Roganic

Roganic is one of the few restaurants where I really, really want to see what’s new on the menu, and regret it when someone tries a dish that I didn’t have… Simon, Ben and the team have an incredibly sensitive palate and a very inventive use of seasonal and foraged ingredients. Last time I was at Roganic they were still using all of the glorious summer produce, with delicate herbs, edible flowers and the freshest ingredients. A winter menu is much more challenging for the kitchen – to truly stay seasonal, with a very limited range of produce, a kitchen has to be particularly inventive.

It was lovely to come back into the restaurant – the staff are so friendly and so enthusiastic that it was great to catch up with them again. Most of the original front of house team are still here, with Jon Cannon, Sandia Chang and Jack Settle still providing their usual warm cheer… Sandia has also taken on the duties of sommelier.

We were greeted with a glass of Chapel Down sparkling wine from Kent (very good) and a couple of amuse. There was a squid ink crouton with smoked cream cheese and celery cress, and a beef coquette with corned beef, apple, cress, carrot and grain mustard mayo. Both were delicious – the beef dense and chewy, and the richness offset by the crisp apple. Smoked cream cheese is also a revelation – the really tangy sourness cutting through the umami /iodine flavour of the crouton.

Roganic’s bread is always a joy, and considering the tiny space they have downstairs in the kitchen(s), is an amazing testament to their commitment. Today’s offerings included the famous pumpernickel, Irish sodabread, buttermilk, and a sweet chestnut and thyme parchment. These are served with freshly churned butter.

We left ourselves in the hands of the staff and settled in for the tasting menu. First came the millet pudding with grains, burnt red pear, tangy rich Devon blue cheese and honey cress. This is a beautiful dish, sitting in its green pool – the burnt edge to the pear adding an extra dimension to a familiar cheese pear combination. The grains were chewy but soft and yielding and topped with sea kale, not too much iron intensity.

Roganic likes to play with water-bath egg yolks, and this winter it’s a smoked Braddock White duck egg with pickled roots, wild chervil and salt beef. The dish is served under a cloche filled with cherrywood smoke. The yolk becomes a dense, buttery globe of golden goo, offset by delicately soused grapes, which cut through the richness. Under the yolk a little stack of salt beef and something not unlike granola provide a depth of texture. The smell of cherrywood pervades the dish and the chervil adds a gently aniseed kick.

Taking mushrooms to an art form, the poached and grilled king oyster mushroom is served with dehydrated powdered mushroom soil, Douglas fir pine, red and yellow beetroot. Intense umami flavours are achieved by roasting off the tomato in a mixture of Lea & Perrins, tomato and barbecue sauces – a deeply satisfying sweet and sour flavour.

And how can you transform the humble leek? Brought to the the table on a bed of rosemary spiced soil is a leek wrapped in a clay casing. Broken open and then plated, it’s dressed with a layer of 72° grated chocolate. The King Richard leek is first intensified through sous vide in a water bath for several hours, before being baked in its clay coat. Served with beautifully scented sorrel, rosemary, puffed rice, shallots and bacon cream, the shallot is intact but yielding, intense in its meaty sauce, yet preserving the integral taste of the leek.

One of the kitchen’s real endeavours is to introduce us to unusual varieties of vegetables, and Mr Little’s Yetholm Gypsies are a Scottish variety of potato with a red white and blue colouration. Cooked in chicken fat, with snow peas, mussel juice and a little goat curd, it was full of flavour and packed a punch but presented in a beautifully delicate way.

Plaice poached in fennel stock, sea beet, and sprout leaves tastes very meaty. With Morecambe shrimp and preserved leek fondant, it worked well with the other dishes.

Then Gressingham duck, carrot, mayweed and smoked redcurrants. The smoked redcurrants are a revelation – tiny little bombs of intensity which sing happily with the roast salsify and rich duck. The smooth smoky tomato sauce provides a kick and the meat just falls apart.

