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From the moment it was announced that husband and wife team Sandia Chang and James Knappett, ex of Per Se, the Ledbury, Roganic and you-name-it of world-class restaurants here and abroad, were opening their own place, the buzz was deafening. When it was further announced that their first collaboration was to be a small bar in Fitzrovia specialising in hot dogs and champagne, well, some anticipation turned to chuckles.
I loved Bubbledogs. It was - still very much is - a serious cocktail bar that cleverly matches what, for the want of a better description, I'll call "gourmet fast food" with a brilliant selection of grower champagnes and a smart front of house team that never put a foot wrong. It was ludicrously busy from the day it opened in the way these places often are, but there are very few people who ever braved the queues and got a table that would have cause to complain. Tasty food, great atmosphere, and friendly service; a perfect neighbourhood bar.
Ah, but - the story went - the best was yet to come. Behind thick leather curtains at the back of Bubbledogs was to be Kitchen Table - chef James' pride and joy, a gleaming Rolls-Royce of an open kitchen surrounded by just 19 seats, where lucky diners would watch in awe as a 13-course tasting menu was prepared in front of their eyes, each dish presented by the chef who designed, sourced the ingredients and cooked it. A foodie and chef-groupie utopia, a personal chef "experience" that laid raw the creative process of cooking and represented the very pinnacle of achievement in modern British cooking. I was certain I'd love every minute of it.
And don't get me wrong, the food was frequently astonishing, as accomplished as you might expect from a chef with Knappett's pedigree and as good an advertisement for London's place at the top of the food tree as you could possibly imagine. And if it wasn't for a few bizarre minutes halfway through the evening, I would have skipped out of Kitchen Table singing its praises as much as every other Tom, Dick and Marina that's set foot there. But I'm afraid, in the end, my memories of that evening aren't as golden as I was hoping they'd be.
We can start in happier times, though. First course of raw razor clams, cucumber, horseradish and mint was very like something you might be presented at the start of a Ledbury tasting menu - fantastic fresh seafood, lifted by just the right mix of aromatic herbs but still tasting unapologetically of the main ingredient. Loved the presentation, loved the showmanship - a great start.
Sea bass was a cured, largely raw piece of fish with a skin that had been blowtorched over 'wood coal', which as far as I can gather is a state of being somewhere between wood and coal. The smell as these things were being prepared was amazing, like a log fire in a fisherman's cottage, and though the texture was unexpected - chewy rather than flaky - the extra bite just meant the flavours lasted longer in the mouth. That on top by the way is fennel marmalade - a masterful accompaniment.
The next course was chicken skin, rosemary mascarpone and bacon jam. Do you think anyone in the history of the world has never not enjoyed chicken skin, mascarpone and bacon jam? No. I wasn't about to be the first.
"Kale" was a clever thing, a parmesan-soaked sponge of raw kale, topped with flakes of pickled radish. When you bit into a particularly spongy bit of kale the sauce burst out like a kind of inside-out Caesar salad, smooth and salty and fresh.
Perhaps my favourite course of all, "Cod" contained the most perfect gyoza-like gnocchi dressed in cod's roe, topped with fresh shaved chestnuts. There wasn't much more to it than that, but it was crunchy, salty, rich and umami in all the right places and an absolute delight.
Then, just as the second glass of bubbly was having its desired effect and it looked like this was shaping up to be one of the most enjoyable evenings in a long time, it all went a bit wrong. Not with the food - that continued in a similar stellar vein - but with the atmosphere in the room. Halfway through my cod course I looked up and saw Knappett's face twisted into something halfway between anger and agony. I have no idea what had happened - as I say you wouldn't have known anything was amiss from what was presented to us to eat - but from the obscenities shot at his sous chefs to the way he was suddenly throwing plates and pans around, he was clearly not a happy man. In fact, he looked furious, the kind of rage I'd only previously seen from a man dressed in chef's whites on TV in a programme involving Gordon Ramsay, and the reaction from all around him was immediate - the waiters racing around wide-eyed, the juniors in whites chopping and slicing and prepping in an even more terrified and frantic fashion.
I looked around in astonishment to see if anyone else had noticed what was going on. On the face of it, they hadn't - people were chatting and enjoying their meals in much the same way as before, but then actually very soon, so was I - in the face of such an abrupt change of attitude, your first reaction is to pretend nothing's happening and hope it blows over, in case acknowledgement of the issue makes things worse. Even when one poor member of serving staff got called a "lazy c**t" (I don't think I'm paraphrasing) over the shoulder of a bemused Australian diner, nobody reacted. Could this be the kind of thing people were expecting?
