise. The bold inclusion on the tapas menu of "chickpea-battered lamb's brains" won't be everyone's cup of tea (it wasn't really mine - I tasted one in a spirit of daring adventure but the creamy, formless texture of brain still doesn't quite do it for me) but at least shows confidence, and they were cooked as well as you could cook anything that came out of a baby sheep's skull. House bread, too, was genuinely fantastic - nicely seasoned, good crusts, light and buttery inside, I'd like to think they are made in-house but if not, they have a good supplier.

Trying to get an overall impression of a place from a shaky soft opening is difficult - and possibly rather unfair - but judging from dishes such as the marrowbone toast and the oysters I would like to think Kopapa could grow into an interesting and characterful restaurant in a location - Covent Garden - hardly blessed with a surplus of such places. Nothing was mind-blowingly great, and some things were pretty awful, but at least it's not another branch of Nando's and I'll take promising and enthusiastic over predictable and anodyne any day of the week. Good luck Peter Gordon and Kopapa, then, and here's hoping, in the end, that "good in parts" is good enough.

6/10