Odd, a little challenging, but never, ever boring
I live in fear of an invite “to see the kitchen”. It happens often when I’m reviewing, and the honest answer is, “No, no, I do not want to meet a chef with a rictus grin and a cleaver, and whose last restaurant I helped to close down.”
Still, at Niklas Ekstedt’s new place at the Great Scotland Yard hotel in Westminster, I’m glad I found myself, straight out of the traps on course number one of a seven-course tasting menu, up close and personal with an oyster flambadou. If I’d not seen the medieval nature of Ekstedt’s cooking set-up with my own eyes, I’d possibly not have taken seriously his claim to be cooking only with fire, and eschewing gas and electricity entirely. But then one sees the open, raging fire, with chefs taking turns to boil beef fat, then dramatically pouring it from a height over some oysters before dressing them with a pond-green nasturtium and beurre blanc dressing, and it’s all rather magical.
