CUB, LONDON N1

Cub is like no restaurant in London, or the UK, actually. From the brains of drinks maestro Ryan Chetiyawardana (his bar, Dandelyan, was named the World’s Best Cocktail Bar at the 2017 Spirited Awards in New Orleans earlier this year), and zero-waste chef and restaurateur Doug McMaster (of Brighton’s Silo), this sustainable “drinks-led dining experience” opened this autumn.

Taking over the upstairs of Ryan’s former White Lyan bar, Cub is made up of cosy mustard booths, tables made of recycled yogurt pots, and paper mulch and cork pendant lights. The old bar is now shared with the kitchen, from which a £45 set menu of five food courses and five drink courses are made. You can order singular “good things” to eat and drink, but don’t. Go all out.

Each course, food and drink, leads on to, and prepares the palate, for the next. It’s challenging in places (an opening coupe glass of Krug champagne is marred by a contact-lens-like water jelly spiked with a single piece of cress) but exciting when it works.

Dish number three, chervil root (as soft as boiled potatoes) with a nutty, celery-like flavour comes bathed in ‘turbo’ super-reduced whey with miso – salty, umami – and scale-like slithers of a striking (in appearance and flavour) red-flesh apple. Another called “shrooms on shrooms” sees baby king oyster mushrooms fermented in duxelles, as a broth, roasted and raw – it’s incredible. To finish, Square Mile coffee with cognac and peach is excitingly multidimensional – it’s been designed to taste different depending on who you are and what you’ve tasted during the night – there’s notes of mint, chilli and szechuan pepper with every gulp.

It could feel a bit worthy but there are playful touches, too – go to the loo to find those. But mostly it’s low waste, high flavour, and beautifully light. lyancub.com (Words by Laura Rowe)