The chef-owner of the UK’s first vegan Michelin-starred restaurant knows how to make a vegetable taste delicious. At Plates, Kirk Haworth aims to dispel the myth that cooking without animal products is plain, boring, not a ‘real’ meal. His eight-course tasting menu is a technically complex masterpiece that begins with the best bread course we’ve ever eaten and ends with a breathtaking banoffee-inspired pudding.
Before we get to that, let’s start with the setting. Plates – understated and serene in how it operates – sits on the busy main drag between Old Street and Shoreditch. We shimmy past heaving traffic into a cosy, muted dining room of natural woods, plaster walls and earthy, mellow tones. In the corner, a small open kitchen houses a brigade of chefs who work methodically at their stations. There are a lot of staff for such a small space, but the room remains calm, much like the man himself. Kirk is composed at every moment. When he presents his dishes, he does so without bravado, as if a plate of barbecued maitake mushroom, smoky black bean mole, aioli and crisp puffed rice were an ordinary meal.
Know this: there is nothing ordinary about Kirk’s cooking. We still think about the laminated sourdough with whipped wild garlic butter, which is less like bread and more like a buttery croissant that flakes as we rip it apart. Elsewhere, velvety Jersey Royals are neatly arranged with juicy sweet and sour apricots and a scattering of sprightly dried mint. A humble cup of white onion soup resembling a cappuccino arrives without cutlery, so we drink it like one, the biting tang of powdered aniseed dusted over a layer of foam giving way to mellow onion beneath.
If we were being picky, there were moments when an over-deployment of sweetness felt a little jarring. The extra courses between courses – ricotta granita, a piece of guava dusted with dehydrated lime, mango laced with wasabi – swing from sweet to savoury a little too often. Still, the final course was a welcome finale. Lovingly entitled ‘Flavours of banoffee pie’, it contrasts aerated banana parfait with dense cacao sponge, before finishing with the crunch of toasted nuts and buckwheat.
A selection of creative wine pairings rounds off the experience, including a fun half-and-half option that offers insight into both Plates’ left-field wine list and adventurous soft drinks offering. For just over £100 - one London’s most affordable Michelin tasting menus at the time of writing - it’s a triumph.