Roganic

With what has rapidly become the hottest London restaurant on Twitter, Roganic is something of a joyous enigma. Chef Patron Simon Rogan, Head Chef Ben Spalding and his team are able to turn out extraordinary food in what is essentially a tiny and cramped site. But the genius of the restaurant is that it recognises this restriction and turns it to its advantage.

Very few dishes are served hot, and as a result a number of the dishes are very pure, and incredibly scented. This is also the first tasting menu I've ever managed to get through without feeling faintly ill – a number of the elements are raw, soused, or barely cooked – the resulting menu is fresh, full of texture and flavour. Some ingredients, such as the chenopodiums, hyssop, sweet cicely, lovage and wood sorrel are sourced by a forager, others from their own Howbarrow Farm, located close to their parent restaurant, L'Enclume. Remaining ingredients are sourced as closely as possible, and only from the British Isles.

Although there is a six course menu, I would urge you to go for the 10 course, if you have enough time.

The restaurant itself is behind a discreet French gray facade, and is feels like a minimalistic seaside joint. To go with the more organic feel, the butter is served on stones collected by Ben and his family, the place-mats are coloured like a stoney beach, and the water glasses are an intense sea green. It's a very serene and relaxing room. The staff are very attentive, and very well informed.

We began our evening with a glass of apricot and vodka fizz, with a couple of shards of dehydrated apricot in the glass. The fizz is dispensed at the table in a creamer (and uses just one gas canister). It's a very lovely variation on a Bellini, and I think actually preferable – but I love a vodka martini, and this was also a very good and clean variation on that.

The bread is served warm, and we were offered pumpernickel, spelt, and buttermilk & potato. The butter is brought in from a farm and whipped with Maldon sea salt in the restaurant – this results in a light and voluminous concoction. It took a lot of effort to resist.

As an amuse we were offered a chickpea wafer with ox-eye daisy, aioli, red amaranth, and edible flowers – a lovely combination of sweetly sour and floral scent. The closest comparison I can offer is that of cream cheese. But really lovely cream cheese with spiky herbs and very light garlic in the aioli – a difficult balance to strike, but effortless here.

The first course was a tiny plate of broad beans and hyssop, with fresh curds and beetroot. The beetroot came diced at the bottom of a beetroot, purée – a slightly salty sour velvet. The hyssop is a light and green puddle into which the broad beans sit, with the fresh curds. The sensation of dryness induced by chewing the broad beans is offset by the slightly tart curds, and that rich beetroot. The resulting dish is light, very, very fresh, and a lovely way to begin the meal.

I should also point out at this stage that one of the nicest parts of this menu is that the dishes begin delicately, and gradually build into an incredible crescendo of cheek-sucking umami-ness. As a result, very delicate flavours like the hyssop aren't lost in the menu – your taste buds adapt and the later intensities don't destroy that taste memory.

The next dish was a scarlett ball turnip baked in salt, smoked yolk, sea vegetables and wild mustard. The smoked yolk is achieved by sitting the separated yolk in it's shell with some smoking oil for a few hours, before putting it into a sous-vide for 40 minutes. This results in a yolk with the texture of lemon curd, and a smoked velvet intensity. The turnip is soft and tender, and delicately scented, and our samphire echoed that with its customary salty kick. The wild mustard serves as a green and intently fragrant smear under the dish. I do like to taste those additions on their own, and this is delicious – would be amazing with fish! All in all it's a fantastic dish.

We followed this with Seawater cured Kentish mackerel, shoots, broccoli and warm elderflower honey. I'm not a massive fan of mackerel, it's always rather an overpowering flavour for me, but here it was delicate. Once cured, a small amount of sweetness intensifies that saltiness. A shard of crispy skin sat on top of this moist fish, and under that was a layer of delicately soused onion rings – is this a nod to the Scandinavian counterpart? If so it was executed perfectly and served to highlight the fish, and not swamp it! The honey, sourced from Regent's Park in our case, not Hyde Park as in others' reviews, added a sweet contrast and was filled with tiny speckles of broccoli. The purées allow you to scoop up the fish and smear it with fragrant green.

