‘You need to be a specific kind of chef to set up a rather dark, strange restaurant with that name’
Some restaurants lurk in my diary for weeks, instilling mild anxiety rather than joyful anticipation. Fiend was one such example. It began with the name, which does not whisper equanimity, dreaminess or deliciousness. Fiend, to my mind, is a demonic, possibly green, gnome-like being, waiting in a dark alley on behalf of Satan himself. You’d need to be a specific kind of chef to set up a rather dark, strange restaurant on Portobello Road and call yourself Fiend.
Chris Denney is that person. A shufti through the interviews the chef gave about his previous venture, the cult hit 108 Garage, brings up some refreshingly unfiltered quotes. “He speaks as he finds,” as my old gran would say. Fiend’s website merely underlines the idea that one is about to be ambushed. This, I read, will be a “provocative, rebellious and inspired” evening of eating “kurobuta belly with eel glaze and rock samphire” or “diver scallop with yellow sauce and kent mango” or other sentences ringing with Ks and Zs that sit on the menu like barbed wire, not even attempting to sound delicious but, rather, intriguing.
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