Reviews: Marina O’Loughlin is impressed by social enterprise Ebury by Fat Macy’s, while Jay Rayner revels at Burnt Orange

The Sunday Times’ Marina O’Loughlin is impressed by the lovely people at social enterprise Ebury by Fat Macy’s in Pimlico, London, and by the lovely food, too

 

We’re eating in the “community courtyard”, furnished with colourful tables, umbrellas and sprouting raised veg plots. It’s all most unexpected. And even more unexpected is its Middle Eastern menu – labneh with chilli butter, hummus and toasted pine nuts, aubergine maghmour with green pilaf and “Lebanese pizza” (flatbreads zhuzhed with the likes of harissa, za’atar and Akkawi cheese, a member of the feta family).

 

During the supper club years Fat Macy’s flirted with everything from Mexican to Christmas dinners too: not a smashed burger or loaded fries in sight. Silly me. But it’s not exclusively Middle Eastern: there’s Cobble Lane charcuterie – made in Islington; cheeses with the likes of Rubies in the Rubble chutneys; chocolate torte with espresso cream.

 

Under an umbrella, in possession of a rather odd pisco martini, it’s a mellow place to hang. I could imagine hours spent happily over a few glasses of catarratto or vermentino and excellent drinking snacks: fatayer, one of those small tricorn Lebanese pastries, this one featuring stout pastry wrapped around a juicy nugget of minced lamb, rosy with sumac. Or savoury doughnuts: fat, fried leavened buns stuffed with herby elastic cheese. Or halloumi fries served with a dip of pomegranate toum, a successful, super-tangy twist on that kebab shop favourite, garlic sauce. But they can turn out more evolved dishes too: the fish of the day, pollock, in a crisp crust with a green chilli and parsley salad on the side, a finely chopped proto-zhoug, the kind of thing you might eat at a sultry restaurant overlooking a minaret or two.

 

Polishing off a plateful of lamb chops in a sauce of almost-melted, slow-cooked tomatoes with the salty funk of vanished anchovies, before nibbling on a chunk of mastic-chewy Turkish delight, I’m so pleased Fat Macy’s now has this impressive space to call home. Ebury is a lovely place staffed by lovely people. And it’s doing lovely things. Oh, and the food is pretty good too.

 

Price: meal for two, including 12.5% service charge, £79

 

 

Jay Rayner of The Observer revels in fire-licked food that hits all the right spots at Burnt Orange in Brighton

 

At Burnt Orange there’s a lot of searing and blistering, smoking and flaming. The menu is sprinkled liberally with these words. There are also outbreaks of Persian limes and harissa, preserved lemons and wild garlic. It thrums with an apparent eagerness to display on-trend credentials.

 

The complex dish descriptions and that wood-fired oven deliver on their heat-bubbled promise. Given the team behind it, led by skilled restaurateur Razak Helalat, that’s unsurprising. They also have the Salt Room, housed in an outcrop of the cheerless Hilton Metropole on the front. Elsewhere in Brighton (and more recently, London), they have the Coal Shed where everything is, as the name suggests, cooked over burning coals.

 

There’s grilled halloumi from Sussex, as well as heat-blistered sardines with fried bread and an anchovy cream. Lamb shoulder has been long-smoked until it is on the edge of a breakdown, then shredded, formed into fat filo-wrapped “cigars” and fried to crisp. On the side is a dollop of cooling yogurt. It is a lot of textures and butch lanolin flavours playing catch-up with each other. The thinnest slices of friable toast are piled with salted cherries, tomatoes and a tumble of buffalo stracciatella, that milky, foetal cheese of stretched curds.

 

The main courses are where the real action is. A thick slab of aubergine has loitered in the oven until it has reached a paunchy baba ganoush softness, and is laid on a puddle of sour cream. It’s glazed with miso, pelted with pomegranate seeds and finally, for texture and giggles, sprinkled liberally with fried onions. Most things should be. A slab of rib-eye is marinated in fermented chilli for flavour rather than brow-furrowing heat, then given a full wood firing, and topped with melting Tropea onions, capers and a dribble of jus.

 

Prices are keen, with most dishes in single figures and only a few in the teens. Or you can pay £35 a head and get them to chuck half the menu at you.

 

Price: starters, £4-£10; mains, £8-£19; desserts, £4-£7; wines, from £22

 

 

Gaby Soutar of the Edinburgh Evening News visits Heron in Leith, a success story born from an at-home, fine dining pop-up

 

This place is owned by Tomás Gormley and Sam Yorke, who have various experience at the Lookout, Restaurant Andrew Fairlie and Bonnie Badger, among others. During lockdown, they launched a fine-dining food delivery business, Bad Seeds, which was hugely impressive.