For dessert, a pool of warm salted chocolate is poured for you at the table, with toasted almonds and sloe sorbet. It’s dressed with sweetly aniseed flavoured atsina cress and tiny diced zinging pear – a dense but refreshing combination.

We finish with a fir milkshake and cupcakes spiked with rosehip and popping candy – the depth and warmth of the warm milk feel like a bedtime treat, leaving you relaxed and complete.

I must admit to initially feeling a little disappointed with the menu, but it quickly became apparent that even more effort had gone into these dishes than those in the summer. It’s much easier to arrange fabulous fresh ingredients at the height of the summer – working a little bit of magic on the humble winter leek is much more difficult, and actually shows the lengths that Roganic will go to stay true to their seasonal and local credentials. Personally I like all those amazing raw summer ingredients, but the Hubby preferred the rich intensity of the winter menu. This is the point of Roganic, to suggest that it makes you think about your food would do it a disservice – this is food you can just eat because it tastes delicious. But personally I like to think about my food, to question my attitudes, and I came away from Roganic even more impressed by their repertoire. Hurry up Spring, I want to see what’s coming next…

The Current Menu

10 Course Lunch / Dinner Menu £80

Millet pudding with grains, burnt pear and Devon blue

Smoked Braddock White, pickled roots, wild chervil and salt beef

Roasted Looe scallops, purple sprouting and chokeberry vinaigrette

Poached and grilled king oyster, pine, beetroot and coastal sea leaves

Caramelised cauliflower, sour cream, raisin, roasted lettuce and pennywort

Mr Little’s Yetholm Gypies cooked in chicken fat, snow peas and mussel juice

Plaice poached in fennel stock, sea beet, preserved leek and sprout leaves

Gressingham duck, carrot, mayweed and smoked redcurrants

Warm salted chocolate, toasted almonds and sloe sorbet

Yorkshire rhubarb, dried caramel, natural yoghurt and iced lemon thyme

All of these gorgeous photos were taken by Paul Winch-Furness for Roganic

and are reproduced here with his kind permission…

For more examples of Paul’s work go to www.paulwf.co.uk

Follow Paul on twitter as @paulwf

With what has rapidly become the hottest London restaurant on Twitter, Roganic is something of a joyous enigma. Chef Patron Simon Rogan, Head Chef Ben Spalding and his team are able to turn out extraordinary food in what is essentially a tiny and cramped site. But the genius of the restaurant is that it recognises this restriction and has managed to turn it to its advantage.

Very few dishes are served hot, and as a result a number of the dishes are very pure, and incredibly scented. Where others use herbs as a garnish, here we were able to truly smell and taste the individual elements. This is also the first tasting menu I’ve ever managed to get through without feeling faintly ill – a number of the elements are raw, soused, or barely cooked – the resulting menu is fresh, full of texture and flavour. Some ingredients, such as the chenopodiums, hyssop, sweet cicely, lovage and wood sorrel are sourced by a forager, others from their own Howbarrow Farm, located close to their parent restaurant, L’Enclume. Remaining ingredients are sourced as closely as possible, and only from the British Isles. For example the kitchen uses rapeseed oil, instead of olive oil. Such fresh and local produce does have a fantastic impact on the menu. The kitchen also intends to change the menu every six weeks to make the most of seasonal ingredients. Although there is a six course menu, I would urge you to go for the 10 course, if you have enough time.

The restaurant itself is behind a discreet French grey facade, and is feels like a minimalistic seaside joint – the French grey is continued on one side, with a cream opposing wall and a moody oil abstract that I immediately wanted to steal! To go with the more organic feel, the butter is served on stones collected by Ben and his family, the place-mats are coloured like a stoney beach, and the water glasses are an intense sea green. It’s a serene and relaxing room. The staff are attentive, and well informed. The more I questioned them, the happier they were to tell me where ingredients were sourced, the temperature of the water-bath, how long items were de-hydrated for, etc.

