8 minute read
Food and drink
Bitesize ―
Cara Cummings
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FLoR BAKeRY oPens At sPA teRMInUs
Food mecca Spa Terminus continues to go from strength to strength with the arrival of Flor Bakery, a new bread-and-pastry focused offshoot of Flor restaurant in Borough. Using flours milled on-site and from trusted farmers across the UK, Flor Bakery will produce a range of new loaves including house sourdough, a ‘Baker’s Choice’ porridge loaf and a 100% rye tin loaf made with house-sprouted rye berries. You’ll also find a range of Flor’s pastries made with handmade cultured butter - drool - like twice-baked almost croissants, lardy buns (croissant dough buns with tea-soaked currants, laminated with pork fat from free-range Cornish pigs and dipped in sticky mace caramel) and Danishes topped with different seasonal produce. Race you there.
Spa Terminus, Unit 6, Spa Road, SE16 4RP. www.flor-bakery.com
FAntAstIc FIVe sUPPeR cLUB At cInnAMon KItcHen
Grab your diary: next month, Battersea’s legendary Cinnamon Kitchen will host a truly spectacular supper club. ‘Fantastic Five’ sees founder Vivek Singh join forces with Santosh Shah, Philli ArmitageMattin, Bart Van der Lee and winner Alex Webb - aka the 2020 Masterchef: The Professionals final four - for a 10-course extravaganza. Each chef will prepare a signature ‘snack’ or small plate, followed by a main. It’s a culinary tour de force featuring Philli’s cheesy Chawanmushi (a Japanese egg custard) alongside Santosh’s Timur spiced octopus, nettle leaf potatoes, fenugreek pickle, dungri popadum and spiced yoghurt. Also expected are Bart’s grilled scallop with sea buckthorn, yarrow and chicory, plus Alex’s iconic Chalk Stream trout with parsnip, parsley, mussels and caviar sauce - the dish which won him the Masterchef trophy last year. Unmissable: and all for just £120pp including a glass of champagne.
4 and 5 February, lunch and dinner service available. 4 Arches Lane, Nine Elms, SW11 8AB. www.cinnamon-kitchen.com
WALteR’s ARRIVes In West DULWIcH
West Dulwichers, listen up: a brand new bar and restaurant from the duo behind Covent Garden’s much-loved seafood bar and kitchen The Oystermen is coming to your neighbourhood. And with Head Chef Khalid Hassan, formerly of Social Eating House, L’Atelier de Joël Robuchon and Murano in the kitchen, you know Walter’s is going to be good. We hear Hassan’s menu will feature snacks like trout skin with a cod roe dip and truffle arancini; small plates including a Bloody Mary crab salad; apricot and harissa glazed lamb belly, and Jerusalem artichoke orzo risotto; and mains like roasted venison loin and parsnip, and roasted hake with romesco sauce along with spiced cabbage and a slow cooked duck egg. The drinks list, meanwhile, promises a focus on sparkling wines, high quality grower champagnes and the best of the new wave of English producers. PHWOAR.
84 Park Hall Road, SE21 8BW. www.waltersdulwich.co.uk
ZIA LUcIA LAnDs In BALHAM
South London boasts a lot of great pizza joints - but news of Zia Lucia’s new opening is something for foodies to really be excited by. Their famous 48-hour slow fermented dough - available in four different varieties, no less - has won Zia Lucia armfuls of awards and even a spot on global food hotlist Where Chefs Eat. Hotfoot to Balham High Road and feast on an Arianna Sbagliata - mozzarella, gorgonzola, fresh sausage, honey, truffle oil - or a Red Vegana (tomato, garlic, oregano, roasted peppers and olives) to see what all the fuss is about.
65 Balham High Road, SW12 9AP. www.zialucia.com
tAtALe At tHe AFRIcAn centRe
Something special is coming to Great Suffolk Street this spring, where Ghaniana-British restaurateur Akwasi Brenya-Mensa will open Tatale, a panAfrican concept eatery based on West African chop bars, at The Africa Centre. Featuring dishes and techniques with both continental and Ghanian roots, Tatale’s signature dishes will include Omo Tuo Nkatekwan Sesame (mashed rice with groundnut, peanut soup); the Tatale Signature Chicken Burger 2.0 with buttermilk fried chicken topped with shito chilli, citrus yoghurt and basil oil, and Akwasi’s very own Plantain Cheesecake.
66 Great, Suffolk Street, SE1 OBL. Follow @tataleandco for opening updates.
the Fabulous Boiler Boys ―
By Cara Cummings
Adam Carr and Cesar Breton open their new destination venue in south London this month. And they’ve got Great British Menu star chef Kerth Gumbs in the kitchen… The Boiler & Co. cofounders share a sneak preview of their bar and restaurant, and what to expect from the menu.
p Cesar and Adam
What’s the thinking behind the Boiler & Co. concept?