 

I took the pricier option, and went for the starter of crab claw/tomato/rye/strawberry (£13). There were gobstopper-sized peeled tomatoes, looking fleshy and vulnerable in the nude, a berry gazpacho, fiery orange nasturtium petals and little blobs of something creamy that I didn’t pay enough attention to, but which may have been ricotta. On the side was a toasted square of rye bread with a huge dollop of chive-riddled crab.

 

I’d gone for an à la carte main of duck/honey/lavender/chicory (£26). I couldn’t really detect the lavender or the honey, but it didn’t matter, they weren’t missed. The crispy-skinned duck breast was covered in crushed coriander seeds and pink peppercorns, and, on top of some spinach, there was a beautiful coppery pithivier that contained duck leg and pancetta. The chicory leaves were on a separate plate –served simply, raw and crunchy, like palate cleansers.

 

Price: lunch for two, excluding drinks, £77

 

 

The Guardian’s Grace Dent makes some photographic memories at Heritage Dulwich in London

 

We ordered plates of glorious, Goan-style stuffed tilapia coated in semolina and coriander pesto, and an excellent Jodhpuri tawa chicken fried in green spices and served on weirdly moreish mashed potato spiced with tamarind and cumin.

 

The moment I knew I’d made a grave error in taking so long to get to Heritage was when the humongous, fiercely seasoned, dark crimson shatkora jhinga king prawns arrived, marinated in lemongrass and shatkora, then grilled in a clay oven. I took a photo of these wondrous, bulbous, heavenly super-shrimp, which I keep on my phone and look at during sadder moments in life.

 

Next up came murgh makhani – a smoked chicken supreme cooked in tomato, fenugreek and oceans of cream, which may lead you to think: do I really need the black lentil dal makhani, too? Is it maybe too samey? To which the answer is yes, you do. True, they are of a similar vibe, but they are completely different and both unmissable.

 

Heritage’s Kashmiri lamb is a rich pool of spiced gravy filled with tender, slow-cooked meat of just the right consistency to be prodded and mopped by a sundried-tomato-and-truffle naan. And if you’ve room to move after your third tandoori roti, there’s rose-layered gulab jamun cheesecake with sweet dumplings.

 

This is hearty food that wants to please; sometimes strange, sometimes as familiar as a cuddle.

 

Price: about £40 a head, plus drinks and service

 

William Sitwell of The Telegraph finds you get what you pay for when he visits Kerridge’s Fish & Chips at Harrods

 

Don’t think Tom Kerridge has a restaurant here, it’s a concession – like everyone else, of course. But tucked into a corner of the even more chic dining area it’s a slick, dark, stylishly lit set of kitchen, bar and booths.

 

You may have read about this place: headlines screaming about how this pirate from the West Country has been selling fish and chips for £800 a plate, or something (OK, £35). Doubtless, that sort of PR is perfect to attract the sort of people who come to town in August, parking their limousines around Knightsbridge.

 

Still, cost aside, his fish and chips are manifestly the best version I have ever tasted. Fresh, soft plaice in perfect crisp batter and not a hint of old oil. The fat chips, again, perfectly crisp and fluffy inside. And all of it glowing in that gorgeous half-light, that light that can confuse – you’d never know if it was midnight or dawn, snowing or a heatwave while you’re in there.

 

My pal was eating lobster; a small one and at £55 quite steep, if that’s an issue for you. We had also started well with a choice of anchovies – salted or marinated with freshly baked sourdough – a lively beginning to whet one’s lips.

 

But the Morecombe Bay shrimps didn’t work. Mr Kerridge has doubtless had so many he felt he should liven them up, so douses them in paprika. This makes me weep for the shrimp virgin. Nothing is better than to eat them simply in butter.

 

Price: lunch for two, excluding drinks and service, £127

 

The Bristol Post’s Mark Taylor can taste the 1980s at Bristol’s Mollie’s Motel & Diner

 

Yes, Mollie’s is inspired by those classic American diners but it’s far more upmarket than that, with room prices similar to a Travelodge but with king-size beds, Egyptian cotton sheets and rainforest showers.

 

In short, it looks like a cross between Happy Days and Grease. I half expected the Fonz or John Travolta to turn up in a red Cadillac and order a burger and thick milkshake.

 

Main courses include burgers, hot dogs, salads and rotisserie chicken for one, two or four people – priced at £9, £16 or £32. I started with chicken bites with barbecue sauce (£6.50) – a generous portion of nuggets in crisp, greaseless panko crumbs with good quality, juicy chicken breast within. The varnish-like sauce was fruity and slightly spicy.

 

This was followed by the double cheeseburger (£12) – two decent-sized, nicely seasoned beef patties in a soft, pillowy bun with slices of slowly melting American cheese, tomato, lettuce and Mollie’s sauce with a fat gherkin on the side.

 

I went for the American-style hot apple pie (£6.50) which took me right back to those mouth-destroying, napalm-like hot apple pies McDonald’s used to serve in the 1980s. A good thing. The pastry was buttery and flaky and the molten apple filling had a waft of cinnamon.