Now, Voyager!

The untold want, by life and land ne'er granted, Now, voyager, sail thou forth to seek and find. — Walt Whitman

From its earliest beginnings, the East End has been home to the poorest inhabitants of London. Much of its land was in need of drainage, development was inhibited by the medieval system of copyhold and it was home to noxious industries such as tanning, glue-making and the Bryant and May factory at the centre of the infamous Matchgirls' Strike of 1888. While the political centre of London developed in the west of the city, the east remained a low-wage economy, with slums, sweat shops and low-paid industries based in and around the docks. What Ellis Island was to American immigration, the East End was to British immigration with countless waves of migrants - from oppressed Protestant Huguenots, to Jewish victims of the pogroms, to Muslims fleeing more recent poverty and oppression - all making it their home and turning it into the vibrant multi-cultural centre it is today. I was born in the East End.

Now I've returned to seek and find an untold want: great fine dining in the place where I spent my formative years. It's a daunting prospect, as evidenced by this map of Central London: Red dots denoting London's 2010 Michelin-starred restaurants flood the West End - an area bounded by Chelsea to the south, Kensington to the west, Marylebone to the north and Holborn to the east. Three can be found just off the map to the southwest and three have dared to wander eastwards into Smithfield, Clerkenwell and to the edges of the City, but the vast majority are happily based in London's safe, trusted, wealthy West End. The East End - an area bounded by the Thames to the south, Shoreditch to the west, south Hackney to the north and the River Lea to the east - has precisely none. The man who gave me my very first cooking certificate and one of my first ever experiences of work in a kitchen, Professor Cyrus Todiwala, earnt well-deserved Michelin Bib Gourmand recognition for his excellent E1-postcoded Café Spice Namasté, but it's not fine dining. To my knowledge, there has never been a Michelin-starred restaurant here... and few if any fine dining establishments. Only the insane, the recklessly brave or a true visionary would open a fine dining restaurant in the East End... For those who don't know him, let me introduce you to Nuno Mendes. Back in October 2006, just starting my third year at Westminster Kingsway, I read a post on the Food and Drink in London blog about a "molecular gastropub" called Bacchus that had opened in Hoxton, within walking distance of my home in Hackney. Its unique selling point was "fine dining in trainers" - and when I eventually got there almost a year later, it blew me away. What I loved most about Nuno's menu was its fluidity - the extreme opposite of French conservative haute cuisine. Where a top Paris restaurant would insist on perfect replication year on year, Nuno wasn't afraid to develop and improve dishes even in the middle of service. I described his food back then as "combining the precision of classical music with the inventiveness of jazz". A lot of water has flowed under the bridge since that night. Nuno encouraged me to train in Spain, extolling the virtues of his mentors at El Bulli and nominating Mugaritz as the place for me to learn my trade. I never worked at either, but during my two years in Spain I trained with two of their great chefs - El Bulli's Carles Abellan at Comerç 24 and Mugaritz's Paco Morales at Ferrero. Returning to London recently, I met up with Nuno and enjoyed a brilliant night cooking with him at his dining club, The Loft: What I found was a chef who, while I was away in Spain learning the basics of our trade, had been perfecting the skills of chef/restaurateur. A man neither insane nor recklessly brave - but a voyager with a truly sparkling vision for the East End of the future. The Portuguese word for "voyager" is "viajante". And, in the new 5* Town Hall Hotel rising from the ashes of the former Bethnal Green Town Hall, just 300 yards down the road from my old school Raine's Foundation, is Restaurant Viajante. If ever there was a time for change, this is surely it. The area to the west of Bethnal Green has been transformed by the yuppification of Shoreditch, Hoxton and Dalston. The area to the southeast is London's new financial district of Docklands, emerging strongly from the recent recession. And to the northeast is the site of London's 2012 Olympic Games. Communications in the area have been transformed, with the Docklands Light Railway, a new underground link and the forthcoming Crossrail overground service. Government agencies have made huge efforts to shift the balance of wealth from west to east, with the result that Bethnal Green is unrecognisable as the crime-rife former stomping ground of the Krays. The trainers have gone. It's a great spot for fine dining going forward from 2010. If the photo above looks a bit odd, that's because it's a still from the Portuguese daily TV current affairs programme 30 Minutos, transmitted recently by national broadcaster RTP. For anyone with a keen eye and a working knowledge of Portuguese, it was rather a give-away. Of course I only have a bit part, but it's pretty obvious that I'm doing a little more than just helping out on a busy Friday night: I am thrilled to announce that when Viajante opens soon I shall be Chef de Partie, Cold Section - a proud part of a team of chefs from around the world who have descended on the East End, determined to achieve something that has never been done before. I look forward to seeing you there.

