Chriskitch Hoxton, 5 Hoxton Market, London N1 6HG (020 7033 6666). Meal for two, including drinks and service: £120
The first time I went to one of chef Christian Honor’s restaurants it was for salad. It says much about those salads that the journey, a quest to match anything Frodo Baggins ever embarked upon, did not feel wasted. It takes guts and an encyclopaedic knowledge of London’s public transport system to travel from Brixton to Muswell Hill. In the rain. There was no end to my suffering. And yet, for his three-bean salad with a dressing spun through with the soft, earthy breath of cinnamon, or his avocado and almonds, it was worth it.
The original Chriskitch – it’s short for kitchen, obviously, but being a shmuck I assumed it was his surname – is a deli, with grand ambitions. It’s a resting place during the day for over-accessorised buggies, and people in need of therapeutic cake. (Less a Venn diagram than just one big circle encompassing both groups). Honor published a well-received cook book and made a noise with his big, chunky salads and his ways with roasted salmon. Now he has opened a second restaurant.
It’s in London’s Hoxton, which is much easier for me to reach, but I approached it with greater trepidation. Yes, during the day the menu is familiar. There are hearty brunch dishes: fried eggs with tamarind sauce or a corn kernel salad with baby herbs and Polish cured bacon. It’s the kind of food for which you would willingly incur a hangover.
By night it is something entirely other. It becomes a grown-up restaurant with ambition and flash and a wood-fired grill, on display behind glass. In reality this is less of a change for Honor than it might at first seem. In a previous life he ran the brigade at the Dorchester Hotel. He was completely fluent in the formal bob and curtsy of complex dishes brought together on the line. The food he is serving here is unlikely to be given room at the Dorchester. It is too robust for them, and Asian-accented with outbreaks of quinoa. But there is no doubting the gleam and seriousness of the cooking. The room echoes that. It is all polished concrete floors and work surfaces, greyed-out wood panelling and glass. Oh, the bill for Windowlene.
That is echoed in the crockery. I don’t generally mention my companions, because they are only there to laugh at my jokes and so that I can order more food. I don’t care what they think; I’m the one who has to write the column. But as I was joined by the potter Grayson Perry and his psychotherapist wife Philippa it’s worth recording their views on the plates. “Oooh vitrified,” says Philippa, her mouth puckering in a starfish of distaste. Grayson nods. He tells me that it’s been fired at a high temperature so doesn’t need a glaze. “Nasty rough surface,” Philippa says. She has a point. Many of the plates here are like sandpaper. Others have been hand-shaped and glazed, as if formed with big, fat thumbs. Philippa isn’t too keen on those either. Mind you, I say, at least the food’s not being served on a slate or in a galvanised dustbin. Give thanks for such things.
The food on those plates begins with a salad of coconut, coriander leaf and twice-cooked quinoa. The latter pops up regularly, in a crisped, crunchy form for texture. The mirin dressing is light and brisk. Discs of baked parmesan on sticks, with the back hit of chilli, are savoury lollipops for adults. Their buttery cornbread and sourdough comes with thick blocks of more salty butter the colour of a Devon beach, and smooth, insistent goat’s cheese.
Starters roam far and wide. Ravioli of minced and spiced barbecued duck, under an Asiatic dressing, takes on a Vietnamese aspect courtesy of a leaf fall of fresh green herbs, which is heavy on the rough kick of mint – the pub brawler of the herb world. Diced and dressed cubes of de-seeded tomato are formed into a disc as if mimicking steak tartare, under sticks of shaved asparagus. There’s a sour cream dressing with high notes of sherry vinegar. More crisped quinoa adds crunch, as if it was a drift of toasted breadcrumbs.
But the swoon-worthy moment comes with rock oyster shells filled with buttery scrambled eggs, shifted out of the column headed “comfort food” by the addition of chives. A single iodine-rich champagne-poached oyster perches on top with a dollop of caviar, the oils starting to run from the heat. It is a stupidly luxurious three spoonfuls, but worth every penny of the £4.75 each. Two of those and anybody with taste, greed and good sense will be grinning.
I am as prone to food envy as the next over-fed, big-haired, jazz- handed fop. It says much for the mains that, watching Honor plating them up, I couldn’t decide which I wanted for myself: the belly pork with the wobble of slow-cooked egg; the crisped-skinned salmon with the endive tart; the “blackened” cylinder of lamb, flames still flickering around it as if it was lifted off the grill and on to the plate.
It’s a reminder of the point of open kitchens: when the food is worth it, the view helps build anticipation, which these dishes then delivered on. The bitterness of the endive in that puff-pastry tart beneath the salmon was tempered by both sticky, sweet caramelisation and the salty hit of anchovy; the jellified egg yolk sent the pork on its way. But the lamb won the day. It was intense and earthy, a bash of the brambled hillside brought to Hoxton.
The desserts were simple headlines – a chocolate fondant, a crème brûlée, a poached pear – with lots of interest in the text below: the bijou jam tart beneath the cylinder of crème brûlée, the sweetened puff pastry collar around the neck of the pear. But what summed up this meal was the extraordinary texture of that pear, the spoon slicing through without any resistance, as though it had become a warm mousse of itself. And that’s the point. He may have made his name with expertly executed salad bars and deli items, but Chris Honor is a serious cook, with ladlefuls of technique and good taste. Hence the prices: £10 a starter, £20 a main. Judge those numbers by the detail on the plate.
Afterwards Grayson Perry, being well dragged up, sent me a thank-you note. “Good food too,” he said, “Not that you want my opinion.” He was right, on both counts.
Jay’s news bites
■ Nopi is the grown-up restaurant that Yotam Ottolenghi and his team opened after establishing their delis. Go for burrata and peach with coriander seeds and plum wine, courgette and manouri fritters or lamb sweetbreads with pickled cucumbers and oyster mayonnaise (ottolenghi.co.uk).
■ Get your bank details out. A bunch of 15 chefs, restaurateurs and industry experts from the north of England are trekking through the Simien Mountains in Ethiopia to raise money for Action Against Hunger. The group includes the likes of chefs Andrew Nutter from Nutters, Mary Ellen McTague formerly of Aumbry and Lisa Allen from Northcote Manor. Visit everydayhero.co.uk to donate.
■ Until 30 August artist Lucinda Rogers has an exhibition of her paintings of restaurants, originally painted to accompany newspaper reviews,at L’Escargot in London’s Soho. As she says: ‘It’s a window on to that time in London when things were hotting up in the restaurant scene’ (lescargot.co.uk).
Jay Rayner’s new book, The Ten (Food) Commandments, is out now (£6, Penguin). To order a copy for £5.10, go to bookshop.theguardian.com
Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk or follow him on Twitter @jayrayner1
