Naming your restaurant Big Night is like going around telling everyone you’ve got a huge… IQ. Expectations run high and cynics will assume it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. Me? I’m an optimist, which is why I’m here on Morning Lane considering the recipe for an epic evening: good vibes, spontaneity and a collective thirst for the unknown.
Admittedly it’s Sunday, so my friend and I aren’t gunning for an all-out rager, but we are looking to (sparkle emoji, please) live a little. And thank God, because midway through a grapefruit Margarita and chopsticks full of pungent, tangy winter kimchi, we find ourselves doing shots — not out of choice but because they come with the snacks. Honest! Dutifully, we chase a quart of fermented, chilli-spiked green tomato with the medicinal hush of Fernet-Branca and cleanse our palates of the zing of puce sauerkraut with a shock of ice-cold vodka.
Much of what follows is skewered and dipped in tare (a sweet and savoury Japanese yakitori stock) before a blast on the grill, and plump chunks of lightly blackened chicken thigh, freshened with spring onion and charred garlic, cardamom and ginger-fermented sprouts drizzled with Chinese sesame paste and sweet pickled chilli promise the savoury goodness one craves when teetering on tipsy. Plus, juicy pork koftas, cut with mustard and pickled onions, plus skewered lamb hearts and kidneys with a mound of candied XO sauce offer a kebab-like fix.
Meanwhile, rousing pickled mussels on shards of crisp white cabbage, dulcet squash cooked in miso with a rush of green chilli sauce and black bean paste, as well as the matter-of-fact Big Night Noodles dressed in leek and Palestinian lime sprinkle a certain brightness throughout.
After all that, a Fernet-bolstered Negroni and a Gimlet, pud in all honesty is beginning to look a little blurry — a tell-tale sign of a brilliant big night.