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Koy Shunka - Barcelona's Hidden Treasure

Nobody goes to fine dining restaurants to eat. Even people like me, whose lives are committed to fine dining, divide eateries into two groups: those we go to for the cerebral thrill of experiencing a great chef's creativity, passion and originality... and those we go to because we're hungry. But every now and again you come across a restaurant that spans the gap between dining for intellectual pleasure and dining for hedonistic pleasure. It's a rare experience, but a handful of chefs have managed to build that bridge. Peter Gordon is one example and I'll be writing about him again soon. Hideki Matsuhisa is another. If you read this, Hideki, I haven't deserted you. It's just that I'm now living 709 miles away, so it's a bit difficult to pop in on a Sunday night.

Hideki Matsuhisa and his business partner Xu Zhangchao (known to regular foodies and local pool players as "Sam") run one of Barcelona's true hidden treasures, Koy Shunka. Located in a small alleyway off the Via Laietana not far from the city's tourist hub at Plaça Catalunya, you could easily walk straight past the place and not notice it was there. But great quality doesn't go unnoticed. Pop inside, and you could find yourself seated next to regular customer Ferran Adrià or any one of a number of other top chefs, celebrities and gastronomes. For Koy Shunka is predominantly a kappo-style counter restaurant in which customers sit at one of about 24 places around a bar, while 10 or more chefs busy themselves preparing the food right in front of the customer. The most junior chefs cook the hot food in the centre, their superiors work around them and the most senior chefs plate up dishes, prepare cold food, sauces and extras and attend directly to their 'personal' customers. Hideki Matsuhisa supervises all sashimi dishes personally.

Although I've eaten there several times and written enthusiastic comments about the place more than once, I never managed to take any food photos and consequently never wrote it up in my restaurants section. Thinking about that the other day it came home to me that it wasn't a coincidence - when you dine as a critic you bring your critical apparatus with you, but when you dine as a member of a family it just doesn't seem appropriate somehow. Hideki Matsuhisa always made me feel like I was at home. Luckily for me my friend Professor Paulina Mata - Portuguese food scientist, molecular gastronomist, author and broadcaster - paid a visit to the Catalan capital recently, equipped with a copy of my 2009 post Dining out in Barcelona. Better still, she returned home with some great photographs of the food at Koy Shunka, which she's encouraged me to reproduce. Click on slides for descriptions of dishes:

Readers with a command of Portuguese should read Professor Mata's writeup on her gastronomic forum NovaCrítica-vinho.com. "I adored the environment, I adored the food", she reported. "When I return to Barcelona I shall certainly revisit Koy Shunka." I'll raise a glass of sake to that!

It's front of house, rather than the kitchen, that ultimately makes all the difference to a restaurant by turning great food into a great customer experience. In Koy Shunka, personal chefs entertain and inform you throughout the meal. But waiters and waitresses also operate almost invisibly on the customer side of the counter, removing and replacing crockery and cutlery, topping up glasses and attending to every issue that makes the experience perfect. Including important rituals such as offering a hand towel at the start of the meal. Except that at Koy Shunka, even this transcends ritual to become entertainment. Click left and enjoy!

For anyone who can't afford to visit Tokyo but can manage the fare to Barcelona, I can't recommend Koy Shunka too highly. Make sure you call ahead and book - then just turn up and be pampered.

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So Proud Of Our Global Community

I always knew there was something very special about the global foodie community. Ever since I started my blog over three years ago, I've been surrounded by friendly, supportive people from all corners of the globe. My stats report tells me that the quarter of a million people who have visited my site in that time come from a staggering 207 different countries, as far apart as Haiti, Rwanda and Norfolk Island. Not only is it a global family - it's a wonderfully generous global family. Take a look at Pim Techamuanvivit's annual Menu For Hope fundraising for the World Food Programme to see just how generous.

When on Monday 15th February I heard about the kitchen fire at Mugaritz, I was particularly moved by the story of the stagières' knives. As someone about to contract his first ever paid position as a chef without first starting as an unpaid stagière, I knew how devastated these three young trainees from Guatemala, Sweden and the US would have been to lose their most precious possessions and the tools of their apprenticeship. That night my dad and I decided to see what we could do to help. After a few days fruitlessly trying to sort out the logistics of an appeal fund, dad wrote to food blogging friend John Sconzo in upstate New York... and the rest is history.

Overnight, the appeal fund that John established a fortnight ago smashed its target of $2,500. The overwhelming generosity of chefs, foodies and bloggers everywhere means that Diego Telles, Mattias Hogebrant and Greg Kuzia-Carmel will soon be able to buy brand new knives to replace the ones destroyed in the fire. I won't acknowledge all of the individual donors here, as John Sconzo has published a comprehensive thank you on his own blog. What I will say is that seeing the names of world-famous chefs, food writers, bloggers and fund-raisers on that list of donors, inter-mixed with the names of ordinary people like dad and me, makes me so incredibly proud of the global food community.

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