Clik here to view.
'It looks like someone has slung a giant, uncooked pizza base over a super-sized Alvar Aalto wave vase'
There has always been a lot of chuntering about whether cooking – especially at the haute end of things – can be described as art. Some of the more self-aggrandising chefs would say it is. But they would, wouldn't they?
More pointy-headed types than me have also argued that sublime cooking has transformative qualities and can contain layers of meaning, so, yeah, art. But I'm not convinced: surely food's eventual fate precludes it from any aspirations to high culture? Not that it stops rabid foodies using it as shorthand for the old kunst. A recent piece in the New York Times stated, "Nobody cares if you know about Mozart or Leonardo any more, but you had better be able to discuss the difference between ganache and couverture." (Mind you, the same article also said that food is unable to provoke anger or sorrow. The writer clearly hadn't visited Gregg's Table.)
So here's the latest gallery restaurant, at the new Serpentine Sackler in Kensington Gardens. It's light years from the traditional art world hospitality of cling-filmed carrot cake served in the vaults. Designed by Zaha Hadid, it's little short of extraordinary. The 200-year-old former gunpowder store looks as though someone has flung a giant, uncooked pizza base over a supersized Alvar Aalto wave vase. In daylight, sitting inside this cream- and sorbet-coloured curiosity, with its swooping columns that manage to be simultaneously phallic and yonic, makes you feel all Alice In Wonderland, as if strange creatures are rustling in the greenery outside. In the evening, with trancey DJs and mood lighting, it's like one of those wildly designed joints in Vegas or Singapore. It's very, very Not London.
The chef, too, is very Not London. Oliver Lange is Berlin-born and has worked with Nobu and at pop-up "happenings" here and abroad. His dishes are characterised by brow-wrinkling complexity. Take this simple-sounding number: robata lamb tartare, aubergine and cornbread. First conundrum: how can a tartare be also robata'ed? Raw and grilled? The two large meat patties look and taste uncooked, but have about them a whiff of smoke, as though they'd had a brief grapple with the robata behind the bike sheds. The tiniest petals of acidulated onion cradle emulsified blobs of this and that – mustard, pea (I think) or aubergine, glossy and tongue-coating with oil. There's modernist "snow" of maltodextrin, fragranced with chives. And cornbread, reduced to wafer-thin crisps.
Or there's "Ollysan's" (cringe) sushi: bizarre items topped with fried quails' eggs and truffle, or tofu and basil, scattered with seeds and served with soy jelly. Or whipped butter topped with powdered black Hawaiian salt. Or bread made with black pudding. Pork belly – a huge serving – features a hectic homage to the carrot: orange glazed; purple scattered with bacon-y dust; processed into a mousse-like sauce. Puffed pork rinds provide contrast and crunch. Oh, and there's a slow-braised pig's cheek, too. It's vaguely exhausting. Cauliflower also gets the treatment: served with cod in paper-thin raw cross-sections, and roasted and caramelised, and violently pureed. There are nuts and seaweeds, too, in case you're tempted to nod off. Puddings, particularly one made with tonka bean-scented tapioca, mango sorbet and dragonfruit, are like some kind of in-joke. I'm not sure I get it.
My favourite art-food collision on the planet – The Wapping Project– is about to close (go while you still can). I'm not sure this, a five-year installation, will replace it in my affections. But it's worth a visit, to be wowed by Hadid's vision and looked after by charming Juan Calatayud and his sharply dressed team. The food sure made us react, and I've thought about it a lot since. I suspect the gallerists will be delighted to have us uncultured restaurant critic types scratching our heads to make sense of it. But is that art?
• The Magazine The Serpentine Galleries, London W2, 020 7298 7552. Open, Wed-Sat, 10am-11pm; Tues and Sun, 10am-6pm. Meal with drinks and service, around £60 a head.
Food 6/10
Atmosphere 8/10
Value for money 7/10
Follow Marina on Twitter.