Ikoyi

Ikoyi’s West African cuisine stole the column inches when the restaurant opened in summer 2017. But let’s be clear: you don’t need to know your banga from your igbin to have a great meal at this smart Michelin-starred destination. Instead, simply marvel at the “unique flavour combinations” that define the cooking here.

A glass-fronted, minimalist cube set in the St James’s Market development, Ikoyi’s interior is clad in blond-wood panels for a Scandi-cum-sushi vibe. Hanging clay lamps add a touch of African artisanship, low-ceilings create a real buzz and a bijou open-plan kitchen kicks out perfumed, smoky aromas.

Chef-patron Jeremy Chan has done his time in some A-list kitchens (Noma, Dinner by Heston Blumenthal) and his cooking delivers elegant small plates that derive their oomph from the heat and boldness of West African cuisine – witness a snack of crunchy plantain dusted in smoked Scotch bonnet (chilli) and raspberry powder.

Standouts on the short menu include a chargrilled octopus tentacle with spicy ndolé (a bitter-leaf and spinach mix); pink slabs of Wagyu beef atop an umami-laden paste of mushroom, fermented chilli, walnut and olives, all sitting in a silky smoked eel sauce; and an absolutely stunning dessert of mouth-coating groundnut foam with zobo jam and meringue. To drink, we loved the roasted plantain Old Fashioned, while wines are chosen to withstand the spice (our robust, ever-so-slightly sour Riesling was a case in point).

Prices aren’t cheap, so offering a good-value lunch/pre-theatre menu (£35 for three courses) is definitely a wise move. On the other hand, if you want to blow the budget, it's well worth settling in for the nine-course blind tasting menu with paired wines. The seven-course tasting menu represents a happy medium and both can be requested as vegetarian or vegan. In other words, this “totally beautiful” restaurant is adding a new dimension to London’s dining scene.

Ikoyi has been on quite the journey since opening its doors in the summer of 2017. It survived a heavy barrage of TripAdvisor criticism in the first six months, then emerged as a genuine trailblazer in London's restaurant scene, scooping a Michelin star in 2018, then a second in 2022. To call this a 'West African' restaurant is a wild simplification of what dinner at Ikoyi entails. Yes, the restaurant is named after a district of Lagos, Nigeria, and yes, there is a great deal of West African inspiration in the dishes, but the menu at Ikoyi is so much more - it's West Africa via Noma, with smatterings of chef Jeremy Chan's Chinese-Canadian background and everything in between. 

Ikoyi has built a unique spice-based cuisine around British micro-seasonality, using vegetables that have been slowly grown for flavour, sustainable, line-caught fish and aged native beef. That produce is then served in it's optimal state, and combined with carefully constructed pairings using umami flavours. That umami can come from beef, or mushroom, or tomato, but also comes from a vast collection of sub-Saharan West African spices, meticulously researched and sourced by the restaurant. 

The results are astonishing, sometimes challenging and totally unique. The tasting menu  can feature dishes like octopus fried in wild rice and yeasted béarnaise, plantain smoked kelp and blackberry, turbot, caramelised chicken and artichoke miso and pistachio, comice pear and grains of peace - an African seed pod that has notes of liquorice and mandarin. And, of course, that smoking jollof rice that graced Instagram for a number of months.

Ikoyi also offers a shorter lunch menu and a clever bar menu that features smart West Africa-inspired cocktails, such as a plaintain old fashioned made with plantain rum and a Palm Punch, made with rum, palm wine and tiger nut.