Jay Rayner on restaurantsFoodReviewAs Smithfield meat market gets ready to close, a superb new meat-led restaurant opens up its doorsOrigin City, 12 West Smithfield, London EC1A 9JR (020 4568 6240). Starters £11-£15; mains £21-£42; desserts £8-£10. Wines from £24
Slapping the words “nose to tail” on your website is a gutsy flex for a new restaurant, when it’s located fewer than 250m from Fergus Henderson’s St John. They coined the term almost 30 years ago, and have been diligently working their way from arse to nostril and back again ever since. If that “whole animal” approach is what you’re after, why would you come to this new place when the mothership is just over there?
Then again, the team behind Origin City, on the south side of the soon-to-close Smithfield meat market, likes a grand statement. The meat comes from the 600-acre organic estate in Argyll and Bute which, like the restaurant, is owned by the Landsberg family. Seafood comes from Loch Fyne, which they also own. There are wines from the winery in the south of France, which – checks notes – they own. They own an awful lot of stuff, do the Landsbergs. The restaurant does all its own butchery and ages all its own cuts. They make all their own charcuterie, and weave all their own tablecloths from the hair combed from the golden tresses of their willing waiters. That last one isn’t entirely true. The tablecloths here are glacial snowfields of cotton. There are hefty oak floors, tweed-backed banquettes, high ceilings and low lights.
It all has a 90s power-lunch vibe, and I am very much here for it. The thing about those 90s power-lunch places is that they were comfortable. You could pull up to the table, order that ill-advised third Martini and stay the course. They were engineered for Lunch and Dinner, with a capital L and D. This is one of those places. The tables are big. The music isn’t intrusive. The menu is readable. More important than all of this, obviously, is the food. It’s good. At times it is nothing short of magnificent. As someone guilty of flashing more thigh than is strictly necessary in the interests of promotion, I understand the need for a hustle. But what matters more than performative statements about how you source your ingredients, is what happens to them. Head chef Graham Chatham, who has cooked at Rules and Daylesford Organic, treats them with old school care, attention and at times, maternal indulgence.
We have a board of their smoked coppa, salami Milanese and their ham, sliced thin enough so you could read the interesting 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 cellulite. 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 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 Tamworth pork loin with a generous ribbon of fat, sliced almost as thin as the coppa, and piled with just enough tuna sauce, plus a sprinkling of golden fried breadcrumbs 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 profound meatiness, with a mustard sauce. It is a trio of huge flavours playing very nicely indeed. You will clean the plate.
There is indeed a nose-to-tail ethos here, but compared to St John over on the other side of Smithfield Market, it is precise and contained. It’s best expressed through roasted Texel hogget, with chunks of liver, kidney and their own merguez sausage lending a waft of spice, all of it brought together by dollops of salsa verde. Order the charred long-stemmed broccoli with anchovy sauce. Definitely order the triple-cooked chips, which are thick, and crusted and crunchy and golden, and speak of time and effort.
Perhaps you are not a meat eater. Perhaps you are rolling your eyes at all this. Quite right, too. Origin City is not for you. Try Masala Zone, which I reviewed last week; they have lots of non-meat options. Here, they recognise that needs must be catered for, hence a starter of summer beets with pickled pear and goat’s curd or the main of a courgette flower with goat’s cheese and romesco. But these feel like acts of politeness rather than commitment. It is a meat-led restaurant. That said, the cooking of stone bass is spectacular. The creamy-white flesh slips apart. The skin, stacked with shiny orange trout roe, is so crisp it makes a rustling noise when a knife-edge is dragged across it. Underneath is a warm “salad Olivier”, which is lots of impeccably crunchy vegetables bound in a warm, thickly emulsified butter sauce. The Origin City kitchen has some classical chops and it’s determined to use them. Desserts include a perfectly made crème brûlée, and a log of chocolate mousse with a raspberry compote centre, enrobed in more dark chocolate, alongside a peanut butter cream. Are there missteps with the food? Yes, a tiny one among the petit fours: a cube of fudge made with beef fat. It’s a lousy idea. Stop it. Stick to the tiny, warm, dolls-house honey madeleines.
Starters are in the mid-teens and mains loiter about £30. Importantly though, it is good value. In addition, the carefully arranged wine list starts in the low £20s and barely manages to get above £40. What’s more it’s shared with its extremely civilised sister wine bar at 56 West Smithfield just across the square. Have a glass of wine you like there over a bowl of rosemary-crusted nuts, perhaps a pinot gris by Clos Jangli of Luxembourg for £6, and you can continue with a whole bottle in the restaurant for £27. Origin City is possibly one of the most traditional restaurants I’ve reviewed this year. Despite the mission statements, the kitchen is not pushing at the boundaries of anything. Instead, it’s doing something rather less celebrated. It’s cooking up a total storm.
News bites
The five-strong Blacklock group, famed for its keenly priced menu of skinny chops and steak sandwiches, is to open its first outpost outside London. The Manchester branch will occupy a space inside the Grade II-listed Freetrade Exchange building on Peter Street, and is due to start trading early next year (theblacklock.com).
Big news in London restaurant circles with the announcement by Jeremy King, founder of the Wolseley group, that he has taken over the lease of the famed Le Caprice, where he started as a restaurateur with partner Chris Corbin back in 1981. Le Caprice came under the ownership of Richard Caring when he bought what had become known as Caprice Holdings (which included the Ivy and J Sheekey) from Corbin and King in 2005. Caring closed it in 2020. When the new restaurant opens, which may not be under the Caprice name, it will be fronted by the original Caprice maître d’ and restaurant director Jesus Adorno.
Our heartfelt condolences to the family and friends of the innovative Turkish chef and restaurateur Esra Muslu, whose death has just been announced. Esra trained in Australia before returning to Istanbul where eventually she became head chef for Soho House. She worked for the group in London, then with Yotam Ottolenghi and in 2021 opened the lovely Zahter just off Carnaby Street. A statement released by the restaurant, which she ran with her sister, said, “Her memory will forever reside in our hearts, never to be forgotten. Esra dedicated herself wholeheartedly to her restaurants, especially Zahter, and we vow to honour her legacy by striving to fulfil her vision and elevate it to new heights.”
Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk or follow him on Twitter @jayrayner1
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