Hibiscus, 29 Maddox Street, London W1 (020 7629 2999)
Meal for two, including wine and service, £150
The arrival in London of Hibiscus is to restaurant critics what the opening of a new Stephen Sondheim musical is to theatre critics. Only without the meditations on love and death. Then again, given the intensity of the food, the animals slaughtered to achieve the effect, and the fact that this is a husband-and-wife affair - Frenchman Claude Bosi is in the kitchen, Englishwoman Claire is out front - perhaps love and death are on the agenda here, too. Let's agree on this: the arrival of Hibiscus, in a smart little site off Regent Street that has been wood-panelled to within an inch of its life, is Very Big Stuff.
A lot of this has, I think, to do with distance. For many years Hibiscus was in Ludlow, where it won two Michelin stars for food which reportedly flashed with brilliance and diverting flavour combinations that made ladies swoon and men loosen their breeches, or whatever it is people in Shropshire do when they are thrilled. I say reportedly because I never made it to Ludlow. Laziness? Possibly. Then again, I did once make it to Drumbeg, and I challenge you to find that on your A to Z. There is always the suspicion that the length of the journey required to reach the meal - and a lot of people made pilgrimages to Ludlow - intensifies the response to it.
The distance thing also has its inverse: the relocation of the restaurant to London is bound only to excite a certain level of expectation among people like me who care too much about their dinner. Everybody said you were great when you were out there, let's see what you are like here.
So, does it live up to that? Up to a point, yes. Curiously, almost all the most innovative restaurants in Britain - the Fat Duck, L'Enclume, the Vineyard, Sat Bains, Midsummer House - are all outside the capital. Bosi has brought a bit of this modernist flash into town.
Some of it is very clever indeed. I adored his starter of a savoury ice-cream of foie gras, with a thick, bready foam of brioche, sprinkled with beads of 'lemon caviar', which was new to me. The entire dish is an indulgence, if a perfectly balanced one. A main course of yellowfin tuna, confited in olive oil to a dense texture, came with a disc of big, porky caramelised pig's head terrine, some roasted artichokes and aubergines, and a slick of bright, acidic sauce. If we look for anything from chefs working at this level, it is that they find a way to introduce ingredients to each other which otherwise might not have met. Here there was a finely tuned relationship between the subtlety of the fish, the earthiness of the artichoke and the punch in the teeth that was the pig's head.
The most intriguing dish was suckling pig in two services, the first bringing a tranche of meat and skin so tender a gumming baby could have eaten it, spread with warm sea urchins. They have a dirty, sexy, almost overwhelming flavour, particularly when introduced to a little heat. By themselves, they could have been too much; with the pork the dish was a revelation, the sea urchin extending the meat's taste for an age.
Curiously, though, it was the second service which made us do the swooning, breeches-loosening thing. The menu said warm sausage roll and that's exactly what it was. But what a sausage roll! A colossus among sausage rolls. King sausage roll of the sausage roll people. Er, we liked it. The pastry was so buttery I heard my heart making an appointment with the cardiologist for the morning. Inside was not the standard porky mush, but something gently spiced and with real texture. With this came a slick of dark sauce, a rush of savouriness that made the blessed roll so much bigger than itself. Forgive me. I have to go and lie down.
Now then, where was I? Oh yes. Hibiscus. Land of the sausage roll. I wish I could say everything hit those heights, but it didn't, not quite. Of the nibbles only cheese gougeres, each a waft of hot cheesy air, hit home. A hibiscus and olive oil cocktail to start, for example, was merely a glass of infantile fizzy sweetness, and a pre-dessert involving lemon grass and apple puree, too one-note. A starter of golden beetroot tart with pickled girolles and a sweet ice-cream made with feta cheese didn't quite live up to its billing. And then there were the desserts. Apple tart, advertised as coming with a lentil and ginger ice-cream and salted butter caramel, was merely a nice apple tart. Most disappointing was a parfait of sweet iced olive oil with crushed chickpeas and stuffed dates. The job of such a dish should be to make you look anew at olive oil; to recognise its role in the sugary end of the meal. This one didn't. It was a gloopy mess.
And yet, despite all this, I am intrigued by Hibiscus and I want to go back. Even allowing for the occasional supplements, the opening price of £50 a head for food of this complexity seems fair (it's bound to go up), the service from Claire Bosi's team is superb, and the setting pleasant. Oh, and there's that sausage roll. Welcome to London, Hibiscus. We're sure you're going to run and run ...
