High-profile chef Victor Garvey has taken an uncharacteristic under-the-radar approach with the opening of his latest restaurant, the Japanese-influenced Materia Prima, in Notting Hill this week.
Victor – who wins consistent high praise for the food at his Californian venture Sola in Soho – made headlines with the dramatic closure of his restaurant at the Midland Grand (now a branch of Hawksmoor) after only six months last summer. He then launched and quietly closed a crowdfunding campaign for Materia Prima, which was originally planned for a site in Great Portland Street, Marylebone.
Now open on Westbourne Grove, Materia Prima is billed as ‘the culmination of four years of evolution from chef Victor Garvey, the creative force behind SOLA, Europe’s first Californian restaurant to earn a Michelin star. Where SOLA became known for its precision and luxury, Materia Prima embraces the opposite – intimacy, simplicity and purity’.
The chef says: “It’s my own little world that I’d like to personally invite people into, one service at a time.”
A standard tasting menu is served at £169 alongside a shorter £99 menu at lunch (Thurs-Sun) and a ‘carte blanche’ menu at £214 at dinner (Wed-Sat), plus wine pairings.
Inspired by Victor’s years in Japan, signature dishes include: Line-caught Atlantic bonito cured in chorizo fat, grilled over binchotan charcoal and served with roast onion vinegar jelly, mikan and beni-tade; Chawanmushi of bouchot mussels with finger lime, coriander root and green curry; gyoza of langoustine, duck liver and preserved fig with black truffle and aged black rice vinegar; and Duck wing stuffed with wind-dried sausage, black trumpet mushrooms and koji rice, glazed in ume-plum tare.