Well, I wasn't, and I didn't like it. Call me a big old softie but I shrink when people lose their temper in any situation, never mind one in which everyone is taking part in the same interactive dinner, and I found the whole thing excruciatingly embarrassing. In a few minutes Knappett had gathered himself together enough to introduce the next course but by then the damage was done and I can't say I really found my appetite again. Which is a shame - for everyone - because food as good as this deserves an atmosphere suitable to enjoy it in, and front of house staff as good as those at Kitchen Table deserve to not have their efforts overshadowed by a head chef with a short temper.
So, in a thin semblance of normality, the evening continued. The calcots and cod dish, seemingly the cause of a kitchen meltdown, was wonderful - flaky cod fillet, smoky veg and a wonderful sharp homemade romesco sauce studded with toasted almonds.
Sous-vide mallard with blood orange and chard wasn't my companion's favourite dish but I am yet to not enjoy wild duck and thought the orange and olive combination, while definitely experimental, not wholly unpleasant.
Roebuck venison, served with roast cauliflower and damson yoghurt, was just about the best bit of bambi I've ever eaten - so full of flavour despite (we were told) not being hung at all, tender and fresh rather than gamey and bitter.
More venison came in the form of ragu under house pasta and smoked egg yolk, topped with panko breadcrumbs and tarragon. Again, lovely.
And a cheese course was a blob of unpasteurised Stichelton with some dainty curls of champagne-compressed apple.
Desserts, if not as wildly successful as those that had come before, still spoke of real skill. Alphonso mango purée (frozen when they were in season, they were careful to point out) and yoghurt ice cream was like a posh Solero (in a good way), lemon and cream cheese curd even survived the addition of beetroot ice cream (something I'd previously vowed to hate forever more) and finally a rhubarb "Tunnock's tea cake" was a clever and powerfully-flavoured last bite that contained a great mix of soft and crisp textures.
But what to make of it all? Perhaps much of my discomfort is a personal thing, and the more emotionally grounded amongst you could have shrugged off the Incident as just one of those things that must happen from time to time in any professional kitchen. It would be naive to think they don't happen, in fact, in restaurants all over the world every hour of service. But my point is, I'm not that naive. I know these things happen. I just don't want to see it. And even if you are the kind of person who can happily sit through the sight of a chef/owner striking the fear of God into all around him, only a real sadist would enjoy watching sous chefs and sommeliers desperately trying to do their job and pretend all's well while all hell breaks loose behind them.
And even if this was a complete one-off, and normally Knappett is as level-headed and composed as Mahatma Gandhi on a spa break, the Incident still made me question the whole logic of having the process of preparing food so nakedly on display. Is not some of the joy of eating stunning fine-dining like this the mystique of not knowing exactly how the magic happens?
There's a fine tradition of open kitchen bars in Japan, for sushi and yakitori amongst many others, but these are much different beasts - the sushi master will just press a piece of raw fish around some warm rice and it's done, or place some skewers of marinaded chicken over charcoal as needed - actions calculated to be part of the presentation rather than part of the preparation. Watching a poor junior chef, towards the end of a 12-hour day, desperately shaving as much raw chestnut into a bowl as possible without slicing his fingers off is not fun, or educational. It's just cruel. And had I been shielded from all that, the tantrums and the terror and the toil, I would have enjoyed my dinner infinitely more.
But here we are. And though I didn't enjoy my evening at Kitchen Table as much as I'd hoped, there is still the unavoidable fact that the food is some of the best you can find in town. If I'm the only person to ever catch them on a bad night, then consider the above nothing more than an anomaly, an excuse to pontificate grandly on the whole logic of open kitchens and, all said and done, a report of what I had for dinner one day. By all means, go, eat and drink and be merry, you'll probably love it. But I think I may just lean towards an "ignorance is bliss" perspective from now on - when it comes to eating out, too much reality is rarely a good thing.
6/10
EDIT 2: I've received a response from James that stands in such contrast to the usual cheffy posturing on Twitter I hope he won't mind if I publish it here:
EDIT: Forgot prices. The menu is £68/head and bottles of champagne start around £35 ish. We paid £108/head all in with drinks & service.
