“Alternatively, I'll go to the restaurant and take a sad photograph of the outside, and write an equally sad piece on how I didn’t get to see the inside.”

It was potentially one of the lowest moments in my career: begging a celebrity chef representative (via email) to secure me a table at a hotter-than-hot restaurant – but it worked.

The restaurant in question? Dabbous, decidedly the restaurant of the moment in London’s fickle (and flourishing) restaurant scene, and described by restaurant critic par excellence Jay Rayner as “so damn hot you could blister your palms on it”.

The recipient of the above closing argument to an embarrassingly epic appeal? The much-obliging Borra Garson of Deborah McKenna Ltd., who, without much fanfare, organised me a table for lunch at his client Ollie Dabbous’s West-End restaurant during my recent trip to post-Olympics London.

In my defence, I tried booking the traditional way. I sent an email in July, a month before my trip, and didn’t specify a day or time. I simply said that I would take whatever was available, as Rayner’s review (written in May) suggested that he had four unsuccessful attempts before getting a seat.

I received a quick, civil reply, stating that the first available lunch booking was April 2013. Yes, April 2013. Impressive if you consider that Dabbous first opened its doors on 20 January 2012. (At the time of writing, the first available dinner reservation is September 2013.) Bar the fact that I was only spending one week in London, I couldn’t possibly not eat at the hottest new restaurant in town – everyone was talking about it, even in South Africa – hence the soliciting email.

But enough about reservations and reviews. I can hear the collective mumbling of “So, what’s the fuss about?”.

Quite simply, the food is phenomenal. Elegant, simple and restrained, yet bursting with flavour. And beautiful.

Owner and head chef Dabbous has, at 31, done a few laps around the Michelin-starred block, most recently at Texture, but also at Hibiscus and Raymond Blanc’s Le Manoir, and performed shorter stints at The Fat Duck, Noma and Pierre Gagnaire. The eponymous eatery is his first solo venture and has placed him firmly on Restaurant magazine’s list of young chefs shaping the UK culinary scene. And I could absolutely see why.

Ollie’s menu is seasonal and well balanced, available in à la carte or tasting menu format. (I went for the latter, naturally. This meal was one experience that almost certainly wouldn’t be repeated.) Dishes are served in slightly smaller portions and accessibly priced, which definitely attributes to the restaurant’s success.

Discounting the complimentary green olives (luminous and fat) and brown bag of bread (stamped with the date), the meal surprised and impressed from the get go. The first course was simply called “Peas and mint”, and was such a punch in the flavour stomach that I could have left the restaurant thereafter and still called it the best meal of my life. An intensely flavourful pea mousse was topped with a strewn assortment of peas (some left in the pod), a mint granita and a few mint leaves, and decorated with a pea shoot and a lone miniscule violet.
 
The second course was mixed alliums in a chilled pine infusion. Again, delicate and beautiful and packed with flavour. It was followed by coddled free-range egg with woodland mushrooms and smoked butter, deftly served in the shell on a hen’s nest of sorts. Delicious.

The meatier courses were led by braised halibut with coastal herbs, topped with braised celery and a pair of ice-cream-pink slices of pickled garlic. Thereafter came barbequed Iberico pork, perfectly cooked and served on savoury acorn praline with turnip tops and apple vinegar. It was such an interesting and successful match – sweet and umami and the same time – that it would have inspired plate licking, had it not been for the two dessert courses that lay ahead, or the hip-yet-friendly waiter that gracefully removed the plate.

The first was “Ripe peach in its own juice” (a peach quarter simply surrounded by the most intense peach juice imaginable), followed by an equally unassuming sounding “Custard cream pie”. The latter looked like a pretty cupcake: a fragile phyllo casing filled with custard cream and a dash of banana mousse, and decorated with a flourish of cream and a purple violet. Perfection.

The magic of Ollie’s food is as much in the intense flavours as in the way that not a single piece on the plate is redundant. You want to – in fact, have to – devour every little bit.

Also, it’s the perfect food for the space in which it is being served. It’s my kind of restaurant: not a starched white tablecloth or gratuitous vase of flowers in sight. The design is industrial yet organic, with exposed brickwork, concrete floors, natural wooden tables, copper pipes and metal shelving – the ideal austere canvas to show off Ollie’s elegant food.

For the record, months before my booking plea, I asked Borra if Ollie would come to South Africa to speak at the Eat Out Conference. Said Borra, “He is overwhelmingly tied to the kitchen at the moment and for the foreseeable future. So unless the restaurant is closed, he doesn’t leave the country!”

As far as I could see, the cute redhead chef barely leaves the kitchen. The only time I spotted him during the epic lunch was when he popped his head out the kitchen door to scan the restaurant (presumably for the Tilda Swinton-looking sommelier). I got a quick wink and a naughty smile, and he got… well, a fan for life.

Dabbous, 39 Whitfield Street, London W1T 2SF, www.dabbous.co.uk,  020 7323 1544

By Anelde Greeff

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