Kudu review: Out of Africa, at home in Peckham

1/5
David Sexton14 February 2018

Everybody knows that over the past few years Peckham has become the new restaurant mecca, don’t they? There are loads of guides online to the 10 best places to eat there, “the 11 Peckham restaurants that make it a neighbourhood dining dream” and so forth. Those regularly highly rated include Artusi and Pedler, which I reviewed when it opened in 2015, feeling envious of all who could claim it as a local. 

No, not everybody knows this. I emailed Kudu’s address to friends who live in not very distant Streatham Hill, so we could meet up on Friday evening. Dazed by two small babies, Henry and Georgie entered Queens Road into their satnav and faithfully followed its directions all the way to Queens Road, Croydon, a boulevard celebrated less for its restaurants than its 25-acre Victorian cemetery. Only an hour-and-a-half late, they finally got to Kudu.

So this gave me time to look around and Kudu, converted like Pedler from a former chicken shop, is a good-looking place. The conversion by Milanese designer Alessio Nardi has an expansive, welcoming feel. The seating plan and lighting have been so well thought out: velvety blue banquettes down the sides facing square copper-covered tables.

It’s particularly pleasing that down one side the arrangement is to eat side-by-side looking out into the room, helping create a clubby, sociable mood. Kudu is an object lesson in how to create a restaurant that’s informal and contemporary yet also stealthily luxurious in a way that’s not a provocation to the street outside. 

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The couple responsible are head of the kitchen Patrick Williams, originally from South Africa, who previously worked for Robin Gill at Paradise Garage and The Manor, and front-of-house Amy Corbin, the daughter of Chris Corbin of Corbin and King, who have created so many influential restaurants in London since they took over Le Caprice back in 1981. They’ve put their all into this place. Creating a restaurant is putting your whole sense of how life can be on the line — and Kudu feels not just expertly delivered but deeply felt. Loved, even.

The menu is unpretentiously arranged as snacks (£6-£7), small plates (£7.50-£9) and medium plates (£9.50-£16) — and although the name (it’s an antelope) suggests fully South African cooking, that element’s actually not much more than a pleasing inflection to a Modern British style, full of totally on trend ingredients, some of them foraged, also incorporating Japanese flavours and charred, smokey and ashy tastes.

From the snacks, Kudu Bread is a delicately spiced brioche loaf, baked in a pot, served to dip into either a generous panful of good bacon lardons in melted butter with parsley or, even better, a panful of seafood butter, full of shrimps, some almond flakes and a bit of a romesco-ish seasoning, as well as some seaweed, briny and marine, so delicious it alone is worth a detour to Peckham. 

A pheasant leg, so well cooked as to be almost confit, is served complete with claw, Mark Hix-style, with some foraged crab apple purée and snippets of sorrel. Artichokes, those wine-killers, are deep-fried to a Roman crispness and served with a funky miso mayonnaise. A rich and classic chicken liver parfait is modernised by being served with crispy leek ash crackers, like a home-made take on nori snacks. 
 

David Sexton's week in food

For Katie’s birthday lunch, smoked salmon tartine, coq au vin and chocolate pot at Côte in Kensington: brasserie staples, such amazing value, £54.17 for two, including two flutes of champagne and a big ’un of Corbières.

On Thursday night, the full blow-out at Claridge’s for the Evening Standard British Film Awards, starting with a fine tuna tartare with crab and avocado, curiously served, confined within its own little goldfish bowl.

With drinks on Saturday, remarkably good duck fritons from the Artisan Food Company (madefordrink.com) via Daylesford. Crafty British takes on Gascon classics rarely improve on the originals: this little packet did.

After a cold morning at the zoo, Sunday lunch at an old favourite, the Lansdowne in Gloucester Avenue in Primrose Hill, a pioneer gastropub, still so welcoming. A ham hock terrine was good — but the pork belly roast (pictured) could have served as a useful, indeed conclusive, illustration of just how dire British catering can still be.

For Monday supper, noodles with chicken/partridge/pheasant stock, simmered with garlic, ginger, chilli, lemongrass, soy, sesame oil and nam pla, before adding pak choi, chestnut mushrooms and chicken scraps. Now one of baby’s favourites too. 

From the small plates, the mussel potjie pot (potjie just means little pot) has fat mussels in tangy, slightly curried sauce, with seaweed gnocchi. Scorched mackerel tartare is little chunks barely cooked and  dressed with cucumber, like a British ceviche — tuna might be more gratifying but no doubt would not suit the ethic here. 

Pig’s-head tortellini achieve a porky essence. Asking about this nervously, Georgie was told the whole head is cooked overnight before being scavenged. She thought the meat was gluey; I thought it fantastic, almost Bovrilly in its concentration, served in an equally robustly flavoured mushroom and smokey hay broth, given further texture by crispily fried onion strips.

The medium — or, you might even say main course — plates continued this succession of intense hits. Braai (grilled) lamb neck was served assembled into a roundel, topped with pesto and accompanied by a smoked yoghurt sauce and lettuce leaves: Henry and Georgie’s favourite from the meal. 

A big dish of onglet, pleasantly tender skirt steak cooked pink and neatly sliced, had such emphatic support — bitter puntarelle leaves dressed with miso and truffle oil, big slices of stringy enoki mushroom, and an almost preposterously airy beige-coloured potato purée, again truffle-flavoured but also dusted with dried cèpe powder, sourced, Amy told us, from her grandfather’s place in France.

The puddings were equally demonstrative. A pumpkin tart had a slightly overbaked crust but the rich liquid filling made this gourd good for once, especially with its lift of salted caramel, cut by a scoop of sinisterly dark charcoal and almond sorbet. The sumptuous chocolate mousse contained extremely minty ice cream and came with some peppermint crisp — a joke, then, on After Eights.

So every dish here has lots to say, an amazing set of statements about what tastes right, right now. The short, modestly priced wine and cocktail list complements the food well — a fresh, lemony Vermentino from Languedoc is £20 a bottle, a powerful Mourvèdre from Swartland, £31.

You might actually want your neighbourhood restaurant to be, strange as this may sound to some, less impactful. Blander, even. But Kudu aims to be stand-out all the way and it succeeds. Lucky Peckham. Hapless Croydon.

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