Halfway Through Summer, Some Insider Travel Tips
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Here, for your summer travel needs, recent FOUND reports from both of these great cities.
RESTAURANTS • First Word
Hold on to Brat summer
The Skinny: Mini martinis (still trending!) are the talk of Londontown this month thanks to Noisy Oyster, a new seafood bistro serving the diminutive cocktails alongside creative, colourful plates. Opened in late June on a buzzy side street outside Spitalfields, it’s the second London venture from the duo behind Soho wine bar Firebird, Madina Kazhimova and Anna Dolgushina.
The Vibe: Servers clad in lime green t-shirts, with a website and menu spiked by the same colour scheme (still Brat summer!). The interior is spacesuit-esque, with silver chairs and tables and PVC strip curtains separating the main room from the loos. It feels very Shoreditch in its decor, yet the menu is more Soho.
The Food: There’s plenty of caviar, like the ‘red caviar toast’ (Guinness bread, Yarra Valley salmon roe, whipped butter) and the star of the menu, the mini maritozzo, a savoury riff on the Roman cream bun, filled with whipped ricotta and Osetra caviar. Pop it in your mouth in one go, and wait for the sweetness of the brioche to segue into salty, creamy notes.
Among the rest of the excellent snacks and starters are a crispy-skinned Hasselback potato served with bottarga and a nostalgic sour cream and chive sauce, while octopus con tomate features meaty octopus chunks, sweet tomato pulp, and dazzlingly soft Datterini tomatoes. It’s what might happen if you crossed the pulpo at Sabor Asador with José Tapas’s pan con tomate. Highlights among mains and desserts include a single egg yolk-oozing raviolo stuffed with smoked eel and a light-as-air rum baba.
The Drink: There are three mini martinis: a vodka-gin-sake-vermouth combo, a gin-vermouth-sherry and a tequila-mezcal-sherry. They’re designed to be perfectly chilled and not too strong, but this lightweight was (happily) tipsy after one sip. There’s an excellent selection of cocktails, wines and non-alcoholic drinks too.
The Verdict: In a neighbourhood of great restaurants, Noisy Oyster feels unique, fresh and particularly appealing while the weather’s hot. Pitch up outside with a mini martini or two and as many small plates as you can muster. –Laura Price
→ Noisy Oyster (Shoreditch) • 2 Nicholls and Clarke Yard (off Blossom St) • Wed & Thu 530-11p, Fri 12-3 & 530-11p, Sat 12-11p, Sun 12-9p • Book.
RESTAURANTS • First Word
From Chile with love
The Skinny: Chilean cuisine doesn’t have much of a presence in London. That’s about to change with the arrival of Santiago superchef Carolina Bazán and her sommelier wife Rosario Onetto. Their London debut, Mareida, is a slick combo of pisco sours and food that feels both fresh and immediately accessible. It opened in mid-June.
The Vibe: Inside a discreet entrance on busy Great Portland St., the stylish open room reveals an L-shaped kitchen counter and characterful features, like semi-precious volcanic rocks shipped over from Chile. To one side, there’s a bar for a pre-prandial pisco, while the counter seats provide the best vantage point for watching the chefs at work. The restaurant’s driving force is Mumbai-born restauranteur Prenay Agarwal, who fell in love with a Chilean man, and then, the country’s food, deciding to bring it to London. It’s clear he’s thought about every single detail here, from the distinctive design to a unique playlist by DJ Raff (search ‘Mareida Sound’ on Spotify).
The Food: You needn’t know anything about Chilean food to come here — Bazán and head chef Trinidad Vial Della Maggiora have struck the right balance between the exciting and the familiar. Potato pancakes known as ‘milcao’ are essentially circular hash browns, crunchy around the edges, pillowy in the middle, topped with fresh cream and caviar. Lomo ‘a lo pobre’ is a grilled steak served with a confit egg hidden under a nest of thin potato crisps and caramelised onions. ‘Pastel de choclo’ is shepherd’s pie, but with a thick, sweetcorn mixture in place of mashed potato. To keep it light for summer, there’s ceviche, crab gratin, and moreish yucca (cassava) wedges served alongside black garlic butter.
Desserts by pastry chef Gustavo Sáez are a real highlight. Rather than an orthodox plating, the flan is a soft construction of dulce de leche and banana compote topped with a thick disc of hazelnut brittle that took me straight back to the Peanut Cracknell of my childhood. Then there’s the ‘chocolate merken’ — merkén being a smoky Chilean spice included in a sort of chocolate mousse, topped with a circle of apricot compote with the appearance of egg yolk. If you like Green & Black’s Maya Gold chocolate, this one’s for you.
