The Loft Project

El Bulli protégé Nuno Mendes caused a real stir when he was cooking dangerously challenging food at the short-lived Bacchus in Hoxton. Now he’s pitched up at a dinky, domestic kitchen in an East London loft-style development, which has morphed into a permanent supper club with guest appearances from big-name chefs. The deal is this: one communal table, Mendes at the stoves & a wild menu running to 12 courses with matching wines. The show begins with easy cocktails & posh nibbles, before an extraordinary procession of increasingly abstruse dishes begins to appear. The names tell as much or as little as you want: ‘Thai explosion with chicken skin’, ‘Milk yuba’, ‘Oysters & onions, old & new’. It’s dizzying stuff, & the whole sense-jangling extravaganza goes on for hours. You may need a lie-down afterwards.