There's a new chef behind the stove at this London stalwart, and it looks as if he might be a bit of a star turn
What an astonishing place the Wapping Project gallery is. This hulking Victorian brick building, a former hydraulic power station, squats in its neglected, scrubby grounds like the setting for a particularly gothic melodrama. Inside, its restaurant is even lovelier, if your tastes run to the monolithic and vaguely ruined. The combination of concrete, soaring ceilings and cracked tiles with iconic modernist furniture can render even the jaded restaurant-goer temporarily speechless. Vast hooks on chains dangle from the ceiling. And, in the evening, abandoned machinery, its peeling paint mottled with rust, twinkles with candles, a bit like draping Godzilla in fairylights.
OK, I'm gushing. But I'm a huge fan of Wapping Food and its creator, the clever and slightly scary theatre director and curator Jules Wright. So much so – full disclosure – that this is where I had my wedding party. Wright is given to tinkering with her giant baby – furniture might change overnight, or it might sprout a book-stuffed greenhouse – but the open kitchen has been remarkably consistent, run for several years by the talented Cameron Emirali. His departure earlier this year – to run his own place, 10 Greek Street – left a hole as niggling as a missing tooth.
So I'm here to check out new chef Matthew Young, his CV a mix of London names-to-drop (Rochelle Canteen, Anchor & Hope) and New York big-hitters (Eleven Madison Park, Il Buco). It looks as if he might be a bit of a star turn. His menus zip along without waffling, but are lively with curiosities: coco beans, za'tar, cow's curd. They're not just there for effect: he knows what he's doing.
With the exception of an assembly of lardo with black figs and rocket – fine ingredients, but nothing to bind or cohere – every dish we try is as exhilarating as the setting. Young uses n'duja to add musky heat to plump palourde clams with octopus; and sumac to deliver a hit of refreshing sourness to a slab of cod, its Basque-style pil-pil sauce daringly slicked with dill oil.
Duck "two ways", a familiar combo of crisp confit leg and ruby-rare slab of breast, comes with a dense puree of carrot and hazelnut, ripe and autumnal. I do wish chefs would stop that trick of dragging the spoon through the sauce (though it's still preferable to my other plate-dressing bete noir, the "skidmark").
The killer dish is a starter of tempura borage, the lemon-scented leaf battered and fried with the lightest of hands. The crunch of herb paired with clean-tasting, sweet white crabmeat, the thick creaminess of labneh and fleeting impression of liquorice from fennel fronds is one of my mouthfuls of the year.
Truthfully, if Young's cooking hadn't been up to snuff, I wouldn't have written about it: yep, I love Wapping Food that much. But he's a worthy successor to Emirali, sharing his willingness to let ingredients tell their own story, but happy to give it a bit of playfulness. He has an instinct for things that wind up being more than the sum of their parts: I'm still dreaming about a limpid chicken broth, its savoury depths intensified by mushrooms and nubbly wheat grains with the genius addition of wafer-thin foie gras on top. It's a murky rockpool of gorgeousness. And there's something to be said for a restaurant that invites you to lie in an asylum-style metal bed in disturbing gloom, 3D glasses on, watching a writhing, naked woman projected on to the ceiling by way of post-prandial entertainment.
Wapping Food is never going to be everyone's cup of matcha: too cerebral and uncompromising. Even the wine list refuses to countenance anything that doesn't come from Wright's native Australia, but it's rammed with well-priced dazzlers, so who's complaining? Its cool, arty constituency would never dream of anything as cheesy as going down on one knee, but I think it shimmers with edgy romance. Reader, I married in it.
• Wapping Food, The Wapping Project, Wapping Wall, London E1, 020-7680 2080. Open lunch, Sat & Sun, 1-4pm; dinner, 6.30-10.30pm Mon-Sat (7pm Sat). Three courses with drinks and service, about £60 a head.
Food 7/10
Atmosphere 10/10
Value for money 7/10