Cesar: Boiler & Co. as a concept was a brainchild of Adam’s. He wanted to create something bold, but at the same time accessible and inclusive - away from a cliche kind of bar. One of the spirit categories we found was un-inclusive was whiskey. It was very much a boys' club, associated with the patriarchy. So Adam started thinking about making that accessible, using whiskey the same way you use gin. That’s the core of Boiler & Co - recreating what the perception of whiskey is in a cocktail. With that as a base, the concept has evolved. Our location is within a strong community, so we added other things that come from a boiler that are catalysts for flavour - coffee, beer, whiskey - with that focus on inclusion. Making specialist coffee accessible, not snobby, and whiskey that’s easy to drink, not burning your mouth.
Can you give us a sneak preview of what the new venue is like?
C: There were two concepts that we set out to achieve with the fit out. One was a bit of affirmative action by looking for a female-led, female-owned design company. The other was sustainability, rather than throwing everything in the bin and sending it to landfill. Even if it cost a bit more, we wanted to create a different norm to the usual fit out, which is very wasteful.
Adam: We want to make an impact, in every sense. Design was a process - it's a huge, industrial space we’ve inherited with big open ducts and concrete cylinders. But there’s lots of beautiful wood as well. Our ethos of sustainability was to repurpose as much as possible. We recycled wood, took panels off the bar and refinished them and now they hang off the ceiling with acoustic panels hidden on top.
There’s around twelve small pockets of seating continues on page 17
throughout the building that create intimacy in this large space. We’ve got an 8-seater outdoor space, with the Tate Modern towering over you. We’ve got a very special 24- seat cocktail bar upstairs - a bit of a secret, intimate bar which we want to make the best cocktail bar in the world.
Tell me about Kerth. Are you excited to have him at the helm in the kitchen?
A: Very! We’d been looking for a chef for a while. When I saw he was ‘open to work’ on LinkedIn I almost fell off my chair! Chefs like that get snapped up so quickly. We instantly clicked. On the third chat we made him an offer and he accepted. That was a good morning!
We’re not opening a restaurant - it’s a gastro cocktail bar. But now that Kerth is on board we’ve changed things around a little. We’ve invested in a huge open kitchen so that Kerth has a beautiful home because he deserves it! He’s such a great chef.
C: His food is so innovative. It's food you think you know, but then it arrives and it’s such a fresh surprise. It’s like Adam’s cocktails - surprising, new, unexpected.
A: We also have our own pastry chef and counter.
p Kerth Gumbs ©William Torillo
It’s a coffee counter by day, and at night you can sit around it and watch the pastry chef and speak to her whilst she’s working. You can have dinner then move up for dessert, or just come for pastry and a glass of wine.
What can diners expect from Kerth’s menu?
C: What you can expect is traditional British dishes, done in an unexpected way with added flavour and species. If people watched Kerth on The Great British Menu, they can expect food that’s a few notches up from what he presented there. It’s super exciting and full of flavour.
A: He’s really going to bring his Caribbean background into it. His style is very based on those flavours - it’s international fusion, with global influences like yuzu from Asia, sumac from the Middle East… We’re working on a special seven-course tasting menu paired with five tasting cocktails. Smaller versions, of course - we want people to remember the food! It's called the Kerth Guns Tasting Experience; it’s his creation, his kitchen. He’s got full autonomy. He’s worked for huge names and Michelin-starred restaurants, where you don’t often get to run free.
…and from your drinks list?
A: I’ve divided it into sections, with a focus on whiskey. We’ll have classics like mint julips, whiskey sours, New York sours; through to more spirit-forward drinks like old fashioneds and Manhattans. Then we'll have a signature drinks list - 10 sustainable sips, where each drink has a sustainable element, whether a spirit that's Fairtrade or carbon neutral, or reused ingredients. For example the skin, seeds and stems of red peppers will be pureed and used in cocktails. Or passion fruit shells that are normally discarded - we’ll cook them to make passionfruit cordial. Sustainability will run through the whole menu.
Then we have highs and lows - the highballs, like gin and tonics and a collection of whiskey sodas. Classic drinks. I love whiskey and soda, but I prefer the two separately. We’re taking that staple and adding clarified, 100% strawberry syrup, with no added sugar. It becomes this refined, long, refreshing drink. You still taste all that beautiful complexity of the whiskey though.
Sum up Boiler & Co. in a sentence.
C: A specialist cocktail, whisky led-bar.
A: Wow, that’s a challenge! I’d say we’re challenging the norm of what a whiskey bar is - a modern adaptation of a traditional whiskey bar, with no balding old men in corporate suits in the corner smoking cigars! We’ll have over 100 whiskeys, but something like you’ve never witnessed before…