Next on the table is the Shredded ox tongue, pickles and sourdough paper. I think this is perhaps my favourite dish. On the plate are a few soused raw and barely cooked elements – a halved grape, tiny cauliflower florets on cauliflower purée, barely raw strips of carrot wrapped around a purée, a radish intact with its leaf… In the centre are two shards of sourdough paper (made a little like Sardinian Carta da Musica) into which is pasted a mound of the intense ox tongue. I'll be honest – I could have eaten platefuls of the veg!

Halfway through, and next up is Flaky crab and mallow cream, young squid and cucumber. The squid is raw and diced to the same size as the cucumber, then mixed in with the crab. It reminded me of a much better textured ceviche or tartare, the effect is the same, lightly spiked and clean. The texture is further offset by the inclusion of the squid ink croutons, and the smooth mallow cream. My own dish didn't have a courgette flower* (clearly the season has passed, and this photo is from a few weeks ago). I did have stonecrop in my dish though, which added that dryness in the mouth, offsetting those other silky flavours. There were also tiny mallow flowers decorating the dish, and adding further fragrance.

Up next is one of the signature dishes of l'Enclume – Heritage potatoes in onion ashes with wood sorrel, and lovage. In our dish the heritage potatoes were Sharpe's Express, a variety first introduced in 1900. The onion ash is produced by cooking down the onions and then dehydrating them. The result is then whizzed until an oil can be produced from it, and this is then mixed with tapioca (like the Texturas from El Bulli). The dish is assembled with a shallot purée, a lovage purée, the cooked Sharpe's with a mound of the ash, shards of dried and crispy potato skin and adorned with a scattering of wood sorrel. I hadn't eaten wood sorrel on it's own before, and it's a complete revelation – an intense citrus flavour which cuts through the richness of the shallots, and that intensely onion ash. I absolutely loved this dish, but I can imagine others would not. We laughed with the staff about the ‘marmitiness’ tag that seems to have been linked with a number of the dishes – for my part, I though this was actually quite addictive. I could imagine putting that ash onto popcorn, or any number of other foods – but I do like savoury flavours!

Phew! But I have to say, still not feeling to full, up comes Cornish monkfish, chicken salt, surf clams, rainbow chard and mushroom purée. Now we really are (literally) getting to the meat of the matter. Following that intense ash, the menu steps up and gives you a good whack of umami. The intense mushroom purée really packs in that savoury punch, which the chicken salt steps up again! The Hubby wanted much, much more of this, and we literally sat at the end sucking our cheeks – it's an incredibly intense set of flavours. The menu has in the past carried brill, ours was monkfish, but to be absolutely frank, the fish is merely a foil for all the other flavours. This isn't a criticism – I'd choose those flavours over the fish any day!

Now we're on a roll and the end is in sight. Next, Cumbrian hogget, with artichokes and chenepodiums, we were getting excited. Hogget is lamb which has reached maturity, generally at the one year mark. The lamb is intense, with a lamb jus, and artichoke purée with tiny crispy sweetbreads. As a combination you do get sweet, sour, salt and savoury – and the bitter is included through the addition of the chenopodium leaves. Extraordinary things – you pop the leaf in your mouth and it takes rather nice, but after about 10 seconds it interacts with your saliva and adds and incredibly bitter note – a fabulous contrast!

How do you follow this? With Sweet cicely and strawberry, buttermilk and verbena: macerated strawberries, sweet cicely ice cream, very creamy buttermilk custard and verbena syrup. After the last two meaty dishes, this acts as a very food palate cleanser! It's served with shards of dehydrated strawberry scented with cicely – this adds a very moreish anise flavour to the shards, echoed in the main dish. Delicious. Again there is very real emphasis on the herbal and fresh nature of the ingredients.

One final course to go: Warm spiced bread, salted almonds, buckthorn curd and smoked clotted cream. We very much enjoyed this dish – the very crunch cube of brioche is toasted with cinnamon and cardamon. The cardamon offers and incredible scent, and one of those – there's something else in there, I know that taste, what is that? – moments. It sits on the buckthorn curd. The clotted cream sits to the side with the salted almonds. I can understand why people might have trouble with some elements of the dish: the buckthorn curd again gives you that sense of dryness in the mouth, and the smoked cream is so unusual, but if you combine them together again you get that sense of umami-ness – which is incredible in a dessert.