Back in April, I went to a brand-new restaurant in Fitzrovia called Dabbous. I had a lovely lunch with three friends, paid a very reasonable amount of money for it, and left very happy indeed. For some months since I raved about it any chance I could get and it wasn't long before I returned with a different group of people eager to fall in love with the place all over again.
That didn't happen. Instead, this happened. The wonderful cold allium dish from April had been replaced by a slice of ordinary tomato in a sweet consommé of some kind. The coddled egg had gone from being a beguiling, rich mixture of smoke and herbs to a nothing much more than thin scrambled egg. And the Iberico pork tasted of nothing, the acorn dressing that worked so well the first time now reminding me of cheap satay sauce. Bits and pieces of it were still enjoyable (the house bread was still excellent) but how to explain such a different meal? I couldn't honestly put my hand on my heart and say that any of the dishes I'd enjoyed the first time and now didn't were objectively any different this time at all. Either they'd changed, or I had. And I have absolutely no way of knowing which.
And it's this mysterious, intangible variation in the restaurant experience from one day to the next that makes writing about these places so difficult. Every fibre of my being tells me that upstairs at John Salt is the most exciting, innovative and enjoyable place to have dinner in London right now, and yet I'm worried if I go out of my way to say so, I'll be on the receiving end of a dozen disgruntled comments at the end of the month when for whatever bloody reason various other people are disappointed by it. But for the sake of argument I'm going to ignore that possibility for now, and hope that just for once I may have got this one right.
Given a notable recent trend for hacking tube maps (and I plead guilty myself in that regard), the minimalist menu upstairs at John Salt is very "now", with the option of a £56 4-course 'Central Line' (actually 7 if you include the extra bits and pieces) or the full 12-course 'Piccadilly Line' if you have £85 burning a hole in your pocket and feel like travelling all the way to a culinary Cockfosters.
The terse descriptions on the menu/map, though, seriously undersell the amount of detail in the dishes themselves. 'Nibbles', for example, was a tray containing five different elements including a sort of slow-cooked beef croquette speared on an egg whisk, a lemon curd-like substance sprinkled with nuts (slightly unusual amongst savoury items I suppose but there it was anyway) and a incredibly lovely dashi soup poured from a miniature teapot. I know enough about Ben Spalding that anything described as 'nibbles' would never have been a bowl of Twiglets but these were beyond the call of duty.
House bread normally isn't worthy of a course to itself on a menu, but house bread is rarely as good as this. The in-house baker Fanny came out to explain what we were being given, my favourite being a little muffin-shaped red wine bread with a fantastic crust. More impressive still was the gluten-free option served to my dining companion that evening who said it was the best gluten-free bread he'd ever had - not exactly a crowded field, admittedly, but still nice to hear. And even the butter was special - from Norway I believe, served as it arrived as well as soured and whipped with sugar.
I didn't "get" the inspiration for Chicken on a Brick until a couple of days after my meal at John Salt when someone explained that Conran Shops used to sell something called 'Chicken in a brick', a sort of big ceramic roasting chamber. Anyway you didn't need to be in on the joke to enjoy this fresh chicken liver paté spread on top of solid, sticky caramel. We were told to "lick the brick". I didn't need telling twice.
Maple-smoked wild salmon was very good, the salmon itself not being overwhelmed by the maple flavour and having a great healthy, solid texture of wild animal.
I completely forgot to take a photo of the dish called "salad" but as you can see from the quality of the other photos, you're not missing much. Imagine a painfully pretty arc of a bewildering number - over 50 in all - of vegetables, some foraged, some pickled, some preserved, some cooked. They left us with the full list (colour-coded according to preparation method) and I think I noticed about 1/10 of them while eating, but it was great fun. Can Roca in Girona used to do a dessert called 'Anarchy' which contained 50 different elements; this may have been a savoury tribute to that or their own invention entirely.
"Beef heel" was a stonking dish, a lump of gooey slow-cooked cow dressed with button mushrooms, matchstick root vegetables of some kind and little mounds of buttery kale. The sauce was an un-filtered dollop of the cooking sauce from the beef, and the little bits of crispy fat and crunchy herbs from the beef seasoning were a great addition to the mix. Perhaps the most traditional dish in terms of flavour combinations but little tricks with texture and form turned it into something special.
