It is a bit of a tight squeeze in here, and the music is not on point… But eating in this place makes me want to fire up my barbecue and try to come a little bit close to the level the chefs are achieving. Their barbecue skills caught my attention. To elaborate, it was a Saturday night, and we had just arrived in London from Paris. We craved an excellent barbecue, nothing fancy and stuffy so we went over to the east side of town for this especially. Firstly, the seating was cramped, and you were literally sat on top of the person next to you with some one-dimensional, boom boom music playing, doing nothing for the vibe of the place. (Why not play something in homage to the Texas barbecue??) This would be so much better and more authentic. Anyway, as much as it killed the atmosphere the focus point was the remarkable food.
The skill it took to deliver what I ate… I did not think It was going to be THIS precise. We started with pig tails, soy molasses. Crunchy, sticky, sweet and delightful, an excellent introduction to the barbecue feast.
The crispy ox cheek with anchovy mayo was everything I love in one single bite. They looked good and you can tell they were going to BE good as well. Falling apart ox cheek with a seriously crispy outside, the anchovy mayo exactly right with these. Delicious.
Next arriving was a beef + pork fat sausage with chilli sauce. Not as memorable as the earlier dishes unfortunately.
The main event was what we waited patiently for, and we took a bit of everything to compare. What we have here is native breed pulled pork, charred pork belly, pickled cucumber, beef brisket, mustard barbecue, and a 30-day dry aged beef rib. Every single bit of every cut we had was cooked through utterly perfectly whether it was the corner, the middle or the side. Sometimes when you are doing the barbecue even for slow cooking it can be hard to get the texture bang on, and when you are playing with different cuts it can become harder, especially if you do not practise it enough. To say the strands were tender does not do this enough justice. This barbecue gave me a run for my money for sure, I was overly impressed. There was nowhere where anything was over cooked, the tenderness was really at that perfect spot. This I know is difficult to reach and takes a certain amount of skill and not only this, but this was also some of the best food taste wise, I have had the pleasure of eating. Incredible… This is barbecue.
To match with this, we took some pickled red cabbage and mint slaw which was the perfect companion and the skin-on chips with aioli. The feast was complete.
It is not this often that I am impressed with the cookery, but I clearly have a long way to go in my own barbecue journey to achieve this. I am a barbecue obsessive, I love it. I should ask them for a private master class… Change the music and the seating arrangements and it will be even more enjoyable. This I would not come back for, but if we are judging on the food alone, it is a big fat yes.
