In the restaurant business, there are bad amateurs and good amateurs. The bad ones will have made a few bob doing something else and think, “I’ll have me some of that.” They buy brick tiles and industrial lighting by the metre, smoke themselves some pig and stand back, waiting for the queues and rubbing their thighs. The good guys are those who, as the name suggests, just love the industry with a not-to-be-denied passion and, despite not being pros, can’t imagine doing anything else.
It’s into this latter category that I’d put the people behind Pidgin: James Ramsden and Sam Herlihy (neither trained in the restaurant business, but with a successful supperclub under their belts), alongside Elizabeth Allen in the kitchen. Allen’s most recent gig was at Neil Rankin’s ballsy Smokehouse in Islington; she’s staged at L’Enclume and has a love for Asian flavours – miso, sake lees, shiso, dashi. The result is bewitching.
Our four courses kick off with petals of raw mullet, the pristine fish set among radish, fennel tops and an intriguing squid-ink crisp, all underpinned by smoked fennel mayonnaise. Inevitably with a set, no-choice menu, there’s one dish that makes me think “nope”, but the squash spaghetti turns out to be our dinner’s dazzling turn. It’s not, as I’d imagined, spaghetti squash, but the less squelchy butternut, spiralised and dressed with brown butter and a nut-laced dukkah spice mix. At a time when many chefs think they need to dial flavours up to 11, the subtlety here is sexy: seductive interplay between textures, various degrees of nuttiness, including what looks alarmingly maggoty but turns out to be clever – puffed wild rice. If I’d seen this on a conventional menu, I’d never have ordered it. There’s a definite benefit to having your hands tied.
Then something more straightforward: a pigeon pie, almost up there with the outrageous pithivier from newly Michelined Portland. This is simpler, flanked by cavolo nero – some of it crisped – and meaty wild mushrooms in a sauce as boozy as a hen night. Dessert is one of those modern jobs I whinge about. The individual components are odd – super-sweet burnt white chocolate ice-cream tasting like Scottish tablet (no bad thing, in my book), an airy and vaguely medicinal parsley and pistachio cake, cheek-squeezingly sharp raspberry powder – but, eaten together, they suddenly make glorious, harmonious sense.
Of course, if you go to Pidgin, this isn’t the menu you’ll have – it changes weekly. You might have coffee-roasted carrots with buckwheat and chicken skin jus, or deep-fried pork belly confit in miso (mama), or smoked confit duck with pickled potato, peas, lettuce and herbs (also mama). This fixed-menu idea is nothing new – Sally Clarke’s done it for years in her west London classic – but the Pidgin team have made it fresh and vibrant as a citron pressé. I’d happily go back for their home-churned Jersey cream butter alone.
The restaurant is beautifully plain: grey tabletops and banquettes, bentwood chairs. Elegance comes from twigs on the back wall and the warm glint of copper (surrounding the tables and in a quirky billholder shaped like a bird’s claw – pigeon, presumably). It’s tiny, and tables are close together, recalling the supperclub from which it evolved.
I go to this quiet Hackney back road with my Florence-based sister, who says it’s one of the best meals she’s had in an age, and they know how to eat in Florence. Her only complaint is that she’d like to have inhaled a giant bowlful of that squash. This is that rare kind of restaurant that delivers way more than you expect. A flask of “pigdincello” arrives at the end of the meal, a mellow liqueur they make from vodka, lemon and herbs, and a delicious piece of real hospitality. Plus a freshly baked madeleine. We also have a fine pecorino, Ciu Ciu Merlettaie, at £31 their most expensive white wine.
On my way to the loos, where the theme is, eccentrically, thunderstorms, I peer into the kitchen. Allen is there, in balletic control of her domain. I’ve clearly got to that stage where policemen start to look like children, except in my case it’s chefs – she looks about 15. (In reality, I believe, she’s 27.) If this is the kind of stuff she’s doing now, I’d say we’re looking at a serious future star. Amateur? Je l’aime.
• Pidgin 52 Wilton Way, London E8, 020-7254 8311. Open lunch, Sat & Sun, noon-2pm; dinner, Tues-Sun, 6-10pm (9pm Sun). Set menu only, £35 for four courses, plus drinks & service.
Food 8/10
Atmosphere 7/10
Value for money 9/10
