food photography, luxury travel, london, restaurant reviews, chefsdavid leeSeptember 09, 2018restaurant review, chef, london, foodies, foodie

108 Garage, Golborne Road. Notting Hill, London

food photography, luxury travel, london, restaurant reviews, chefsdavid leeSeptember 09, 2018restaurant review, chef, london, foodies, foodie

Chicken from the big green egg, liquorice root and dashi

The restaurant world, is, and has always been, in constant state of flux. Restaurants come and restaurants go. Sadly most of my alma mater's, have done the latter as apposed to the former. The current dining scene is a cornucopia of breathtakingly designed eating houses of glimmering glass and steel. Wonderfully conceptualised dining rooms birthed though super star architects, stylists and the odd focus group. The very nuances of eating beaten into temples designed to catch the wandering new age foodie like Venus fly traps, snaring them in an over whelming sensory web. The chefs who operate these stunning marvels are serving dishes of such provenance that one must gasp with muted jealously and amazement...... Sarcasm I hear you say! Well all jokes aside.....

The modern restaurant scene is filled with wonderful design, beautiful food and wonderful professional service, in fact more so now than in years previous. Yet, what I miss is that touch of grunge, the home made nature and feel that only the chef’s restaurant can provide. The thrown together dining room, developed on such a budget that one might think your dining in a second hand furniture shop. The chef and owner in the kitchen, toiling away with the smallest of kitchen teams. The floor held together by the chef’s better half, customers loving cared for as if dining in their own home. I miss the old restaurant smell, the mis-matched furniture and table ware and the feel that you are a part of something special. Sean’s Panorama in North Bondi, the original Becasse in Surry Hills and the wonderful Phil’s kitchen in Auckland spring to mind. These were, and are, chef’s restaurants with personality to burn. Places that made you feel as were part of something special, a food history moment, an almost secret food cult and a home away from home. My best memories are of Tetsuya’s restaurant in the inner city blue collar suburb of Roselle, the old workers terrace transformed, the ill defined door hidden on the side street. It was cramped and rather noisy, but walking though those doors was like the proverbial Alice down the rabbit hole moment. The food was a revelation, the intimacy of which has lingered to this day.

Sitting at the bar amougst the staff was like a backstage pass. A glass of Slovenian Barbera (Guerila 2014 12 pounds), we began with a series of snacks, preceded with good solid bread. Chicken from the big green egg was presented on licquorce root and served with English mustard and dashi this was followed by a palate cleanser of freeze dried sorrel. The chicken was deep and tender, the mustard added a serious zing and the dashi was oily delicious umami bomb. The sorrel cut the richness and cleaned the palate.

Scallop, apple, lovage, horse radish and caviar, cool salty, crunchy and sweet with a gentle acidity that brought it all together.

Squab with woodruff and last years cherries

Desserts consisted of an individually churned sorbet with frozen blueberries and a very rich Chocolate cremeux with cardamom ice cream, wild rice and a sake shot.

"It has been over a year since I ate at 108 Garage in Notting hill. A day that is only possible in the joy of the english summer time"

London, summer time 2017

Which brings me to Chris Denny and 108 Garage.

I had eaten Chris Denny’s food on a recent trip to London at the rather odd dining room at four two eight in Convent Garden. The food here shone whilst the room and the restaurant seemed to pale against it. Much has been written and said about Chris’s new restaurant 108 Garage in the rather grungy end of Notting Hill and to this end I’m not prone to repeat. What I found on my visit was a wonderful experience. There is a machismo to this restaurant that suits the food and the location. This is the old vinyl Rolling stones record, the warm scratchiness and thud of the needle dropping on the first track, that first sound of Mick and Keith, of sticky fingers and beggars banquet. Its rock and roll. Kurt Cobain meets Mick Jagger dressed in Armani. Grungy yet fine, meretriciously planned yet a continuous work in progress and yet paradoxically finished. This is a chef’s restaurant, a rare thing and the beauty of 108 garage. There is no distillation of ideas though a large team, just four chefs banging bums into each other, under the eagle eye of Chris Denny. This is unpretentious food, expertly conceived and carefully crafted. I didn’t have a plate that didn’t surprise yet satisfy.

Scallop, apple, lovage, horse radish and caviar,

Fermented carrot, yeast and kohlrabi was earthy and grippy with the yeast puree binding and providing the foil to the other elements. I thought this was one of the best dishes I had, as was the next. Burnt Cabbage with smoked butter was so incredibly simple yet amazingly delicious. No real explanation needed as I could eat this dish every day. Next was a perfectly cooked squab pigeon with woodruff and last year’s cherries. The two aforementioned dishes were by far the best of the day. The cabbage was an amazingly beautiful dish that brought back memories of fireplaces and the classic french country dishes of my early apprenticeship. The yeast, carrot and kolrabi on the other hand was the modern, crunchy fresh and tantilizingly aciditic.