Cream of the crop
Presenting the season’s best, from crisp super-salads to indulgent afternoon teas, plus gelato know-how
ILOVE THE bounty of summer ingredients. Elderflowers have just bloomed and cherries are about to ripen — and that’s just in my garden. Seasonal ingredients star in our recipes on page eight. But if you’d rather let someone else do the work, I’ve been checking out a few restaurants on your behalf. It’s a tough job… DELAMINA
Where: Tucked away in Marylebone Lane in a little oasis of foodie outlets. A second eaterie for my hosts, Limor and Amir Chen.
Style: The room is casual and airy, with a long bar and a chilled vibe. The menu is intended to allow sharing or solo dish ownership. Décor is by Limor, who is an artist, and includes some of her work.
Menu: We ate charred cauliflower, baby aubergine smothered in black sesame with crumbled rosary goat’s cheese and pita balagan (topping changed daily) with za’atar, spicy onions and feta roasted with honey, frisée salad and concassé tomatoes.
Our fourth plate was a main-coursesized whole fish rubbed with dried lime then charcoal-grilled with roasted fennel, garlic and olive oil dressing. It was all superb but my winner
was that fish. My co-diner swooned: “It tastes like Israel; that took me right back to the port...”
Puddings included flourless mousse cake with cherries and a perky salted sesame cracker. We also tried the deliciously cooling halva parfait, drizzled with date syrup and tahini and scattered with roasted almonds.
Verdict: Fun, friendly and relaxed service with Israeli hospitality.
ORRERY
Where: London’s Marylebone High Street, above the Conran Store. I was a guest of the owners, to celebrate Mr P’s birthday.
Style: Huge windows, plush carpets and low jazz.
If there were a dress code, it would be “smart casual”.
The classy dining room has been refurbished and is more sparkly than ever.
Food: Simple but sensational. Mozzarella, poached pear and truffle honey was a hit and vegetable soup with poached egg and truffle croutons was a work of art, bright spring-like green and popping with flavour.
Next, a perfectly cooked, still-shiny sea bass with an umami-laden blanket of parmesan crust. On the side, tiny beetroot discs topped with horseradish cream and pretty chervil leaves and a pool of creamy spinach and wild mushroom sauce. Mr P’s salmon with asparagus and wild garlic velouté was similarly refined and perfectly executed.
My healthy-eating husband (on a day off from abstinence) treated himself to birthday cheese. A trolley was wheeled out and with theatre only the French can pull off, six were selected for him by Vincent, the charming and not-at-all-snooty maître d’ from Provence.
Birthday Boy went on to demolish a chocolate delice (on a plate piped with a happy birthday message) and I picked the unimaginatively but accurately named Strawberry, Strawberry, Strawberry — a mousse, sorbet and coulis plus the raw fruits and white meringues.
Drink: Go for the guided wine flight. As designated driver, I managed only a small glass of Ruinart champagne from the magnum our sommelier brought over. Mr P sipped a selection of fabulous wines, from crisp Alsace to the sticky, sweet Spanish sherry (Pedro Ximenez) with the cheese. Verdict: Perfect for a special occasion. Friendly, slick service and immaculate food will leave you feeling utterly privileged to eat here.
ZEST AT JW3 (GLATT KOSHER)
Where: The formerly milky restaurant at the Jewish community centre on the Finchley Road has been reinvented by clever front-of-house manager, Joshua Owens-Baigler. The café remains milky but the restaurant has been reborn with a meaty menu, glatt kosher l’mehadrin, under the Sephardi Kashrut Authority. It’s already going down a storm with locals, who were out in full force on the Wednesday night we visited. My dining partner, a South African émigré, was happy to come along (back home, her experience of kosher restaurants had been “sorry, sad and best avoided”).
Style: Leafy interior, with a huge, potted olive tree and plentiful plants. One wall is filled with an over-sized image of a 1950s Tel Aviv café. It’s the same room, but with new life. Tables, chairs, crockery and cutlery have all been replaced, for kashrut as well as cosmetic reasons.
Menu: Funky and modern, designed by the head chef at Zest’s Bevis Marks outpost. There are a few smaller dishes (designed to be shared or as a starter) plus some main course-sized plates. Prices for the smaller plates would not make your toes curl, even for some of the meat dishes.
We shared crunchy, spicy frickles (deep-fried pickles) and kubane (stillwarm, crunchy crusted, soft-centred brioche), which came with dipping pots of lamb fat, plus a pot of zhoug (a green, salsa-style Middle Eastern sauce). Indulgent food with a nod to the Levant.
Lamb koftas with a smooth, peanut salsa were perfectly pink in the centre and mouth-meltingly tender.
Equally tender was the chicken coated in date molasses, sprinkled with toasted, flaked almonds and under a rolled piece of char-grilled laffa. Some may balk at the portion-to-price ratio — that’s kosher meat for you — but this was hands-down winner. We could have eaten it all again.
Aubergine dumplings were deepfried, cigar-shaped bundles of aubergine on a pile of Israeli salad. Our only main course-sized plate pick was bream
chraime with sea vegetables and challah. The bream (perfectly cooked) — sat on a thick, shakshuka-esque tomato and pepper stew and was topped with a pile of bright, green samphire.
Refreshing watermelon and peach sorbet with summer fruit salad and a coconut malabi (Israeli milk pudding) were perfectly in-theme.
Drink: Sizeable wine list and some cocktails named by someone with a sense of humour (White Wine Schvitzer made us smile). House white and rose were better than most house wines and only £4.60 for a small glass.
Verdict: A great addition to the kosher roster of north west London. Another coup for Owens-Baigler — who has already has done great things at JW3.
It tastes like Israel; that took me right back to the port’