GRACE AND FLAVOUR

Grace Dent parties on at The Palomar

Who ventures to Leicester Square on a Saturday night? Exactly: savages. Generally I have no truck with the sight of regional types getting overexcited on rickshaws, but I made an exception for Rupert Street, W1, last Saturday as I’d hooked a table for the much-talked-about spot The Palomar. I wasn’t missing out on this. Chef Assaf Granit’s other restaurant, Machneyuda, in Jerusalem’s Mahane Yehuda market, is raved about by Israeli foodies, and its London outpost — 35-cover restaurant at the back; 19-cover raw bar at the front — is presently considered ‘hot’.

I enjoy the concept of ‘hot’ London restaurants because the title befalls venues for the most random and incoherent of reasons. A whisper here, an Instagram pic there, an earwigged Twitter dialogue, then suddenly a place is swamped by eager beavers. This leads to a second wave of foodie early adopters not being able to secure a table, being piggin’ furious, noticing that the PR for the restaurant is finding tables for celebs (who don’t eat anyway) and so declaring the restaurant ‘over’. Meanwhile, the chef is still peeling the delivery labels off his hobs. Oh, it’s all fun and games. People are so furious about Chiltern Firehouse right now it’s a wonder that doorman with the top hat at the main gate isn’t regularly pelted with eggs. One thing I’d been told about The Palomar that stuck in my mind was: ‘It’s a bit mad.’ Rumour said the place is noisy and that the chefs play loud music, that there is dancing in the kitchen, the waiting staff have their names written in the menu and the jars of Jerusalem-style truffle oil-laced polenta with mushroom, parmesan and asparagus are death row-dinner good. All of the above is true. The Palomar is pleasantly bonkers. Not a relaxing setting — in fact, a bit like eating in a nightclub — but the dishes that appear, such as kubenia (handchopped raw beef fillet with bulgur and tahini), or the Persian oxtail stew with chickpeas and turnips, are heavenly in spite of the din.

The chefs do indeed yell and bang pans, and the music is loud. At one point I was eating my polenta — the second or the third jar I’d ordered — while half-dancing to ‘Electricity’ by Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark. More bonkers still, our table was