The Drink: It’s tempting to say ‘pisco sours all the way,’ but that would find you missing out on an excellent selection of Chilean wines.
The Verdict: One of the hottest new spots to visit this summer, Mareida gives Chilean cuisine a chance to shine in London, delivering on all fronts. In short, go. –Laura Price
→ Mareida (Fitzrovia) • 160 Great Portland St • Tue-Sat 12-3p & 6-11p • Book.
RESTAURANTS • First Word
Funky & feral
The Skinny: After almost 20 years as a loyal lieutenant to legendary chef Alain Ducasse everywhere from the Plaza Athénée to Doha, Romain Meder has gone solo in Paris, spreading his wings in one of the Left Bank’s silk-stocking neighborhoods at Prévelle.
The Vibe: The restaurant occupies an improbably brutalist duplex formerly home to La Garance. If La Garance was a favorite of mostly male politicians in ill-fitting suits, the early days crowd at Prévelle — where the snug second-floor dining room has exposed cement floors, with oak parquet and paneling — is noticeably hipper. Two men with elaborate dragon tattoos sat across from us, and there were courting creatives on our left and right, with New York chef Dan Barber — Meder’s closest American culinary counterpart — seated at a round table in the corner with two French friends. Service features friendly young servers in wheat-colored linen tunics, sharing their enthusiasm for the healthy New Age French haute cuisine that Meder pioneers here.
The Food: Sustainability and a zero-waste ethos are the compass points of Meder’s quietly avant-garde cooking, which surprises with a stealthy sensuality. His flavor constellations and texture juxtapositions are sly, shrewd, funky, and sometimes feral, a perfect example being his dish of chicken in a glossy black sauce of squid ink with shaved fennel and crunchy ribbons of raw squid. Roasted cabbage with caviar and fig-leaf gelée from our dinner tasting menu was another nervy example of the succulence accomplished with a certain kind of gastronomic austerity, which (caviar notwithstanding) mostly eschews traditional luxury ingredients like foie gras and lobster.
The Drink: An outstanding list of natural and organic wines, with an especially alluring and impressive selection from the Loire Valley, where the sommelier hails from.
The Verdict: By discreetly eschewing the virtue-claiming hair-shirtedness of so much sustainable 21st-century cooking, Meder looks set to have a major impact on the direction of French haute cuisine. –Alexander Lobrano
→ Prévelle (7th arr) • 34 Rue Saint-Dominique • Dinner Mon-Fri 19h30-22h, Lunch Tue-Fri 12h15-14h • Book.
Photo: Maki Manoukian
RESTAURANTS • First Word
Dandelion wine
The Skinny: When Antoine Villard wrote his last assignment at prestigious cookery school Ferrandi, it was about one day opening a restaurant in Paris’ 20th arrondissement. After hunkering down here for the pandemic, and hanging out with friends in the neighborhood even longer, Villard finally opened Dandelion with sommelier Morgane Souris last summer.
The Vibe: Villard and Souris picked a century-old neighborhood bistro on rue des Vignoles and decorated it with help from Souris’s architect friend to create their own modern version. The laid-back, undone styling — unfinished walls, exposed brick painted white, simple dark wood furnishings — is cool but not pretentious, and rather romantic when lit by the evening candles.
The Food: Villard has plenty of experience in tasting menus and fine dining (Septime, Restaurant Guy Savoy) but at Dandelion, he’s gone à la carte with a reassuringly tight menu of just four starters and four mains. It’s mostly a contemporary take on French cuisine, exhibited in Villard’s deft use of sauces that add a kick to seasonal ingredients. Asian influences from his time at Double Dragon are also at play. Sweetbreads with a satay and shrimp jus, Meyer lemon, and chilli pepper are a good example of all of the above coming together on the plate. Homemade cavatelli with cavolo nero, Cantabrian anchovies, and taggiasca olives also introduce a bit of the Mediterranean. Desserts are fancier reinterpretations of more down-to-earth French favorites. We couldn’t choose between the old-fashioned café Liégeois and the “chou” version of a tarte Tropézienne, but with only two sweets on the menu, Dandelion makes it easy: get one of each and share.
The Drink: Having found her passion for wine at Parcelles, Souris has put together an excellent list of natural and classic bottles, though there’s also a very good dirty martini (among other cocktails) to get things started.
The Verdict: This elegant neo-bistro is refined enough for special occasions, but shouldn't be saved for them — it's too good to wait until one comes around. With tables booked up two months in advance, reserve now and make whatever evening you manage to get into something special. –Nicola Leigh Stewart
→ Dandelion (20th arr) • 46 Rue des Vignoles • Tue-Thu 19h15-22h30, Fri-Sat 12h-15h, 19h15-10h30 • Book.