50—MARYLEBONE JOURNAL ROGAN’S RUN
wonderful molecular-style dishes using mountain herbs, flowers and roots from his local Haute-Savoie region. “I realised that although the Lake District might not quite be the Alps, a lot of our local produce is very similar to what Marc Veyrat used,” he continues. “Then I got a bit side-tracked by the technical side and went through Japanese, Greek and Spanish-influenced phases [think El Bulli rather than paella], until finally, I realised that rather than deconstructing to reconstruct the perfect carrot, I would concentrate on using the best technique to cook the perfect carrot, so that the cooking wouldn’t be in your face, but you’d still be eating amazing food.” L’Enclume’s menu has developed
into an expression of its locality. Where possible, everything is produced locally – much of it on the restaurant’s own 15 acre farm – from the rapeseed oil used instead of olive oil, to Herdwick lambs’ tongues and wild dandelions. Forget lemons – any acidity in the food has to come from a British ingredient, such as verjuice, cider vinegar or buttermilk. So, is Roganic going to be a taste of Cumbria in Marylebone? “No, not really,” says Simon. “For a start, I’m giving Ben Spalding, who is going to be my head chef here, a free hand about who and where he orders from. It seems hypocritcal to bring food all the way down from our biodynamic farm in Cumbria when he could buy it more locally, but the food is going to be British, predominantly organic and very seasonal. We’ll change the menu every week.” He does intend to bring down
certain specialist ingredients from Cartmel, such as Good King Henry, a hardy spinach-like plant which thrives on the farm, or flowers such as scented pinks, ox eye daisies, violas and chamomile. Simon plans to have a single 10
course tasting menu for dinner (£80), with a shorter version for lunch (£40). The restaurant is going to be restricted to 30 covers, with the
old private dining room downstairs being replaced by more prep space for the kitchen. Curiously, Ben Spalding has
already worked in Marylebone, just a few doors down at L’Autre Pied, where he spent 2008 as the senior sous chef. For the past few months he has been working at L’Enclume, so he’s been fully imbued with the ethos of the kitchen. And that ethos produces some
truly extraordinary food. In July, for example, you can expect to eat such delicacies as broad bean and hyssop, fresh curds and beetroot; and vintage potatoes in onion ashes, lovage and wood sorrel. The latter is made by cooking a type of pink fir potato in a low temperature water-bath with rapeseed oil, garlic, herbs and seasonings, before serving it warm on an onion puree with little dots of lovage cream. Richly caramelised onions are mixed with onion oils and maltodextrin and scattered over the top to create the effect of onion ashes. The dish is finished with pretty little lovage twigs (dehydrated and deep fried lovage stems), tiny slices of deep fried potato and delicately sour wood sorrel. In other words, this is not the sort of dish you’d just throw together at home. Half of the kitchen staff at Roganic
will come from L’Enclume, with Simon wanting to ensure that the emphasis on supportive team work and a calm working environment is replicated in his latest venture. This is, he says, essential if you want to maximise creativity while using high tech culinary methods. Roganic’s menu is scattered with
references to herbs, flowers and wild plants. Who could resist flaky crab and mallow cream, young
LINKS
Roganic 19 Blandford Street 020 74860380
roganic.co.uk
squid and cucumber; or sweet cicely with strawberry, buttermilk and verbena? Especially when the latter is made with a sweet cicely ice cream and served with strawberries that have been compressed in a vacuum in strawberry juice, and served with a cold set custard made from buttermilk, a verbena syrup, verbena leaves and a tuille made from dehydrated strawberry juice? The Britishness of the menu does
not stop with the food. “Obviously we’ll have an international wine list, but with an emphasis on smaller, more unusual bio-dynamic and new world wines that are crisp and light, but we’ll also have interesting British beers, ciders, juices and infusions,” says Simon. “Cumbria has 36 independent breweries and we sell around 30 different beers at L’Enclume. I think at Roganic we’ll offer beer from all around Britain,” he enthuses, with a dreamy look in his eye. As he talks about making fruit
juices and infusions, as well as sparkling ‘wines’ such as elderflower ‘champagne’, I realise that this is a chef whose mind buzzes with endless culinary possibilities. He is not someone who can be tied down. So this September you might find yourself being offered a glass of hawthorne blossom ‘champagne’ at Roganic. But then again, you might not. You may find instead that he’s taken a completely different path, such as specialising in southern ales. Much will depend on how his London clientele respond to his latest venture. At the moment, he and Ben
have penciled in some ideas for delicious sounding tasting menus for the next couple of months. In August, for example, you can expect to be offered sea urchin roe with rye bread, chickweed and apple; along with cured monkfish cheek and charred red onion, dill and courgettes; creamed chicken of the woods (a type of mushroom) with cider vinegar and dandelion, and salt baked plums, meadowsweet granite, sour cream and muesli.
FOOD
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