Tuesday 7th August
Here, as promised, then, are the details of our visit over the weekend
to Bacchus, which was good enough to convince me to return to this here
rooftop in order to shout about it. It's a lovely place - an old pub on
Hoxton Street, which is a very trendy part of town - serving the sort of
exciting, molecular-ish gastronomy that you normally have to go much
further upmarket for. Bacchus is affordable, accessible, bookable, and
casual: if you're on a six-month waiting list (or a six-year saving
plan) for a table at El Bulli/The Fat Duck/The French Laundry, this
obviously isn't a substitute but it's a very pleasant diversion. The
chef, Nuño Mende, has worked at El Bulli and it shows.
We started with cocktails - a Bloody Marvellous as they call it, in
other words bloody mary made with tomato water (very finely strained
juice), and a 'Bacchus Bubblebath' - a delicious cocktail of apple,
lemongrass and vanilla (oh, and vodka) with an amazing tower of bubbles
on top. Bubblebath is exactly what it looks like, and there is a
distinct moment of cognitive dissonance when the liquid you slurp
through them tastes neither soapy nor fizzy.
And so it went on. We took the Goldilocks option from the nine course
menu, of which you can have three, six or all nine, and from the crisp
bread on the table (tomato or walnut, with salted and unsalted butter)
through to the shot glass of heavenly crema catalana among the petit
fours, there was something exciting, playful or intriguing about every
course. The amuse bouche, with its shard of dehydrated milk skin on the
side of a cup of avocado soup topped with mushroom jelly. The salad of
lightly cooked vegetables and raw pea shoots, sitting in a pool of
intensely tomatoey broth. The rubbery sheet of soy milk wrapped around
the breast of veal. We loved the prawn, served with pine nuts and olives
on one side of the plate and pineapple and coconut milk on the other.
Some things were odd: the rubble of oats that came with the monkfish,
for instance, or the caramel disc on the skate and avocado. But
everything was technically good, and carefully put together; and the
overall effect was always thought-provoking, like a conversation with
serious and well-informed people. Even when we didn't agree, we were
glad we'd been asked. I'd be surprised if you could get six (or even
three) more interesting plates of food for forty pounds anywhere else in
London at the moment.
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