‘Why am I not raving with the rest of ’em? Well, the whole thing feels like a house party I’m not quite invited to’
If you’re at all interested in restaurants, chances are you’ll have heard of Kitty Fisher’s by now; the restaurant, not the infamous 18th-century poule de luxe. Everybody love, love, loves it. And, yes, chef Tomos Parry is a talent: he’s been one to watch since a residency at grungey Climpson’s Arch in London Fields, and winning the YBFs Chefs’ Award last year. Counterintuitively, it’s here in stodgy Mayfair that he has really come into the spotlight, possibly because it’s a long time since the area has witnessed anything remotely cool.
The restaurant calls itself a “wood grill”, and much of the cooking – from chunks of bread and the Catalans’ beloved calçots to carnal hunks of meat – comes with the kiss of smoke. That bread, rough-hewn, striated from the grill and glossy with good oil, comes with whipped butter dusted with jet-black onion “ash”. This kitchen has a remarkable ability to blacken without scorching, and they pull off the same trick in a memorable duck dish: the breast blushing pink and oozing juice, the confit leg boned and cut into a sophisticated square of intensely ducky meat and crisp skin; it comes with a pool of rhubarb puree and little barrels of the stalk, charred but still supremely fuchsia and sour-sweet. There are salt cod croquettes (Portuguese-style with potato, rather than Spanish-style with bechamel): light, crisp and fluffy. And red mullet “ceviche”, its sauce more bisque than leche de tigre, on another hunk of toast. Ingredient du jour calçots (also spotted at Lyle’s and Le Coq), a seasonal allium like a large, benevolent spring onion, are charred – obviously – and, instead of the more traditional salbitxada, come with meringue-shaped clouds of goat’s curd, the sultry, double-nuttiness of brown butter and toasted almonds, and a vivid puree of the vegetables’ green tops.
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