JIMI STEPS THROUGH A MAGICAL PORTAL IN EAST LONDON
ALL outdoor dining areas are not created equal. Several hours into the liberated carnival of “Happy Monday”, Shoreditch’s freshly reopened hospitality industry looked, to me, like a commendably committed but bedraggled and wind-battered thing. A scattered collection of cycle lane tables, flopping perspex screens and hardy, puffer jacketed figures, huddled like determined smokers and raising toasts through chattering teeth.
It was a lurching wake-up call of sorts. A reminder that this transitional period of exclusively alfresco dining — inexpressibly exciting and vital as it is for both diners and hospitality staff — will require some doggedness, adaptability and patience. And that, perhaps, none of us should hurl our begrimed winter coats onto a ritual post-lockdown bonfire quite yet.
But then, I arrived at Rochelle Canteen — Margot Henderson and Melanie Arnold’s discreet, 17-year-old icon — and it was as if I had stepped through a magical portal. Here, beyond the hidden buzzer entrance, were smiling-eyed servers, a cross-generational bohemian crowd (including St John founder, and Margot’s husband, Fergus) and the familiar clatter of a professional kitchen opening up the throttle. Here was a table beneath interlinking, see-through tents, well-ventilated but primed to magnify a sudden burst of sunlight into a dazzling sparkle. Here, above all, was warmth of every description, cooking touched by a quiet, calming cleverness and, across the next two hours or so, a comeback lunch of artfully cultivated, all-weather brilliance.
Part of this is the confidence and steady familiarity of the restaurant’s experience and ethos. Despite a transformational pandemic (for one thing, Henderson and Arnold had to close their classy spin-off operation in the Institute of Contemporary Arts), there was unruffled continuity from a debut menu that cleaved to the Rochellian practise of almost brutish English minimalism (hello there, braised faggots and mash), enhanced by vivid streaks of something more cosmopolitan. Fat, flavoursome asparagus came with a rich drenching of butter sauce and the sprinkled saline hit of bottarga, while radicchio, goat’s curd and softened boulders of beetroot in a punchy caper dressing struck me as something akin to cold-climate Ottolenghi.
Tactile, sensuous dishes are another lodestar for Henderson and longstanding head chef Ben Coombs. For our table that meant specials of vast, beautifully fresh langoustines and a forearm-length, majestically barbecued whole dover sole, coming away in soft, smoky flakes and served with sharp green sauce plus a deceptively dynamic slow-cooked fennel mush. “I didn’t actually think I liked fennel,” noted my friend Joe, heaping more onto the saucesmeared ruin of his plate.
There was perfectly matched wine, too (a crisp, inhalable François Crochet Sancerre from the mostly French list) and, finally, a pudding that set this already unforgettable meal off into some unseen upper stratosphere. It was a square of warm, butterscotch-soaked gingerloaf — with the thinnest little scrim of a crunchy crust — topped with a tart, soft mound of cold, poached quince; a signature dish in the sense that it was precise but unprissy, hearty but delicate, understated but in possession of a declarative, exclamation mark of flavour.
The joyful burble of a full dining room (well, tent) continued. The sun beat down as if fully sensing the magnitude of the occasion. And Henderson (new minted OBE but still very much in the kitchen) emerged now and then, wearing the expression of the happily shattered host.
All meals out in the coming days will be precious things; memories you want to savour and hoard. But to be this good straight out of the gate — to gather up all the deceptively complex threads of a high calibre hospitality experience with such apparent effortlessness — is nothing short of miraculous. There is sanctuary and magic within Rochelle Canteen’s walled kingdom. I suggest we take shelter there while we can.