The bleakest of crises can also gift us the most impressive of innovations. The Second World War gave us radar and rocket propulsion. This pandemic has given us… evolved restaurant food delivery. Oh, what a time to be alive and hankering after a bit of dinner. OK, it doesn’t enable airliners to avoid colliding and falling to earth in a devastating fireball. Nor does it empower us to reach the moon. But it does allow us to have a nice time. In the current circumstances, we should take it where we can get it.
Another review of takeaways? Not quite. I’m intrigued by the way restaurants that would never before have imagined their food being available to eat outside their premises have started to innovate. Consider it an act of business rehabilitation, a kind of economic physio to get the body moving again. Clearly it requires thought and care. Ravinder Bhogal of Jikoni in London’s Marylebone has put an awful lot of thought and care into it. Full disclosure: she’s a dear friend, but I’m not going to let the small matter of liking someone get in the way of writing positively about the marvellous things they’re doing.
In this case what she’s done is launch a separate brand called Comfort & Joy: “globally inspired veg with benefits”. There’s a daily changing roster of multi-dish meal boxes, all meat-free, all drawing on Bhogal’s intuitive and restless way with spicing, but informed by her Punjabi and Kenyan heritage. If it works, it’s in. The tag line on her forthcoming cookbook is “proudly inauthentic”. That tells you everything you need to know. The boxes are £20 per person if delivered hot (close to the restaurant) and £18 if delivered cold to be reheated at home, within a five-mile radius. For every order, a meal will be provided for someone vulnerable through their partners, the Nishkam SWAT Homeless Project.
The branding is gorgeous, but what really marks it out is the compostable packaging, from a company called Sabert. Throw one of these boxes into the garden when you’re done and there will be nothing left in 90 days. If I’m going to get food delivered like this, I’d prefer not to feel like a total eco-scumbag at the end. I urge other restaurants to consider using them. They can be put through a hot oven and they’re robust. That’s useful when you’ve got a thickly sauced curry of nutty new potatoes and baby aubergines, roasted until ready to fall apart, as if eager to please. It is an enticing rust colour and sweet-sour with an encouraging slap of spice and aromatics. Alongside is a fruity mango and Bramley apple dal, a loose-grained lemon rice the colour of sunshine, and crunchy French beans with ground coconut and roasted cashews. Other boxes might include the likes of crispy caramel cauliflower alongside silken tofu with black vinegar, and charred pak choi with sesame dressing and crispy shallots. These are lots of showy words that demand your attention.
Bhogal’s food is oven-ready, if it needs cooking at all. Jacob Kenedy’s offering requires commitment. If you want a no-fuss takeaway as a break from all that bloody cooking, this is not it. He’s dispatching meal kits within a five-mile radius so you can plate at home the muscular dishes he serves at his Italian restaurant Bocca di Lupo in London’s Soho. There are cook-along videos online, and wittily written method sheets. It isn’t just something to eat. It’s an hour’s kitchen fun with dinner to follow, and Kenedy guiding you all the way.
Just be prepared for a lot of packaging. Some is compostable; much, while made from recycled plastic, rather less so. The end result, however, can be stupendous: £7 brings a generous single serving of Kenedy’s ragù made with hand-cut beef, veal, pork and oceans of time. It’s braised down in milk and white wine until collapse. Also in the box is a chunky block of butter, the filthy secret of many restaurant kitchens. The liberal application of butter usually helps with most things. Chuck the ragù and butter in a pan, with a ladle of starchy water from the saucepan you’re using for the handmade tagliatelle. Eventually you introduce cooked pasta to bubbling sauce and, gosh. The technical term for what I did to complete this dish is “bugger all”; Bocca di Lupo did all the important stuff. But it made me feel like I had a stake in dinner.
There is a box of trofie, knobbly spindles of semolina pasta, to be boiled with green beans and new potatoes then mixed with a big pot of freshly made pesto. That pesto is the equivalent of dazzling Technicolor compared to the dull, scratched monochrome of the mushy jarred version. For the tagliata he supplies a quite monumental T-bone, at £30, to be grilled and sliced. It’s more than enough to feed two, and comes with rocket and parmesan salad. Courtesy of an online video, I spent 11 minutes with Kenedy perving over the best steak cooking methods. I regard this as a fine way to spend my time.
I get to plate up vitello tonnato just as they do at Bocca di Lupo: a big dollop of the textured mayo blitzed with tuna and anchovy goes on to the plate in a circle. I do this with the back of a spoon, and narrate myself in India Fisher’s hushed, silky voice as if I’m finally a MasterChef contestant. Cue voiceover: “Jay smooths the sauce before placing the rose of thinly cut, salt-cured veal in the centre. He garnishes with capers, broad beans and slices of radish for that wow factor.” It is a very good vitello tonnato. I also learn a new method for cooking sliced courgettes: brown them in a searingly hot but dry pan before dressing with olive oil spiked with garlic and chilli. Then turn the heat off.
When I spotted the box of pre-sliced courgettes, I started hating myself. I sneer at people buying pre-mashed potato in M&S, but at least those potatoes have actually been cooked. By itself, those raw courgettes were clearly ludicrous. In the context of the whole order, however – that glorious T-bone, the finished caponata bouncing with acidity and sweetness and caramel tones, the watermelon jelly to finish – it made a joyful kind of sense. It all cost just over £25 a head for what was an exceedingly good dinner at home. More importantly, it was someone else’s taste and kitchen skills, rather than my own. Because God knows I’m bored of my own cooking. Thank you Ravinder and Jacob for picking up the slack.
For full details and dishes: Comfort and Joy, jikonilondon.com; Bocca di Lupo, boccadilupo.com
News bites
And now a word about gin. Yes, I know. I may not like it, but I do love a good cause. During lockdown Tom Lord, a veteran of the restaurant and bar trade, launched a small crowd-funder to create Hospitality Gin. It’s a London dry gin, costs £33 a bottle and 100% of the profits from its sale will go to support people in the hospitality business who have suffered as a result of the closure of bars and restaurants during the current crisis. Get a bottle from hospitalitygin.co.uk.
Meanwhile in Waltham Forest the not-for-profit Stories & Supper, which since 2017 has run events including supper clubs to enable refugees and asylum seekers from around the world to share their stories, has launched a recipe book. Stories and Supper, More Than a Recipe Book costs £17.50, and contains 43 recipes from around the world including Afghanistan, Eritrea and Sierra Leone alongside the experiences of the people who supplied them. All money raised will go to fund future events. Visit storiesandsupper.co.uk.
And while we await the reopening, a quick mention for the very attractive take-away menu from the Magdalen Arms in Oxford. It includes a whole globe artichoke vinaigrette, house pasta with various sauces and, thrillingly, their steak and ale pie with suet crust and greens for between two and four people, depending on appetite, at £25, magdalenarms.co.uk.
Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk or follow him on Twitter @jayrayner1
