The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - The Telegraph Magazine
Table talk
Our critic finds this week’s restaurant innovative in every way but one
Michael Deacon at Scully in central London
GOOD EVENING, MADAM, sir. May I take a moment to explain the article? It’s a review of a restaurant. The text is written in the English language, with each word composed of a varying number of letters derived from the Roman alphabet. To aid comprehension, we recommend reading the words from left to right, starting with the line at the top of the left-hand column and working your way downwards to the foot of the page, then moving up to the line at the top of the next column to the right, and so on, until all the words have been read. Once you reach the final word on the bottom-right-hand corner, use the jointed digits located at the periphery of one hand to turn the page, and then – with the aid of the two globular organs found either side of your nose – commence reading the words printed on the reverse. Did you have any questions?
I’m not having a go at waiters. It’s not their fault. They’re only doing what they’re told. And these days, what most of them have been told to do, entirely unsolicited by the diner, is to ‘take a moment’ to ‘explain the menu’.
Why, I don’t know, because the menu doesn’t need explaining. The diner has already worked out – using the grey nervous tissue located on the interior of his or her skull – that the menu is made up of small dishes intended for sharing. The diner is familiar with the concept, because 97.6 per
cent of London restaurants launched in the past three years have menus of that type. The idea is not new or obscure.
Again, though, it’s not the waiters’ fault, which is why it’s important to resist any temptation to reply, ‘Oh yes, please do explain the menu. Such an unusual amuse-bouche. It tasted so… papery. With just the subtlest hint of ink. What was it made from?’
At this week’s restaurant, the waiter had been instructed to explain the menu in the usual fashion. My colleague Barbara and I did our duty, and listened, and nodded. The waiter politely pretended to think the explanation necessary, and we politely pretended to agree. Both parties played their roles. In a way, it’s become a little ritual; a customary part of eating out. One day, decades from now, a waiter will finally hand me a sharing-plates menu without bothering to explain it, and I’ll feel sad, and old, and mourn the passing of a great British tradition.
The restaurant was Scully, in London, recently opened by Ramael Scully, a chef who previously worked for Yotam Ottolenghi. He was born in Malaysia, then raised in Australia by a Chinese-indian mother and an Irishbalinese father. The food at Scully is intended to be as varied and distinctive as its creator’s background. No single nationality, no one particular heritage; instead, a bright and colourful comingtogether of all sorts.
Take, for example, the ‘forbidden rice’: black rice, topped with little slices of turnip that have been dehydrated, then rehydrated. The rice was beautiful: so soft and delicately seasoned, with the faintest possible tickling of spice. Not so sure about the slices of turnip, though. Tasted like wet crisps.
Then there was the arepa with eggplant sambal and bergamot labneh. Imagine a slice of polenta, fried, and then dipped in a bowl of creamy aubergine. Next we had the salad: big, bulky chunks of tomato, slices of green strawberry and slivers of coconut. Strange, but nice.
The octopus was good (squashy,
chompy tentacles served on salt-baked avocado), but my favourite dish by miles was the beef short-rib pastrami with horseradish and pistachio. Meltingly beautiful, with a rich peppery zing. So recommended.
On the other hand: the Italian spring greens with red miso and sunflower seeds. This I couldn’t stand. It was weird enough to look at: a hulking great heap of vegetables, the size of a bonfire, coated in some mysterious-looking yellowy moon-dust. But the taste was even weirder. So wincingly, wrigglingly citrusy. So sharp, so tart, so acid. It made me pull a face like Pearl from Last of the Summer Wine spotting Howard and Marina behind a dry-stone dyke.
I wasn’t too keen on my pudding, either. Caramelised white chocolate, grapefruit and pink peppercorn. The chocolate was weird, muddy and gloweringly intense. Also, I didn’t know what was going on with the layout: all the food huddled together in little blobs at the same end of the plate, the rest of it empty, and a lone additional blob perched uncertainly on top of a long flat biscuit, as if it were some kind of edible surfboard.
So Scully wasn’t completely for me. Then again, there’s no doubting its creativity and imagination. Come to think of it, the one thing that wasn’t creative and imaginative was the format of the menu. Now that sharing plates have become almost ubiquitous, it would actually be more radical to make the menu old-fashioned. If London diners can remember what that’s like.
‘Good evening, madam, sir. May I take a moment to explain the menu? At the top here we have a selection of little dishes with which to commence your meal. I recommend ordering one each. They’re known as “starters”. Underneath, we offer a selection of larger dishes, known as “mains”…’
The food at Scully is a bright and colourful coming-together of all sorts