Shotgun, 26 Kingly Street, London W1 (020 3137 7252). Meal for two, including drinks and service: £80
In the modern age of flash and bravura, every new restaurant must have its Instagrammable dish; that food item which, like Prufrock’s patient etherised upon a table, is designed to be held forever in a pixilated, electronic glow. And here it comes at Shotgun. It’s listed as pig’s ear and sour pancakes, and that’s exactly what it is: a whole pig’s ear, complete with the mechanics for joining it to the skull, alongside soft lacy folded pancakes, like antimacassars that have been tidied away. The ear is so anatomically intact that it looks like the plate has been genetically modified to listen into your conversation.
If so, it would hear my companion muttering “the horror, the horror” followed by the grating roll of her eyeballs in their sockets at the shameless display of culinary machismo. She is, I think, missing a trick. The ear has been long and slow cooked to something close to a jelly, then dressed with a sweet sour sauce, and heavily sprinkled with crushed peanuts and sliced spring onions. You slice off a piece, wrap it in a frond of pancake, and settle into a glorious interplay of gelatinous and crunchy, of salt and sweet.
The odd thing about this “look-at-me” dish is that it’s at odds with the rest of the place. US barbecue restaurants have spread across Britain with the eagerness of a sprightly bacterial growth on agar jelly. They’re now bloody everywhere. Whatever the merits of the food – some is good, some is bad, often in the same place – it can come with a tiresome growl of slang and histrionics. So menus bang on about the doctrine of “low and slow”, big up the dirtiness and make their point by, at best, serving their food in white enamel-wear of the sort found in Angola Penitentiary, Louisiana, and at worst in novelty items like a mini galvanised dustbin. God, but that posturing is tiresome.
Shotgun, the second restaurant from Mississippi-born chef Brad McDonald of the Lockhart in Marylebone, presents itself with rather more decorum and southern decency. The name may sound macho, but it really isn’t. It’s a reference to a long, narrow kind of southern US house, which the site on Kingly Street mimics. It has been kitted out like an Edwardian southern drawing room, all dark wood and leather, potted plants and down-lit charm. And it is charming, in an understated way. There is a proper wood and rail bar, where they will mix you a proper whisky sour. Yes, of course the barmen have beards of the sort songbirds could nest in. It’s 2015, for heaven’s sake. But they serve their drinks in tumblers not jam jars. They have an admirably select group of whiskies behind the bar rather than the desperate attempt to source any liquor ever distilled from grain that other more insecure bars boast of.
The menu is relatively short and well priced. A pot of their shell-on peanuts, boiled in a meaty, spicy broth until the shells burst between your teeth, is just £1.50. A generous portion of hot, spiced tamales – a savoury cornmeal cake – is £6.50. That whole pig’s ear is £7. At the heart of it though, are their meats, smoked over wood (rather than pellets; they’d clearly rather die than do that). All of them are dry rubbed, with sauces on the side, in the Kansas City style. These range from a sweet mustard, much like French’s, through straight Kentucky, to hot Kentucky, finally arriving at a fiery Carolinas vinegar dressing. It’s a smart way to cover a lot of regional US bases. The fact is that obsessive US barbecue heads will bitch endlessly, whatever any restaurant does, picking holes in the offering like Niles and Frasier Crane intent on a good night out. Shotgun go their own way and it works.
Black-leg chickens from Norfolk, Muscovy duck breasts from France and baby back ribs from Castilla y León in Spain, come in half or full portions. The other meats – Boston butt, point-end brisket and short rib – cost £5 to £7.50 per 100g. For those tired of dry tangles of brown pulled pork catching in your teeth, the Boston butt is a revelation. The lightly vinegared meat is lubricated by slippery pearls of warm piggy fat, and spun through with pieces of the dark and chewy caramelised skin. Both the brisket and the short rib are exemplars of their kind. The short rib comes out on top, for sheer depth of flavour, though I would have preferred it in one sizable piece rather than in thin slices.
The baby back ribs, from hefty Iberico pigs, are a glorious thing, the meat still holding to the bone, rather than having been oversmoked to a point of submission. There is a thick crust and a fine layer of melting fat. Sides include a crunchy sweet-sour coleslaw, with an autumnal hit of apple, a nutty bowl of baked beans still retaining their bite and, best of all, sticky mash made from potatoes first baked in their jackets. A cold winter’s day would always be made better by a bowl of this.
At the moment they are still going through stock-control issues. It’s only 8.30pm when they announce they are out of the makings of a green salad, which would not have been an unwelcome addition to all that animal protein. I point out that there is a huge branch of Wholefoods, still open at the other end of Kingly Street, just off Piccadilly Circus. They smile and nod. I’m really not joking, but we do not get our green salad.
It seems the same has happened with dessert, when they confess they’ve run out of the banana pudding, one of only three options. But swiftly they make another, which comes to the table in a huge, glass trifle dish from which they scoop out your portion: a big mess of whipped cream, fresh bananas, banana purée, biscuit and honeycomb. It’s a clever and generous touch. Bitter cherry and dark chocolate ice creams, served soft from a Mr Whippy style machine, finish off both us and the meal.
As ever, at the top I give the price of a full three-course meal with drinks for two, but I could quite easily imagine slipping in here just for a single plate of smoked animal. It’s an extremely civilised space in which to experience this kind of cooking done with huge assurance. You don’t have to try the pig’s ear, but it would be a shame if you didn’t.
Jay’s news bites
■ The Little Blue Smokehouse began life as a street food operation in and around Brighton and became so popular it now has a permanent base at the Seven Stars pub in the city. You need to choose carefully. The beef brisket sandwich and the smoked fish are not that great, for example, and get dessert elsewhere. But the Korean chicken wings and the pig’s head croquettes are terrific. Best of all is the huge smoked and charred pork belly rib, which alone is worth the trip (sevenstars
brighton.pub).
■ And talking of Brighton, the city is to get the first branch outside London of the small plates Italian restaurant group Polpo. The outpost, launched by Russell Norman and Richard Beatty, will be on New Road near the Theatre Royal (polpo.co.uk).
■ Peruvian restaurant Lima Floral, in London’s Covent Garden, has devised
a menu item to support Crees, a charity dedicated to a sustainable Peruvian Amazon – 25% of the proceeds of the dish, made with seared paiche, a fish native to the region, will go to the charity (limafloral.com; crees-manu.org).
Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk
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