Restaurant review, John Salt, 131 Upper Street, London

I’ve got enough unread books
to last me a lifetime and the idea of ‘smellies’ makes me shudder. This year,
it’s all about experiences. And what an experience John Salt is.

The place itself is a bar and restaurant in London's Islington, an area that has plenty of affluent residents and a main strip that heaves with vintage furniture stores and artisan bakeries, but which hasn't had a restaurant with 'buzz' since, well, does Blair and Brown's meal at Granita count?

Chef Ben Spalding, late of Roganic and his own Stripped Back venture at Broadway Market, has arrived on a six-month residency to put some zing into Islington. Some have mixed feelings about a restaurant on a glorified pub mezzanine - with the attendant chatter and booming music - serving high-concept tasting menus, but I think it’s fun. There’s no murmured acclaim and starched waiting staff here – but then, it’s difficult to stick your little finger out when you’re chewing a brick.

Yes, you may have heard that Spalding’s most noted/notorious dish is a house brick coated in a caramel glaze with a chicken liver parfait on top. Diners are invited to lick the brick; chef tweets pictures of the masonry that comes back into the kitchen with toothmarks and knife gouges. It’s all good fun. But for my money (and the full experience here will cost you plenty), the brick is a distraction. There is some extraordinary cooking elsewhere on the 12 courses (£85 a head).

All the dishes are listed at the bottom of this review but the menu includes nibbles, bread and butter, salad, hen of the woods, scallop, chicken, wild salmon, vacherin risotto, heel of beef, cleanser, cucumber, fennel, after nibbles, coffee/tea. The salad alone has 45 components.

What drink to order with such a line-up is admirably assisted by Tristan, a solemn young sommelier with a dazzling knowledge of obscure wines – he seems to have found some corkers (ouch), each listed with the soil its grapes have grown in, and every one of them has a yarn attached, which he delivers with aplomb. A carafe of water comes with a sprig of douglas fir. Tastebuds, brace!

Read more at http://www.independent.co.uk