I think if you've actually made it to this point in this insanely long review, you need to get to Roganic now!

I have a theory that the style of a restaurant is as much derived from what went before as to the current chef. Pierre Koffman forsook his three star Tante Claire on Royal Hospital Road and Gordon Ramsay (previously blessed with two stars) took over the place and immediately gained the hitherto elusive third star. Similarly, when PK left his space at the Berkley Hotel it was inherited by Marcus Wareing, who doubled his star count to meet that of the outgoing chef.

Roganic is on the spot that used to be Michael Moore’s restaurant. I like M&M, not least as he is a Gooner. He is also an excellent chef, who was wont to over elaborate. Mr Rogan falls into the same trap: clearly an excellent chef, he is never one to use one ingredient when five will do.

We went during the “soft opening” period, when a restaurant is trying to iron out the kinks. I was (both when booking and when re-confirming) warned that we had a two hour time slot only. Fair enough; forewarned is forearmed. I am not one to begrudge a restaurant wanting to turn tables, so long as you know beforehand. They rightly want to make money from the venture, and the more through the door of an evening the better for them. Three-and-a-half hours into the (no choice) ten course tasting menu, we had to request the bill. Not that the food wasn’t good, the food is far more hit than miss, it was just that we actually did only want to spend two hours there. If you give people a two hour slot, it works both ways: the diner wants to be fed in that time and the restaurant wants you out to get the next person in. If they do want to turn tables, this kink needs ironing.

As with M&M before, the space is a challenge: the restaurant is narrow, with a downstairs kitchen (and loos) and no more than maybe ten tables. The tables are well spaced, however, and, in the hushed atmosphere, there is no danger of being overheard unless you want to be.

Having been sat, we were immediately presented with the wine list. I have been known to order the wine then to work out what on the menu goes with it, but that doesn’t work when you have no choice on the food. So I asked for the menu. This reads like a guide to the hedgerow, with hyssop, orache, chenopodiums, mallow, sweet ciceley and buckthorn all making an appearance. I know that Noma and Faviken have made foraged for food trendy, but they have Christianshavn and the wilds of Sweden respectively as their hedgerow. There isn’t much hedge on the High Street in Marylebone, and I’m not sure that I’d want to eat anything that came out of Paddington Street Gardens. Not unless it was thoroughly disinfected first. Which might alter the taste a little. And thus defeat the point.

When the dishes arrived, they were generally very good: the pick for me was the brill, or rather “Roasted brill, chicken salt, surf clams and rainbow chard”. Which was excellent; perfectly cooked brill with something salty that could have originated from a chicken. A lovely couple of mouthfuls. So too the broad beans (with hyssop, fresh curds and beetroot), the shredded ox tongue (with pickles and sourdough “paper”), heritage spud (in onion ash and bits of hedgerow), hogget (Cumbrian, with artichokes and more hedgerow) and, eventually, the strawberries (with yet more from the hedge). Lovely little mouthfuls all. The emphasis being on the word little. Which is fine, especially when there are ten courses (plus bread, amuse bouche and post-desert). But even eating slowly, they take but a few minutes to devour. There is then the wait for the next course. It reminded me of Umu.

Not everything was a hit: smoked yolk was amazingly executed, but the taste didn’t really live up to the skill involved in creating it, and the addition of honey (sorry, “warm elderflower honey”) to the mackerel (or rather “seawater cured Kentish mackerel”) was something that detracted from, rather than adding to, this otherwise lovely dish.

Service was uniformly polite and enthusiastic, with dishes (or rather, specific ingredients in them) explained to the uninitiated and the sommelier was an excellent aid to the smallish wine list. Given the gaps between courses, we had time to have a good chat with our waiter. The rock on the table, by the way, isn't to chuck at him to get his attention if it has wandered off, but for the butter to be spread on. Butter that has been creamed, whipped and elevated with Maldon sea salt.

This is long term pop-up, being here for but two years (more than a lifetime for some restaurants), so I will be back. Hopefully the kinks will have gone by then and the misses been replaced by further hits.