Review of the reviews


We have a board of their smoked coppa, salami Milanese and their ham, sliced thin enough so you could read the interest- ing bits of the FT through it. They serve it warm enough so the fat begins to melt on contact with your tongue. It has depth, and piggy power. There are crunchy, sweet-sour pickles, and fatty pork rillettes, also served at room temperature, which slump on to pieces of warm toast as if surrendering. We get a quenelle of the ’nduja butter to go with the toast. It arrives speared with a curl of salty pork crackling, which has crunch, but also melts away to something softly gelatinous. The butter is a ludicrously intense mess of shredded spiced pork, chilli and whipped dairy fat. It’s so rich I suspect you could rub it into your skin as a treatment for cel- lulite. Or you could just pile it on to toast. I pile it on to toast. My cellulite is beyond help. The menu is divided into these


Jay Rayner throws fat-related caution to the wind at Origin City, London


sweet, rather curious things called “starters” and “mains”. There are six of each. It might just catch on. Their take on vitello tonnato involves roasted Tam- worth pork loin with a generous ribbon of fat, sliced almost as thin as the coppa, and piled with just enough tuna sauce, plus a


It’s dignified living for Grace Dent at London’s Blåbär Blåbär packs an awful lot into its tiny, two-floored space. Glancing at the website – proffering soft furnishings, children’s games, jewellery, cakes and meatballs – you’d be forgiven for imagining you’re visiting a cooler, pricier, independent Ikea. No, this is a small shop, scented with pine candles and cinnamon buns, crammed with Klippan gooseye eco lamb’s-wool blankets, Mar- tin Schwartz jigsaws and By May Stockholm teapots. There’s a cluster of tables to


enjoy a Swedish handpeeled prawn salad with housemade aïoli, lemon and dill, or sip a turmeric latte. The vegan meatballs were


12 | The Caterer | 15 September 2023


really very good, and served on sourdough with a sweet, creamy beetroot slaw and lots of fresh sliced cucumber. Ikea café this certainly was not – although, if I’d wanted my fix, Blåbär does sell Daim bars, too. There are, of course, fika- friendly pastries, cakes and buns, cinnamon swirls and those amazing punsch-rolls of marzipan dipped in chocolate that look like bright green bum- blebees. However, I went for a timeless classic: the chocolate mud cake. Blåbär’s is heart- shaped, and it screams, “Put me on social media!”, as you attempt to eat it with a fork, before abandoning dignity and squashing it into your mouth. Damn these Nordic types with


their delightful, dignified liv- ing. They may have pillaged my ancestors’ farms, but now I have all their scatter cushions, dom- ino sets and dream cake. Peace tastes completely delicious.


“I pile it on to toast. My cellulite is beyond help”


sprinkling of golden fried bread- crumbs and prime caper berries to send it on its way. And oh boy, their rough-textured, smoked Morteau sausage. The discs are stacked like poker chips across nutty black lentils bound by a pro- found meatiness, with a mustard sauce. You will clean the plate. Despite the mission state-


ments, the kitchen is not pushing at the boundaries of anything. Instead, it’s doing something rather less celebrated. It’s cook- ing up a total storm.


Evi’s has emerged out of London’s street food trenches for Jimi Famurewa Evi’s is an unassuming spin-off of a longstanding street food brand, with a curious magic and subtle, urgent power emerging from its occasional chaos… with a gently contemporary, elegantly rugged parade of dishes that, though not always perfect, knock you over with their culinary acuity, gush- ing succulence and punching, vibrant freshness. Courgette fritters were the first eye-widener from the lengthy menu: ragged boulders of finely crisped, faintly golden greenery with weightless, dill-flecked mid- dles, the detonating charge of fresh chillies and a cooling, zingy swoop of sumac yogurt. Both


tzatziki and melitzanalata (auber- gine, deliquesced to smoky por- ridge and strewn with walnuts and pomegranate) had the bar- reling, layered liveliness you’d expect from something made tableside, and the same went for a crunching, kaleidoscopic mass of Greek salad and bronzed, hand-cut chips that evoke a rip- pling pan of olive oil and a sleepy Ionian taverna circa 1986. That the drinks list – all-Greek


wines, yes, but also profoundly quenching housemade sodas spiked with cucumber and lime – is also a vessel for lily-gilding creativity is another mark of the team’s aversion to easy wins. But Evi’s, propelled by pin-


sharp flavours and the bustling warmth of Peroulaki’s presence on the floor, is such a beguiling mixture of a palpable passion project and a finely-honed reflec- tion of what happens when you do your 10,000 hours in London’s sweltering street food trenches.


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