4 minute read
Food & Drink
Review:
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Levan, peckham – affordable fine dining with plenty of atmosphere ―
By Holly O'Mahony
‘Dill!’ I found my notes enthusing after taking one for the team and sampling the latest set menu at Levan in Peckham. The dill in question swam in a punchy, citrus vinaigrette that flowed around buoys of pickling tiger tomatoes and suhyo cucumber. It was one of seven plates brought to the table over the course of the meal, each a mini masterpiece, so different from the last.
This freshy and zesty salad was the third plate of the night, and only then did a plate of bread with freshly churned butter arrive. Fine dining or not, bread normally arrives first, of course, and with the rise in popularity of the gourmet loaf, the bread basket is increasingly a litmus test for the standard of the meal to come. But the team at Levan – comprising chef Nicholas Balfe, and restaurateurs Mark Gurney and Matt Bushnell – aren’t ones to play by the books. More importantly, when they did arrive, the still-warm wedges of brown sourdough passed the test with flying colours.
What came first to our table was the only dish never to leave the rotating menu at the four-year-old restaurant: its Instagram-friendly stack of comté fries with saffron aioli. Whatever else you try, these you must order. Crisped up and cheese-dusted, a speckling of fried shallots breaking through the dairy, they’re edible comfort. If these ever leave the menu, I’ll protest.
Levan is neither the first nor latest venture for the trio. They had a similar offering in Brixton Market Row, Salon, but while loved by locals (including myself) it struggled to find its feet again following the pandemic. In pre-Covid 2020, they took over the site right next door to Levan and launched Larry’s, a more casual but no less buzzy affair, popular with the less plump-pocketed crowd. Then in late 2021, they set their sights on Somerset, launching Holm, a farm-to-fork restaurant that grows some of its ingredients on site, and to which they hope to add rooms for overnight stays in the future.
Levan even looks a little bit like its Brixton predecessor, with deep blue walls and high shelves harbouring interesting wine bottles. Continues on page 40
Low lighting makes it an inviting space, while the lack of empty seats (if you visit towards the end of the week, at least) at its scattering of unfussy tables speaks volumes for the restaurant’s popularity. Back to the fodder, and while we were eating the set menu priced at £55pp – expensive for Peckham, but reasonable for the level of culinary complexity on offer here – there’s also an à la carte version, where you can take your pick of dishes from the set menu and more. An amuse-bouche of Lincolnshire poacher and pickled walnut followed the comté fries, tasting in the best possible way like a posh cheese doughnut oozing with thickened worcestershire sauce.
We veered momentarily into the realms of fresh pasta with a plate of salmon cappelletti: four delicate parcels stuffed with gooey flecks of the pink fish that sat like lilies on a pond of dulse (edible alga), sea purslane and fine slivers of fennel. It was an inspired take on seafood pasta, playful and thoroughly moreish.
Last of the mains saw a pork chop (with mercifully far more meat than fat) upstaged by a square of dissolve-in-your-mouth black pudding. Between bites, I told the waitress it was by far the best take on the Irish classic I’ve ever tried – let that go on record here too.
As much innovation went into the sweets. A main dessert of Williams pear, hazelnut and frozen yoghurt was greater than the sum of its deconstructed parts, with a hardened vanilla custard sweetening the sour yoghurt and an overall praline finish offsetting the poached fruit.
Do leave that final corner of your stomach open to the petit fours, which on our visit were coconut dusted parcels of fridge-cold dark chocolate housing bursts of palate cleansing passion fruit.
My fellow diner had the vegetarian set menu, which is not advertised but readily available to those who ask. In fact, as our waitress proudly told us, most dietary requirements can be catered for. The menu was largely veggie anyway, with only the pasta and pork chop swapped for a potato filling and hunk of scorched hispi cabbage respectively.
Visit soon if any of those dishes take your fancy, because there’s nothing staid about Levan; you won’t have the same dining experience here twice. But while the menu is subject to change on a regular basis, the restaurant’s welcoming atmosphere, attentive service and commitment to creating complex dishes at a relatively reasonable price are thankfully firm fixtures.
tHE DAMAGE
(FoR 2)
Regular set menu Veggie set menu: £55pp Bottle of Mas de Libian, Cave Vinum 2020: £57 TOTAL: £167
Food & Drink: ««««« Ambience: ««««« Value: «««« Disabled access: YES Disabled toilet: YES Booking: YES Levan, 12-16 Blenheim Grove, London SE15 4QL. Tuesday - Saturday, 12pm - 3pm & 6pm - 10pm; Sunday, 12pm - 3pm. www.levanlondon.co.uk
