Address: Birdcage, London
There is something agreeably laid back about the Birdcage. "If you want to book for lunch," says the message on the answerphone, "leave your name and telephone number twice, or just turn up at the restaurant." Obviously, they're not overwhelmed with lunchtime trade, but it still has an efficient, cheerful, friendly tone to it, and that sets the style for the service, as well. It's as if all those associated with the Birdcage want to convey that the restaurant is rather different.
In fact, it is about as different as it is possible to be -from entry to exit, from menu to wine list, from first mouthful to last, it is like being in the company of a kindly, eccentric, humorous relative who has a mad enthusiasm for the Orient. The dining room, which isn't exactly gigantic, is so stuffed with Orientaliana as to hardly allow any room for tables. Figurines, peacock feathers, swathes of decorative fabrics, mirrors, pictures, plants glitter in the crepuscular gloom. The tables themselves are so covered with decorative bits and bobs as to scarcely have room for plate, bread, wine and all the other paraphernalia of eating. Then the menu comes, stuck to the flyleaf of a book; and the wine list is in the form of an origami bird.
In the face of this onslaught of individuality amounting to nuttiness, it is easy to be distracted from the originality and excellence of the food. Even here the sense of having entered another world persists. There aren't many places - actually, there aren't any places - where you will find goat consommé with Irish moss and wakame tartlet, ackee whitefish in paperbark with lavender-drenched potato, or Japanese golden plum echinacea ice cream with baby bee or giant hornet honey glaze, or that suggests a glass of pudding wine to wash down a chocolate-covered scorpion, worm or cricket. And, yes, that's real scorpions, worms and crickets. Three crickets (though they might have been locusts), cropped up on top of my bitter cactus rice knapsacks in pan-leaf canvas.
This outré display of exotic ingredients might simply be distracting, ridiculous or downright disgusting in incompetent hands, but they aren't. They all play useful and active parts in the utterly consistent and highly structured world of Michael von Hruschka, itself a name that is cause for wonder. I believe he helped out at that early bird of east-meets-west fusion, the Hempel, but has since taken the precepts, and indeed the whole notion of fusion, to an illogical but divertingly delicious extreme. On the whole, I am no great lover of fusion food. Too often, it is an excuse for culinary promiscuity in which the sum is considerably less than the parts. But von Hruschka manages to avoid both cliché and confusion.
After much mulling, Blossom - who eats fish but not meat - and I chose: a triptych of squid, honeyed Hungarian chilli pig with tiger-nut pesto square, then pear-and-raisin cigarillos with jasmine and poppyseed anglaise to finish (me); salmon with Japanese spices, then mohinga with ackee fishballs (Blossom); and bitter cactus rice in pan-leaf canvas between us out of curiosity.
Each dish arrived in exquisite arrangements of tiny parcels, blocks and bricks. You think you are getting one thing, but no, you get three variations, each tied in a Lilliputian strip of lime peel, decorated with a stem of cress or whatever. The effect is like being served a series of Fabergé miniatures. This is labour-intensive stuff to cook, but not to eat.
Take my triptych of squid. There was a diminutive heap of roasted rice with scrolls of limpidly tender squid, that cephalopodic sweetness peeking through a clean, chilli-driven dressing. There was a dainty bowl of Stygian black soup made of squid ink and heaven knows what else, which was slightly thickened, seductively, sourishly acidic and rich beyond measure. Between these came a brace of taut and spiced squid spring rolls. It was a brilliant sequence of differences, each fully characterised and compellingly edible.
A true-blue Hungarian might have trouble recognising a national dish in von Hruschka's version of the pork dish, but the restrained sweetness of the honey, pointed warmth of the paprika and the aromatic dryness of the tiger-nut pesto square made for a rare and meticulously balanced mouthful. And as for the Japanese gold plum business, well...
Given the range and variety within each dish, I would need a volume or two to describe the elements and effects of our lunch, and after a while such detail becomes as wearisome to read as it is to write. Who, after all, stops to note, codify and remember tastes in detail in the course of a meal when your companion is amusing, intelligent, diverting and perceptive. Sad sacks only. I did take notes, because I am a compulsive sad sack, but I have no intention of inflicting my affliction on you.
Instead, I want you to go along and try out the Birdcage for yourselves. It will not be to everyone's taste. The mad clutter, quirky humour and the wild combinations, unabashed theatricality, fastidious decorative style and miniaturism of the dishes will irritate as many people as those who fall in love with them.
Those who want to love need to be prepared to pay a price. I paid £86.30, which included a restricted amount of wine - five glasses between us, including two glasses of champagne: £30.50-worth, to be exact. Two courses at lunch cost £19.50, three cost £26.50, but considering the labour, love, originality and Epicurean pleasure involved in each mouthful, it isn't unreasonable. You will pay more and have less fun in most places in London. Or the Orient, come to that.
