New Openings: Rochelle Canteen at the ICA
The ICA puts eating on the cultural agenda as Rochelle Canteen comes to The Mall
What’s new? Shoreditch’s best kept secret is out. Rochelle Canteen has taken over the bar at the revitalised ICA
Behind the scenes: ICA director Stefan Kalmár, ex-Artists Space New York, wants visitors to be "fed well" with "passion and integrity", two things Rochelle Canteen founders Margot Henderson (wife of St John’s Fergus) and Melanie Arnold have in spades. Head chef Ben Coombs joins them from the mothership.
The concept: The original Rochelle Canteen, opened in a converted school bike shed in 2006, is a semi-secret Shoreditch hideaway beloved of artists, designers, cooks and thesps. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve sat at its communal tables elbow to elbow with an off-duty A-lister (ace eavesdropping, you can imagine).
If this lot follow Arnold and Henderson to The Mall – and I’m guessing they will – the ICA will have itself a hit. Rochelle hasn’t gone all "uptown". Its bare bones style suits the "pre-loved" space adorned simply with cheese plants, rows of white pegs and white Alvar Aalto furniture. One thing I’m not sold on is the table-sharing: communal tables are one thing, splitting a four-top with strangers quite another.
What’s cooking?A daily-changing menu of seasonal European cooking served on round white plates (unusual these days). Ingredients are taken right to the point of rusticity, hence brill, crisp-skinned but yielding beneath, accompanied by lentils, slightly stewy, not terribly pretty but extremely delicious.
The recipes aren’t out-of-the-ordinary but their comic book proportions certainly are. Harissa-spiced spatchcocked quail arrives with its bodyweight in aioli; a bunch of radishes, nicked from Mr McGregor’s garden by the look of them, come with a pool of creamy smoked cod’s roe.
A request for a spot of bread to mop up said cod’s roe brings three inch-thick cross sections of sourdough cut from the middle of the loaf. There’s nothing polite about his food, and in the case of the fleshy red quince with meringue and cream for pudding, it’s verging on impolite.
Signature dishes: Desperate Dan himself would be felled by the pheasant and trotter pie. I think of it as a St John pie but, dare I say it, I enjoyed it here more. It doesn’t say it feeds two but I believe that it could: rich and luscious, it’s packed with nuggets of bacon and juicy bird. I was still picking at bits of baked on suet crust until well past the need-to-lie-down stage. And with that, I’ve laid down my fat stores for winter.
Best for: Parties. Arnold and Henderson are London’s coolest caterers and now they have the ICA’s Nash and Brandon rooms to play with. That’s the office do sorted.
Rochelle Bar & Canteen at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, The Mall, London, SW1Y 5AH, 020 7729 5677, arnoldandhenderson. com
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