Food Review: One Star House Party
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The trio of chefs behind One Star House Party are on the road. They spend a month in each of the 20 destinations on their tour of the globe, opening their pop-up and steeping themselves in the cooking techniques and ingredients of their host country at the same time. Now they've arrived in a Notting Hill gallery-space, serving up eight courses from the eight different countries they've stopped at already.
The results are incredible. Smoked aubergine bread, still warmly steaming when we tear into it, comes with two caramelised, honey-licked garlic cloves on the side and a scoop of roasted hummus, rich and grainy against the softness of the bread.
And that's just the opener. Where some choiceless set menus might stick with crowd-pleasers, the OSHP line-up is crammed with seriously ambitious dishes.
Flavours like hazelnut butter and smoked beetroot sit together with slices of beef fillet, the beef soft and rare in the middle, the edges lacquered with biltong ingredients. It's one of our favourite dishes of the evening, inspired by South Africa. We're less struck by the sweet courses: a pumpkin-porridge confection inspired by their visit to Everest Base Camp and a dish featuring coconut tapioca and acerbic kaffir lime from their stint in Thailand. But that's a personal taste thing, and there's no way we'd want to sacrifice the ambition of the earlier courses for a playing-it-safer finish.
This is a dinner you'd have to clear your evening for: every course is painstakingly tweaked in the open kitchen, and comes with with a lot of enthusiasm and backstory from the chef delivering it to your table. We're there for 3.5 hours, all told. But for a tour of two continents, that's positively whirlwind... Book a place, load up on drinks — it's BYO — and settle in for the scenic route through dinner.
Advance reservations required. OSHP London runs until 3 November 2017. One Star House Party, Unit 1 Gallery, 1 Bard Road, W10 6TP.
Last Updated 13 October 2017