Pro vs punter

Tom Parker Bowles and Steph Tait review Black Axe Mangal

The pro

Tom Parker Bowles is a food writer and restaurant critic for The Mail on Sunday. His latest cookbook Let’s Eat Meat is out now. (£25, Pavilion)

The punter

Steph Tait lives in Southwest London and eats out twice a week. Her favourite meal is a traditional roast. Indeed, alongside Korean chicken wings and crispy duck hirata buns at Flesh & Buns, her best eating experience was Hawksmoor’s Sunday roast beef.

Black Axe Mangal

Black Axe Mangal is the kind of place that comes along rarely: the result of a chef’s singular passion, but one that combines a deep love of a specific cuisine that adapts to its context. In this case, a patch of small, independent restaurants in Highbury Corner, North London. It’s what you might call ‘death metal Turkish barbecue’ but that would belie the complexity of chef/ owner Lee Tiernan’s training at St. John Bread and Wine, and the experience he gained in piloting the Black Axe Mangal concept as a pop-up in Copenhagen.

FOOD MADE GOOD RATING 6/10 foodmadegood.org

All meat at Black Axe Mangal is British and Lee Tiernan goes to great lengths to ensure the farmers he’s sourcing it from share his values. Seafood, too, is carefully sourced: River Exe mussels, line-caught mackerel, and the use of hake and pollock demonstrate a chef who cares as much about what’s left in the sea as what’s on his menu. A flood of customers in the opening month means there hasn’t been time to put many social or environmental initiatives in place, but the restaurant is recycling, and staff are trained in water and energy efficiency.