We began our evening with a glass of apricot and vodka fizz, with a couple of shards of dehydrated apricot in the glass. The fizz is dispensed at the table in a creamer (and uses just one gas canister). It’s a very lovely variation on a Bellini, and I think actually preferable – but I love a vodka martini, and this was also a very good and clean variation on that.

The bread is served warm, and we were offered pumpernickel, spelt, and buttermilk & potato. The butter is brought in from a farm and whipped with Maldon sea salt in the restaurant – this results in a light and voluminous concoction.

Chickpea wafer, ox-eye daisy puree, microleaves and flowers

As an amuse we were offered a chickpea wafer with ox-eye daisy, aioli, red amaranth, and edible flowers – a lovely combination of sweetly sour and floral scent. The closest comparison I can offer is that of cream cheese. But really lovely cream cheese with spiky herbs and very light garlic in the aioli – a difficult balance to strike, but effortless here.

Broad beans and hyssop, with fresh curds and beetroot

The first course was a tiny plate of broad beans and hyssop, with fresh curds and beetroot. The beetroot came diced at the bottom of a beetroot purée – a slightly salty sour velvet. The hyssop is a light and green puddle into which the broad beans sit, with the fresh curds. The dry flavour of the broad beans is offset by the slightly tart curds, and that rich beetroot. The resulting dish is light, very fresh.

One of the nicest parts of this menu is that the dishes begin delicately, and gradually build into an incredible crescendo of cheek-sucking umami-ness. As a result, very delicate flavours like the hyssop aren’t lost in the menu – your taste buds adapt and the later intensities don’t destroy that taste memory.

The next dish was a scarlett ball turnip baked in salt, smoked yolk, sea vegetables and wild mustard. The smoked yolk is achieved by cooking the egg in a water-bath for 40 minutes at 63ºC, then sitting the separated yolk in it’s shell with some smoking oil for a few hours. This results in a yolk with the texture of lemon curd, and a smoked velvet intensity. The turnip is soft and tender, and delicately scented, and our samphire echoed that with its customary salty kick. The wild mustard serves as a green and intently fragrant smear under the dish. I do like to taste those additions on their own, and this is delicious – would be amazing with fish!

We followed this with the now famous Seawater cured Kentish mackerel, shoots, broccoli and warm elderflower honey. I’m not a massive fan of mackerel, it’s always rather an overpowering flavour for me, but here it was delicate. Once cured, a small amount of sweetness intensifies that saltiness. A shard of crispy skin sat on top of this moist fish, and under that was a layer of delicately soused onion rings – is this a nod to the Scandinavian counterpart? If so it was executed perfectly and served to highlight the fish, and not swamp it! The honey, sourced from Regent’s Park in our case, not Hyde Park as in others’ reviews, added a sweet contrast and was filled with tiny speckles of broccoli. The purée allows you to scoop up the fish and smear it with fragrant green.

Next on the table is the shredded ox tongue, pickles and sourdough paper. I think this is perhaps my favourite dish. On the plate are a few soused, raw and barely cooked elements – a halved grape, tiny cauliflower florets on cauliflower purée, barely raw strips of carrot wrapped around a purée, a radish intact with its leaf… In the centre are two shards of sourdough paper (made a little like Sardinian Carta da Musica) into which is pasted a mound of the intense ox tongue. I’ll be honest – I could have eaten platefuls of the veg!

Flaky crab and mallow cream, young squid and cucumber. The squid is raw and diced to the same size as the cucumber, then mixed in with the crab. It reminded me of a much better textured ceviche or tartare, the effect is the same, lightly spiked and clean. The texture is offset by the inclusion of the squid ink croutons, and the smooth mallow cream. My own dish didn’t have a courgette flower (clearly the season has passed, and this photo is from a few weeks ago). I did have stonecrop in my dish though, which added that dryness in the mouth, offsetting those other silky flavours. There were also tiny mallow flowers decorating the dish, and adding further fragrance.

