GOURMET GUIDE THE CHEF
GOURMET GUIDE THE CHEF Angela Hartnett HOW HAS THE LONDON FOOD SCENE CHANGED SINCE YOU’VE BEEN COOKING HERE? For the better! I think London is up there with Tokyo and New York, perhaps even ahead of Paris. It’s one of the best cities in the world for food right now. WHERE DO YOU LIKE TO EAT ON A NIGHT OFF? Pip Lacey, my old head chef at Murano, opened her own place in King’s Cross a couple of years ago called Hicce. It’s really good. WHERE ARE YOU LOOKING FORWARD TO EATING IN THE NEXT FEW MONTHS? I’m really excited about AngloThai, from the people who opened KOL and Casa do Frango. Chef John Chantarasak is a real talent and it’s great to see him getting a permanent home. Angela Hartnett is the chef/proprietor of Murano, in Mayfair, and Café Murano, with sites in Covent Garden, St James’s and Bermondsey. muranolondon.com © GALVIN BAR & GRILL encyclopedia. Save room for the lavishly laden dessert trolley. Meanwhile, in Knightsbridge on the ground floor of the Bulgari, Sette by Scarpetta (settelondon.co.uk) is another hotel restaurant with a New York pedigree. On the ground floor of the Bulgari, Knightsbridge, it is a London version of Manhattan’s popular NoMad Italian, with a separate entrance on Knightsbridge Green. The kitchen’s elegant and fragrant interpretation of spaghetti with tomato and basil is reason enough to visit. There’s also a very smart bar for a negroni or two. There’s a cool bar, too, at Los Mochis (losmochis.co.uk), Notting Hill Gate, stocked with a huge range of small-batch tequilas, mezcals, and sakes. The food follows suit: a similarly heady fusion of Mexican and Japanese, with tostaditos and tacos jostling with sashimi and maki rolls on the inventive, Californian-tinged menu. Arros QD (arrosqd.com), the paella specialist on Eastcastle Street that opened in 2019, bears the initials of three Michelin-starred chef Quique Dacosta. His less buttoned-up London outpost has a recently revamped menu that includes 10 different paellas, as well as Cornish tomahawk steaks, tomatoes dressed with ajo blanco, and chargrilled iberico presa (pork shoulder) with Jerusalem artichoke. More evidence of the trend for light, inventive, modern Indian cuisine can be found at Pali Hill, ex- River Café chef Avinash Shashidhara’s cheerfully kitsch Fitzrovia restaurant. His menu draws inspiration from India and beyond: Flatbreads are smothered in wild mushrooms, chili, Tuscan truffle, and fontina; pork spare ribs are bathed in jaggery and garlic. Round off your meal with a cocktail in Bandra Bhai, the downstairs “smugglers’ bar.” On the other side of Oxford Street, just off Soho Square, one of London’s most famous old 72 NetJets
WHET THE APPETITE Modern Irish restaurant, Daffodil Mulligan, right; the kitchen at Arros QD, below; grilled cauliflower steak, Lincolnshire Poacher pea crumb, and walnut sauce at Galvin Bar & Grill, left. restaurants, The Gay Hussar, has been transformed into Noble Rot Soho (noblerot.co.uk). Taking its lead from the Bloomsbury original, there is an enticing Modern European menu—overseen by Stephen Harris of the much-lauded The Sportsman, in Kent— and an even more beguiling, Old World-heavy wine list, with more than 40 bins offered by the glass. In late 2019, over in Shoreditch, one of the London restaurant scene’s biggest characters Richard Corrigan opened Daffodil Mulligan (daffodilmulligan.com), a love letter to the Dublin of his youth. Bentley’s and Corrigan’s, his two Mayfair restaurants, could hardly be described as stuffy, but Daffodil Mulligan is deliberately less formal: there is Corrigan’s peerless soda bread; copious oysters; beef short rib on toast; chargrilled brill with smoked crab and clams… and, naturally, lashings of Guinness, as well as a downstairs bar where the craic can continue late into the night. Sláinte! THE RESTAURATEUR Ruthie Rogers WHAT WAS LONDON LIKE FOR FOOD WHEN YOU FIRST OPENED THE RIVER CAFE IN 1987? You couldn’t buy good anchovies or olive oil, and nobody knew what pappa al pomodoro was, but gradually things changed—cheaper airfares helped—and people started to learn how to appreciate culture through food. THE RIVER CAFE HAS BEEN A NURSERY FOR MANY CHEFS: WHAT MAKES YOUR RESTAURANT SUCH FERTILE GROUND FOR BUDDING RESTAURATEURS? I think respect for ingredients is really important. All our staff prepare them together in the morning, for example. When they go, I hope they take that ethos with them. And I never mind them leaving, as long as they keep cooking. I’m going to our old chef Max Rocha’s Café Cecilia soon, and I’m very excited. © DAFFODIL MULLIGAN © ARROS ON YOUR HIT PODCAST, RIVER CAFE TABLE 4, YOU ALWAYS ASK YOUR CELEBRITY GUESTS FOR THEIR FAVORITE COMFORT FOOD. WHAT’S YOURS? My favorite answer to that question was Michael Caine’s. He said, “It used to be roast potatoes, now it’s caviar!” But mine would have to be our spaghetti with tomato sauce— with plenty of butter stirred in at the end. The River Cafe also has an online shop: shoptherivercafe.co.uk NetJets 73
