Jimi Famurewa reviews The Magazine: Like a penalty crashing off the post, this green cuisine is so nearly there

The Magazine is sincere, nobly conceived… but it sits in a kind of half-cocked conceptual hinterland, says Jimi Famurewa
The Magazine
Space terminal: The Magazine occupies Zaha Hadid’s swooping gallery extension
Daniel Hambury/Stella Pictures Ltd

It was, strangely enough, the paper stock of the menus that set the first alarm bells gently chiming. Led to our table at The Magazine — a climate-conscious new restaurant from the Benugo team in the Serpentine Gallery’s swooping Zaha Hadid extension — my wife Madeleine and I were handed two distressed-looking sheets of A4; crumpled, grease-spotted, flecked with what looked like pen marks and vaguely resembling an ancient scroll that someone had repeatedly reversed a Hummer over.

“Our menu is printed on grass paper because it’s better for the environment,” said our lovely waiter, with the air of someone who has had to explain this many times. “So it is not old — it is meant to look like this.” And, well, OK. Hard to argue with the introduction of a material which (as I now understand it) is effectively a less resource-intensive type of recycled paper. But if it strikes you as a gimmicky decision that doesn’t bear much scrutiny (wouldn’t it be less environmentally impactful to use the QR code menus that are now everywhere?) then that is my point — and an illuminating detail for what was, ultimately, a fitfully impressive but fairly challenging meal.

Still, let us cling to the positives. And the first one is that Hadid’s space (which adjoins the former munitions store that gives the restaurant its name) maintains its breathtaking drama. Walking in for lunch beneath The Magazine’s undulating, futurist canopy on a recent humid Friday — gawping at its jutting open kitchen, the sunshine flowing in from its skylit, tentacled pillars and the gathered crowd of glamorous, artsy retirees calling for champagne — felt like stepping into some utopian space terminal. The menu (the brainchild of head chef Tomas Kolkus) looks forward as well, with multiple asterisked dishes rooted in the Climavore ethos: a new-minted movement that is, I think, premised on embracing sustainable foods (think seaweed and rope-grown mussels) that have a positive or regenerative effect on our changing climate.

Soda bread provided a likeable induction: a gorgeously warm, cakey quarter loaf, helped along by the briny one-two of both seaweed butter and seaweed salt. And side dishes of fudgy “bonfire” potatoes and carrots, robustly charred into a sticky tangle and set in cashew cream, had just the right mix of virtue and vice.

The Magazine
Frustrating: the bavette steak was one of a series of missed beats
Daniel Hambury/Stella Pictures Ltd

But before long, a frustrating pattern of missed beats started to emerge. Bavette steak arrived slopped in a drab, heatless shrug of a chimichurri. An appealing slow-roasted cauliflower was hampered by an unloveable chickpea stew, thick with shreds of dulse and mushrooms cooked to a soggy, boiled grey (“This is reminding me of being a vegetarian in the Eighties,” noted Madeleine, grimly). And fiercely griddled late-season asparagus boasted a clever heaping of lacy, tempura shallots, terrific miso-dribbled aioli and — bafflingly — molar-troubling kernels of rock-solid, toasted spelt that gave the sense of something flung on a bird table.

So much of it was agonisingly close to brilliance; the food equivalent, if you will, of a decisive penalty kick crashing back off the post. But you only need to look at the other restaurants uniting radical, climate-aware principles with spectacular, playful food (places like Native, Big Jo and even Silo) to know that these two things aren’t mutually exclusive. And by the time pudding rolled around — a partial reprieve in the form of very good panna cotta made with algae-derived agar; plus so-so polenta cake beside a rigid, underpoached length of rhubarb — I had the familiar, pre-pandemic (and pre-critical ceasefire) sensation of a well-meaning, pleasantly run place that… just didn’t quite have it.

The Magazine is sincere, nobly conceived and shows flashes of what could be an interesting, vegetable-forward operation in a showstopping setting. But it sits in a kind of half-cocked conceptual hinterland; hamstrung by strict adherence to its muddled brief, yet unable to commit with anything like the wholeheartedness required. It’s not that easy being green. But you get the sense that it shouldn’t be quite this hard either.

Serpentine North Gallery, West Carriage Drive, W2 2AR; Meal for two plus drinks around £110. Open Tuesday to Sunday from 10am to 8pm; benugo.com/restaurants/magazine

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