"Cucumber and peanut butter" did, fair play to them, taste of exactly that, and it's a combination that while genuinely innovative I'm not sure I'd rush to try again. My companion loved it though so there's every chance you will too.
As the final dessert I was served this absolutely incredible yoghurty thing which I completely forgot to take any notes for and can't elaborate on at all other to say it was a) yoghurty and b) incredible. AA Gill eat your heart out.
And other than a final little chocolate petit four, that was it. I've wittered on long enough and by now you will have realised that John Salt is already one of my highlights of 2012, but two final things remain to be said:
Firstly, the staff at were all, with no exceptions, some of the best front of house (even when they were in fact, back of house… job roles are somewhat blurred in this place) I've encountered anywhere. You can dismiss it as a gimmick if you like but having the pleasant, passionate person who put together the 50-element salad come out and explain the reasoning behind it before you tuck in is a privilege and a joy.
Secondly, it's hard in a few short paragraphs to emphasise just how much fun it all is - we've heard promises before about 'haute cuisine but without the attitude', 'fine dining in trainers', and so on but it seemed to me that Ben Spalding has hit upon a genuinely new way of doing things here - with so much going on and with so much blurring of the lines between waiter and chef, you feel like you're part of some community, a culinary interactive theatre where each actor plays an equally important part and wants nothing more than for you to enjoy yourself. Viajante may claim they were the first in London to have the chefs come out and present their dishes but I always felt they did so under duress; at John Salt they bound out with a huge smile on their face, eloquently and clearly explain the deal then leave you to enjoy it. It's all quite wonderful.
To return to the opening theme, John Salt is already suffering from the Dabbous Effect in one regard - it's increasingly difficult to get a table. But I'm confident this time that the Emperor has all his clothes, hype played no significant part in anything I rated about the meal, and if you manage to get yourself a booking at you will enjoy it all just as much as I did. And if I'm wrong and you hate it, well, then I know nothing about such things after all. But at least it was fun while it lasted.
9/10
"Food in Manchester", I was informed shortly after I stepped off platform six at Piccadilly station, "is two years behind London". I know that by repeating such a sweeping statement I will immediately alienate a good number of Mancunians, but I mention it only because the first notable thing I saw on a stroll through the Northern Quarter was a huge queue for a trendy, underground six-week burger popup. In a quite marvellous bit of serendipity, Saturday 21st April was the last day of the first stage (there will certainly be more) of Almost Famous burgers, Manchester's answer to #meateasy, and it was on this same day in 2011 that year-long New Cross popup shut its doors.
People throw words like "influential" around far too easily sometimes, but in all honesty can there be any food outlet that has left its mark on as many places in recent years as Meatwagon/MeatLiquor? I sometimes wonder if messrs Papoutsis and Collins (MeatLiquor owners) feel proud that so many restaurants have found their back-to-basics all-American style so appealing (and profitable), or miffed they aren't able to charge some kind of royalty fee every time they see another butter-fried chilli burger appear on a menu. And yes I know the pedants will try and argue that in fact they themselves only "copied" more famous US burger joints like Hodad's (CA) and Bobcat Bite (AZ) but that's not the point - it was Meatwagon that did the leg work, did the travelling, researched the recipes and - most crucially - painstakingly sourced UK equivalent ingredients before anyone else. It's also probably the reason why they're still the best (prove me wrong, I dare you).
But this post isn't - for once - about burgers. We did briefly consider a trip to Almost Famous, but one look at the queue snaking down the road in the torrential Manchester rain (it seems this part of the world only has two types of weather - drizzle, or downpour) and we felt glad we'd made a booking at somewhere a bit more sedate. In the dimly-lit basement of the ABode hotel, then, is restaurant Michael Caines, high-end in the classically-trained French style, with ambitious prices to match the ambitious cooking served by almost as many staff as there were customers. Sadly, with regards to service at least, quantity did not on this occasion equal quality, but more on that later.
The food itself, and this is really what it's all about, is hard to fault. An amuse of salmon sashimi topped with a very good radish and subtle apple sauce was colourful and brilliantly fresh. House bread was good too, warm and crusty and if not baked in house then baked somewhere nearby that cared.
