46 • The Sunday Times Magazine
OGNISKOHISTORY
The restaurant is part
of the Polish Hearth
Club, founded in 1939
to provide a meeting
place for the Polish
community in exileCOOKING STYLE
“Robust and
rib-sticking, designed
to insulate you from
Baltic winters”SIGNATURE DISH
Pierogi (dumplings filled
with potato, cheese
and onion or shredded
pork and duck)POPULAR DRINK
House-flavoured
vodkas, “served in
carafes for blotting
out everything that
requires blotting”DETAILS
55 Prince’s Gate,
Exhibition Road,
London SW7;
ogniskorestaurant.
co.ukconcerned about that far more
crucial element, the diner. Also
known as meeeee.
It’s often those who work
front, not back, of house who
can make or break your meal.
The young woman at Ciao Bella
in Bloomsbury, a beam of slightly
raucous energy beside her
lugubrious older male colleagues.
She always makes you believe
she’s incredibly pleased to see
you; who cares if it’s not wood-
fired, sourdough, bloody artisan
pizza? The formal informality of
Chez Bruce and their smiling
generosity with the legendary
cheese trolley; yes, the chef Matt
Christmas’s food is heaven, but
it’s the service that leaves you
beaming. The deliciously theatrical
Martin — “Hello laydeez, I am
here for you. You can ask me
anything” — at the glamorous
Grill in NYC who made us feel
like Mad Men insiders, not
out-of-town grockles. The waiter
in Syracuse, Sicily, who drove us
home because we were trapped by
a sudden apocalyptic downpour.
It’s these people who make the
most pleasurable restaurant
experiences. If the food’s great,
hooray. But sometimes just
“good” is good enough.
Take Ognisko in Kensington,
west London. It’s a place I’m
devoted to for reasons I find hard
to grasp. Everything about it is
unlikely: its location, in a grand
stucco mansion on one of those
blank thoroughfares leading
down to museum row; its historic
status as a club for Polish émigrés;
its many portraits — hello, Rula
Lenska — gazing down at you
from a staircase going who
knows where; its food, robust and
rib-sticking, designed to insulate
you from Baltic winters rather
than set you up for a spot of lightgallery-going. With its whole roast
duck stuffed with buckwheat, or
potato, cheese and onion pierogi,
Ognisko isn’t that hung up on
seasonality and not at all on trends
or fashions: here, even when the
terrace is laid out with its lanterns
and gazebo for hot city days, it’s
always November on the plate.
I adore Ognisko’s placki — crisp
shredded potato pancakes — with
chicken livers and sour cherries,
or kaszanka, blood sausage withChefs reign, but
it’s service that
gives you a smile
Marina O’Loughlin
O
ne surprising thing has
jumped out at me writing
this series: none of the places
I’ve wanted to revisit has been
about the chefs. I’ve always said
that restaurants are about far
more than food — something
that’s been brought forcibly and
literally home by these lockdowns.
We now have access to dishes
from some of the country’s finest
kitchens, delivered to our own.
But much as I do — and will
continue to — support these
delivery services (we must, if we
want the actual restaurants to
survive), no matter how glorious
the dishes are, the experience
will never be the same.
The cult of the celebrity chef,
particularly, has always left me
cold. Sacrilege for a restaurant
writer? Not really. Neither
would I buy a car for nothing
other than the engine, no matter
how thrusting and noisy. The
restaurants I love, the ones that
mean the most, half the time I’ve
no idea who’s in the kitchen.
“Chef ’s table” set-ups excluded,
it’s what happens out front
that matters, and in the best
restaurants you get little sense
of the kitchen other than as a
hidden machine of many moving
parts. It’s the result that thrills,
not the process. Don’t get me
wrong: this isn’t a diss of chefs
— far from it. All love to them,
especially now. But here I’m mostTa b l e Ta l k
The Polish restaurant Ognisko reminds our
critic that dining out is about more than food