Steve Parle’s “funky” café, by the canal in North Kensington, offers “thoughtful” food from an “eclectic” and ever-changing set menu; it’s “gone downhill” since it opened, though – results can be “patchy depending on the night”, and “amateurish” service increasingly “seems to believe its own PR”.
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Stevie Parle is a talented young chef, a protege of the River Cafe and Petersham Nurseries, and a star of London's exciting/wanky pop-up restaurant scene. He has wowed some knowledgable critics, and Observer Food Monthly made him their Young Chef of the Year for 2010. Last year, at the age of 24, he published a cookbook, My Kitchen: Real Food From Near And Far, of recipes from his travels: Cambodia, Kerala, Oaxaca, Tokyo. Been to any of those? Me neither. The recipes have names like Early Morning On Deck With Ciambelline, Watching The Cherry Blossom. Angela Carter once observed that pretentiousness was a good sign in a young writer, because it was an indication of ambition; something similar is true for chefs. The book made me curious about Parle.
Fay Maschler (15th October 2009)
4/5 stars
The critic vists a “permanent pop-up” restaurant, handily situated “where Ladbroke Grove meets Harrow Road”, which is “open for breakfast, lunch, weekend brunch and on Thursday evenings for themed dinners”. She enjoys a “masterful” Sri Lankan dinner there on her visit, but the menu has apparently now moved on, even if the restaurant is not going to. All very confusing.
John Lancaster (19th February 2011)
Fay Maschler (15th October 2009)
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