Park's Edge Bar and Kitchen Is Ruffling Local Feathers

Park’s Edge Bar and Kitchen isn’t the first restaurant to assert that it is "challenging taste and flavour combinations". It is a bold claim, and one that is not always fulfilled, as we recently discovered with Flavour Bastard. Understandably, we are cautiously intrigued by the restaurant’s affirmation: "we may have ruffled a few local feathers".

The menu reads as a simple selection of four to five dishes per course. And yet, the list of unusual ingredients keeps the eye lingering; not quite so simple to choose.

Our waiter serves us some Irish soda bread with honey butter as an appetiser. The bread is warm and soft, freshly baked we suspect, and the sweet and salty butter (a must-try combination) melts into it. Bliss.

For starters, we order the couscous and buttermilk foam, and the lamb breast and kimchi. Both dishes are as attractive as they are appetising. The couscous is plump and sweet, like rice pudding, and complemented beautifully by the slightly salty almond butter and light buttermilk foam. Had it been served for dessert, we would have been equally pleased. The lamb is rich and succulent. The pleasant heat from the sauce is offset by the sweetness from the pear purée. A solid start to a promising evening.

The main course is similarly satisfying. The salt baked celeriac, kale and crème fraîche is another perfect marriage of sweet and salty. The gilt-head sea bream is a sea of textures and flavours, with the fish flaking delicately off the fork.

Dessert is no less imaginative. We follow the waiter’s recommendation and try the parsnip and coffee mousse, albeit with a certain apprehension; carrot cake is one thing, but parsnips? Any concerns about vegetables for pudding are short lived, as the dessert is a triumph. The caramelised parsnip delivers both earthy and sweet notes, which are picked up by the coffee mousse and frozen yoghurt respectively. The chocolate soil adds a much-needed crunch to balance the creamy mousse. We also try the apple and rhubarb crumble, which is a generous helping of home comfort.

Set near Dulwich Village, the restaurant might be off the beaten track for the London-centric foodie, but it seems the road less travelled has its own bijou restaurants, ones that ruffle local feathers in the best possible way.

Park’s Edge Bar and Kitchen , 49 - 51 Norwood Road, Herne Hill, London SE24 9AA.