Next is one of the signature dishes of l’Enclume – Heritage potatoes in onion ashes with wood sorrel, and lovage. In our dish the heritage potatoes were Sharpe’s Express, a variety first introduced in 1900. The onion ash is produced by cooking down the onions and then dehydrating them. The result is then whizzed until an oil can be produced from it, and this is then mixed with maltodextrine. The dish is assembled with a shallot purée, a lovage purée, the cooked Sharpe’s with a mound of the ash, shards of dried and crispy potato skin and adorned with a scattering of wood sorrel. I hadn’t eaten wood sorrel on it’s own before, and it’s a complete revelation – an intense citrus flavour which cuts through the richness of the shallots, and that intensely onion ash. I absolutely loved this dish, but I can imagine others would not. We laughed with the staff about the ‘marmitiness’ tag that seems to have been linked with a number of the dishes – for my part, I though this was actually quite addictive. I could imagine putting that ash onto popcorn, or any number of other foods – but I do like savoury flavours!

Cornish monkfish, chicken salt, surf clams, rainbow chard and mushroom purée. Now we really are (literally) getting to the meat of the matter. Following that intense ash, the menu steps up and gives you a good whack of umami. The intense mushroom purée really packs in that savoury punch, which the chicken salt steps up again! The Hubby wanted much, much more of this, and we literally sat at the end sucking our cheeks – it’s an incredibly intense set of flavours. The menu has in the past carried brill, ours was monkfish, but to be absolutely frank, the fish is merely a foil for all the other flavours. This isn’t a criticism – I’d choose those flavours over the fish any day!

Now we’re on a roll and the end is in sight. As I said earlier, the joy of this menu is that it gradually builds to a crescendo, so your taste buds don’t feel overwhelmed – the freshness of the earlier dishes ensure that you reach these few hot dishes with your appetite intact and raring to go. So, as they brought out the Cumbrian hogget, with artichokes and chenepodiums, we were getting excited. Hogget is lamb which has reached maturity, generally at the one year mark. The lamb is intense, with a lamb jus, and artichoke purée with tiny crispy sweetbreads. As a combination you do get sweet, sour, salt and savoury – and the bitter is included through the addition of the chenopodium leaves. Extraordinary things – you pop the leaf in your mouth and it takes rather nice, but after about 10 seconds it interacts with your saliva and adds and incredibly bitter note – a fabulous contrast!

How do you follow this? With Sweet cicely and strawberry, buttermilk and verbena of course! The dish is constructed with macerated strawberries, sweet cicely ice cream, very creamy buttermilk custard and verbena syrup. After the last two meaty dishes, this acts as a very food palate cleanser! It’s served with shards of dehydrated strawberry scented with cicely – this adds a very moreish anise flavour to the shards, echoed in the main dish. Again there is very real emphasis on the herbal and fresh nature of the ingredients – and I think this is what keeps your appetite up during the 10 courses – there’s so much to spike your interest.

Warm spiced bread, salted almonds, buckthorn curd and smoked clotted cream. The crunchy cube of brioche is toasted with cinnamon and cardamon. The cardamon offers and incredible scent, and one of those – there’s something else in there, I know that taste, what is that? – moments. It sits on the buckthorn curd. The clotted cream sits to the side with the salted almonds. I can understand why people might have trouble with some elements of the dish: the buckthorn curd gives you that sense of dryness in the mouth, and the smoked cream is so unusual, but if you combine them together again you get that sense of umami-ness – which is incredible in a dessert.

Two final things – cherry soda with a shard of Douglas fir flapjack and a very lovely fresh raspberry mini victoria sponge. Both restore your mouth to it’s normal and more mundane existence… What could be more normal and familiar than a little cupcake?

I think if you’ve actually made it to this point in this insanely long review, you’re more than likely to be a future diner at Roganic. I have a question – why haven’t you picked up the phone yet? For £80 a head for the 10 course menu, I can’t imagine being able to get such an interesting and varied tasting menu at that price anywhere else in London. Get on with you – the information you need is:

Roganic

19, Blandford St

London W1U 3DH

These photographs are by Paul Winch-Furniss

Revisits Roganic, Early 2012

Roganic, Marylebone