ABode let me swap the first course off the tasting menu (lamb sweetbreads) into the A La Carte as a starter. This was very nice of them of course, but what was even better was when the bill arrived they'd only charged me for the cheapest (vegetarian) ALC starter. Anyway the sweetbreads were just perfect - good crust on them, rich and smooth inside, and presented in a meaty/buttery sauce with the odd crunchy radish providing more texture. A friend's quail "salad" contained expertly pink and moist game with some nice gummy gnocchi, although I'm afraid the egg introduced by our waiter as "poached" was nothing of the sort - it was hard boiled. Still, only a minor criticism really.
Mains were equally accomplished, in terms of skill and ingredients at least. I ate a tender, pink lamb chop with one of those wonderful reduced sauces that the French can do so well and a crispy, fluffy potato fondant topped with some kind of tomato salsa. And my friend's duck was nice and pink and crusty with an interesting black pudding sauce and roasted onions. We just wish both had been a bit hotter - by the time I got round to the stage of attacking the potato fondant, it had nearly gone cold, and the duck fat had started to congeal unpleasantly.
Cold food sometimes points to issues with service, and I'm afraid it was in this department that ABode didn't quite live up to the promise of the prices they charge. This was particularly evident when it came to the cheese course, where our admittedly enthusiastic waitress responded "well, they're all delicious" when asked which were available, before realising we weren't likely to settle for that and scurrying off to find a list. Sharpham was listed as washed rind (it's not) and when challenged on this point they responded "it's washed with water, so you can't taste it". I know it's easy for me to fire smug questions at people on a minimum wage in a cheap bid for blogging material, but there's no shame in saying "I don't know", and if I'm paying £120 for dinner it's quite nice to know where your money is going.
Yes, the cost. The prices at ABode are bold for anywhere in the UK, and if any of the above seems like I'm nit picking then it's only because at this level, you need to fight for value. Despite the cheese incident, service elsewhere was generally very good, particularly a sommelier who suggested a £32 Valpolicella that turned out to be one of the best things I've drunk in weeks, but the food was only just worth those eye-watering numbers and had we had just that little bit more to complain about in any department, I would have felt the faint sting of ripoff. But no, we enjoyed our meal; when the food was good it was very good indeed, and even when the service was a bit wobbly it was always charming. ABode isn't perfect, but in a town where you can eat wasabi prawn pizza (Fire and Stone idiocy isn't confined to Covent Garden, it seems), you can definitely do far worse. So, after all is said and done and paid through the nose for, is Michael Caines at ABode worth it? Yeah, why not.
7/10
Is there ever anything inevitable about the success of a restaurant? Reflecting after the fact, it's tempting to declare places like Pitt Cue or MeatLiquor or Burger & Lobster were always destined to be wildly popular; after all, who wouldn't think somewhere serving burgers, buffalo wings and cocktails until 1am would draw the crowds? Why on earth wouldn't the promise of a tray of sticky St Louis Ribs and a pickleback get them queuing round the block? An entire steamed lobster for twenty quid? In Mayfair? Good luck getting a table there. But of course, we know all this now - how easy it is to forget the huge gamble the people behind these culinary megastars took, and how it just as easily could have ended differently. Just ask poor old Bjorn van der Horst, whose restaurant Eastside Inn served great food, garnered a handful of fantastic reviews, and closed in just over a year. That's life, and that's the fickle London public for you.
So you may look at Dabbous, at the supremely accomplished food coming out of the kitchens, the trendy industrial interiors, the polished (if slightly odd - more on which later) service, the central location, and think its wild success was a sure thing. Perhaps it was. But quite how much this particular restaurant has caught Londoners' imaginations must have taken even them by surprise. Tables at Dabbous are now backed up until October - that's six months booked solid - and a dinner reservation has taken on the rarefied air of a winning lottery ticket. It's the real-life 2012 equivalent of the mythically exclusive, fictional Dorsia in Bret Easton Ellis' novel American Psycho, except with smaller mobile phones. And perhaps not quite so much graphic, cold-blooded murder.
The Dabbous tasting menu consists of seven courses at a shockingly reasonable £49 (plus £9 if you want cheese). They also offer matched wines starting at £35 a head - also very reasonable - except they did themselves a bit of an injustice when one of our party wanted to push the boat out and have a selection of something a bit more pricey. The sommelier, a rather severe and taciturn individual, refused to serve different wines to just one person and so we all ended up having the £35 option. Surely it wouldn't have been that much of a hardship to be a bit more flexible on this? The wines were all served by the glass anyway, and it's not like the friend concerned wasn't willing to pay the extra. A minor niggle all things considered, but it did seem a bit odd.
