sauce,” says our chef/server
disingenuously). Again, beautiful.
And they remain beautiful until
the sweet finales, one that
involves pounding leaves of
verbena with pestles suspended
overhead while they pour over
liquid nitrogen, flashing and
spitting like icy sparklers in the
gloaming. (“I think I’ve freezer
burns on my elbow,” one pal
marvels.) Topped with a
custardy ice cream, biscuit
crumbs and crunchy rocks of,
I think, dehydrated rhubarb, it’s
crumble as reinvented by Dr
Jekyll, dreamlike and dreamy.
Otherwise the experience is
unsettling. I can’t quite dissect it.
Finally it dawns: if the cannibal
entrepreneur in the recent
smash horror movie Fresh ran a
restaurant ... From the moment
we’re fetched from our sinister
pre-dinner bar — think Fritzl
with fake cherry blossom — to
one of the 16 seats in the black
and purple room, the mood is
Michelin Man. Subtle.) But
I can’t forgive the unforgivable
music, the soundtrack for
provincial nightclubs called
Scandals where the drinks
pairing is mostly WKD. There’s
never any excuse for Simply Red
remixed until your entrails rattle.
I feel sorry for these lovely sous-
chefs in their leather aprons,
looking as though they’d be
more at home with Nine Inch
Nails. Having ears bled nightly
by this basic nonsense must be
some kind of exquisite torture.
Perhaps it’s not Fresh, but Hostel.
Sheridan appears to be an
obsessive talent. I get the
impression he’s evolving and
innovating, honing his craft
until every dish is a jaw-dropper.
But this is a restaurant way more
about chef than diners. “I want
people to walk in and say, ‘What
the f*** is this?’ ” he has said.
Andy, mate: job done n
Twitter: @marinaoloughlin
Insta: @marinagpoloughlinPLATE OF
THE NATION
Poon’s Chilli
Vinegar
DressingPoon’s in Chinatown was
one of the first places in
London to show me the
depth, complexity and sheer
wonder of real Chinese
cooking. Its wind-dried
sausage dishes: heaven.
Amy Poon, daughter of
the family who ran it, has
now launched this small
selection of sauces, a
culmination of what she
describes as “an evolving
food business”.
I first tried her chilli vinegar
during lockdown on some
gorgeously plump, delicate
wontons from Wontoneria,
her collaboration with the
chef Stevie Parle. The
perfect companion to these
dumplings, it’s a marriage,
she says, between classic
Shanghainese “red oil”
wonton sauce and Chinese
vinegar. A handful of
Freshasia dumplings with
a generous splash of this
beauty make a brilliant
quick lunch. Or try her
other sauces — Extraordinary
Chilli Oil, First Extract Soy
Sauce, WO Sauce — for that
matter. They look so beautiful
on the shelf too. MO’L£7.50; poonslondon.comHOW MUCH?
12-course tasting menu
£100 per person
Total for three, including
drinks and 10% service
charge £428ominous. A multicoloured light
tube installation makes us look
variously menopausal, jaundiced,
frozen and decomposed.
Sheridan, teeth gleaming
wolfishly under the ultraviolet,
even has a touch of Sebastian
Stan. It reminds me of Berlin’s
equally unheimlich Nobelhart &
Schmutzig, where, too, I fretted
they might be taking the “brutal
local” ethic a tiny bit literally.
Their place, their taste. It’s all
theatre, even if there seems to
be more plating up than cooking
going on. (There’s a larger
kitchen in the warren of rooms,
many other versions of 8. On its
black doors is an image of theThe Sunday Times Magazine • 47