A world away from plain home cooking at Viajante

Man of influence: Portuguese chef-patron Nuno Mendes, who has roamed the planet, taking in California, Japan and New Mexico, is much admired by young foodie bloggers
10 April 2012

It took nearly five months to agree on a night for the dinner for which Phillip Leigh so generously bid in the Evening Standard Christmas auction in aid of Kids Company. I was determined to take Mr Leigh and his wife to an interesting new restaurant and one way and another suggested dates, including those for the restaurant openings, were never mutually satisfactory.

It was the moment when Ruth Leigh confided that she likes to go to places where they prepare the sort of food she wouldn’t normally cook at home that I knew that Viajante had been totally worth waiting for. No one, except perhaps the unknown and probably non-existent love child of Ferran Adrià, of El Bulli fame, cooks like this at home.

Nuno Mendes, chef and inspiration behind Viajante — the word translates prosaically as travelling salesman — left his native Portugal to roam the world, taking in California, Japan and New Mexico. He first launched in London at Bacchus in Hoxton Street. "Fine dining in trainers," said the publicity. The next project was a supper club called The Loft, which received rave write-ups sizzling with the frisson of paying in advance to sit for hours in a private flat alongside a bunch of strangers. Bloggers claim Mendes as their own.

The young crowd at Viajante last Tuesday evening had a look of bloggers about them. Surely only obsessive food dweebs would invest so much earned income in one mysterious meal with the menu only disclosed at the end. I was too busy being the munificent hostess to discover what the deal was until the bill arrived. For nine courses — there is the alternative of six or 12 — the price per person is £75. Drinks — wines, beers and tea — paired with the courses come to £45. We were granted a 25 per cent reduction on the food, presumably marking the tail end of a soft opening period.

Viajante bar and restaurant occupy the front part of what was previously Bethnal Green Town Hall, soon to be fully open as Town Hall Hotel and Apartments. The interior is by Rare Architects. A problem with design these days is that for some of us — not the young bloggers, of course — what is proposed as cutting edge looks like the front room in the house of our parents’ friends, complete with Ercol furniture.

But those good folk did not have a kitchen in the dining room with a team of chefs on view, all of them picking up and positioning foodstuffs with tweezers. Tweezers are the new tongs. As at Noma in Copenhagen — recently voted "best" restaurant in the world — chefs, including Mendes, come out from behind the counter carrying some of the dishes to the tables. This, allied with cheerful greeters and notably upbeat, friendly, if occasionally incomprehensible waiters, gives Viajante a revolutionary feel in the world of ambitious, discursive, expensive dining.

To describe in detail the meal we enjoyed would occupy most of this newspaper. The approach is not that of molecular gastronomy but there is playfulness, ingenuity, empathy with vegetables, which are addressed almost more seriously than is protein, and a delight in surprise and shock in both texture and temperature. There is repetition of the raw and the cooked, the grainy with the smooth. Asian influences are let loose and an almost childish love of crispness indulged.

Dishes that stood out included squid tartare and pickled radishes with samphire and squid ink granita; an innocent Spring Garden — very René Redzepi of Noma; roasted celeriac with tapioca and Saõ Jorge cheese; delectable skate with mustard gnocchi, brioche and roasted yeast; a credit-card-size slice of beef served with miso, ramson (wild leeks) and burned fennel, tantalisingly dainty in quantity but packing a punch; a dessert of a ribbon of carrot wrapping a pale carrot mousse which was agreeably shy with its sweetness, and before that a sorbet of lemon and Thai basil that exploded with flavour.

The slender baguettes also merit mention — quite the best bread I have had in ages — served with whipped browned butter that was excitingly extra greasy. The pace of the meal, which includes three amuse-bouches as well as the various courses, starts at a brisk trot but slows down as the evening wears on and yet another wine is poured. Viajante is a place to try with friends.

I can imagine that some evenings might end in a lock-in and a food fight with tweezers. Ruth and Phillip Leigh, who have become our firm friends, have invited Reg and me to a return match dinner at their favourite destination — the restaurant of the RAC Club.

Viajante
Patriot Square (entrance Cambridge Heath Road), E2 9NF

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