The first course, after some decent house bread served in a paper bag for some reason, was a plate of asparagus, mayonnaise and hazelnuts. There was no cutlery, and you were encouraged to dip the asparagus tips first in the tangy mayonnaise and then coat it in roasted hazelnuts. It was all perfectly decent - just as you might expect of asparagus and earthy fresh rapeseed oil mayonnaise, but was only that - decent. Plus I'd have liked it to be my decision whether or not to get my fingers dirty (fingerbowls were provided, but that's not the point).
The next dish, however, was absolutely stunning. "Mixed alliums in a chilled pine infusion" sounds dangerously vegan on paper, but the flavours they had coaxed out of these seemingly innocuous ingredients - two types of onion, some kind of clear vegetable consommé and spots of basil oil - was just breathtaking. It's a very pretentious "foodie" thing to bang on about umami but this had it in spades - a deep, rich, satisfying savouryness that gave your tastebuds a big warm hug, and an absolutely masterful command of technique that produced something almost magical. Sorry if I'm getting carried away, but I don't think I've enjoyed a plate of food as much as this in many years. It was also, if I can be momentarily cheeky, a million times better than anything Hedone can do with an onion. There, I've said it.
"Coddled" (what a lovely word) egg was up next, and is best described as God's own scrambled egg. The egg itself (one of those fancy rare breed ones I should imagine) provided a powerful base, but the real fireworks came with the addition of earthy wild mushrooms and a hint of fireplace from the smoked butter. As well as tasting so good we couldn't stop giggling, it was very prettily presented in a half-shell nestled in hay and coloured by a few teeny bits of chopped chives. Dabbous had most definitely hit its stride, and we were helpless to resist.
A pristine wedge of monkfish, as meaty and flavoursome as any beefsteak, came dressed with some subtly dressed greens and a slice of beetroot. Again, this was masterful cooking - the monkfish in particular having not a trace of dryness in the flesh and rolled in a spice mix of some kind that seasoned the protein without masking its natural flavour. More giggles and groans of pleasure, more plates licked clean.
This is a piece of Iberico pork. I'll give you a second to stare in disbelief at the picture for a little while. Yes, I know José in Bermondsey do rare strips of the World's Finest Ingredient(TM) but I've never seen pig looking anything like this - precisely rested and blushed like the finest lamb fillet, and served on top of a vaguely Asian-inspired sweet sauce that contained (cleverly) some of the acorns that these majestic beasts feast on during their privileged lifetimes. A neat dollop of pickled apples on the side finished off yet another brilliant course.
The cheese course, consisting of only British Isles specimens, was also very well done. Lancashire bomber lived up to its name with a salty, cheesy explosion of taste, and a perfectly kept goats cheese was creamy and nutty without a hint of chalkiness. That on the side was some kind of pickled pear I think.
Not being the world's greatest lovage fan (I once made myself sick eating from the lovage plant that grew in our back garden up in Liverpool and I've not been able to stomach the stuff since) I'm not sure I can objectively rate this bowl of "Iced Lovage", but I'm afraid it didn't do much for me. As someone pointed out on Twitter, it's a bit like lovage-flavoured toothpaste, and I think I prefer Colgate. However, my friends polished theirs off.
Photos of the Dabbous chocolate ganache didn't come out, but the presentation was equally as arty as the other courses - a neat square of chocolate, a dollop of utterly brilliant sheep's milk ice cream and a pile of clever basil 'moss', all of which were lovely. I just wonder whether a painterly swirl of pungent sweet dill sauce really added anything - this was a touch of the dreaded savoury dessert (he says retching at the thought of Tom Aikens' beetroot meringue and Vanilla Black's parsnip marshmallows) and was best avoided. Which indeed I did.
But as with any experimental restaurant, you put up with the odd bum note if the highlights are worth the effort. And believe me when I tell you, the highlights of this meal - every course from the coddled egg to the Iberico pork inclusive - rank up there with anything else you can pay for in London. As you may have picked up by now, I loved Dabbous; even though not everything was perfect the best bits were worth a six month wait and then some. Which is just as well, because when you book a table yourself - and you should, and you will - that's how long it'll be before you sit down and eat. Don't worry though, it's worth the wait. I bet the food at Dorsia wasn't as good as this.
9/10
