It’s not every day that you pop to Selfridges for dinner at the hand of one of the country’s best young chefs. Recently though I did just that at a special #MeetTheChefs dinner, one of a series put on annually by Selfridges to celebrate some of Britain’s most exciting chefs.
This evening’s was by
Mark Moriarty, a young chef who recently won the
San Pellegrino Young Chef 2015 award. He might look a little like an unshaved teenager, but his CV reads like that of a seasoned kitchen pro with stints on the stoves of the country’s most illustrious restaurants (The Greenhouse, The Ledbury and Restaurant Tom Aikens to name but a few). dinners were in a tiny little nook of a restaurant in Selfridges called
The Corner Restaurant and Champagne Bar. This was a find in itself. It’s sneakily hidden away on the 2
nd floor in the far corner overlooking the bustle of Oxford street and is charming. I can imagine the joy of aggravated husbands stumbling upon it and escaping their wives’ shopping escapades with a sneaky flute or two.
Mark explained that the ethos of his menu was to explore Irish food, both modern and traditional. As such, the menu read in tomes of wonderful Irish sounding ingredients: oyster, leek, hay porridge and, duh, Guinness. My last encounter with modern Irish food was incredible (on a
recent trip to Ireland with Jameson Whisky) and I keep hearing about all these hungry young chefs coming out of Ireland and tearing up London, so I was excited to get stuck in.
First up; some amuse bouche, including the most delicious brioche loaf with a soured butter and a clever dish of ‘cigars’ and aioli. The cigars were in fact crispy pastry shells, filled with salted cod and served in a cigar box, and the aioli came with a red pepper sauce, so that it resembled scallop. Clever, clever, clever.
Curiouser and curiouser was a dish described starkly in the menu as ‘beef, radish, oyster’.
You know when you see a dish like that that it really isn’t going to be that simple. True enough, this arrived adorned with all sorts of other ingredients, including some sort of green dust, cubes of jelly, emulsions and a rather delicious foraged sea herb on top called ‘the oyster leaf’. Surprisingly enough, this tastes exactly like an oyster. The beef came raw as a tartare and was well flavoured, if a little lacking in acidity from something like pickled capers, which I like a lot of in my tartares.
Next – home smoked salmon with a 'baked potato', leek and egg. You won't be surprised by this point to learn that the baked potato was like no snack granny ever rustled up before. The potato flesh was whipped up and emulsified, piped back into the potato and served as a creamy, unctuous bite.
A salt baked celeriac with hay and hazelnuts brought me my highlight of the entire meal. This was the dish that won Mark the Young Chef of the Year award and, naturally, therefore was unbelievable.
Perfectly balanced, buttery and rich…made even more special by the notable absence of meat, this was a memorable dish. Meat free Mondays are looking ever more attractive!
The savouries were brought to a resoundingly yummy close with a hearty main of braised pork, BBQ cabbage, parsley and bacon. This was a full on, smack you in the face, meaty powerhouse and I adored it.
I loved my time at Selfridges. The food was excellent and it was interesting to be introduced to a young chef cooking such extraordinary food. One to watch and an event series to put firmly in your calendar for next time round.
