Fay Maschler reviews Lino: Cooking worth the detour on this old factory floor

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Fay Maschler9 January 2019

This may be your Veganuary — and if so, let me be the first to congratulate you — but it is not mine. Probably just as well as the only dish I see on the menu at recently opened Lino that qualifies is a small plate of roasted beetroot, black garlic, dates and cashews.

“Risotto” of grains roasted in brown butter with winter mushrooms almost scrapes in, but there is that pesky dairy fat in there. If the Parmesan could be extracted from it, lasagne of pumpkin and Jerusalem artichoke is allowable. Oh, look, here is a snack of BBQ baby gem, parsley and olive tapenade that you could dally with. None of the desserts would be permitted.

What I do appreciate and enjoy is healthy, evolved, carefully considered, woke food that looks for edge and emphasis in pickles, ferments, smoke and salt and virtue in the scrupulous husbandry of resources. Lino’s chef Richard Falk has the decided advantage of having worked at The Ledbury and with Robin Gill at The Dairy in Clapham.

He has alighted in a rather freaky spot — for eating anyway. Wright & Bell — “individual bars for city living”, whose first project was The Kitty Hawk and Backroom Bar in Moorgate — is the designer in this handsome building that was a linoleum factory (obvs) adjacent to St Bartholomew’s Hospital.

What seem like acres of wasted space around a large clover-shaped bar topped with polished tulipwood — no drinkers either time I visited — are fringed on one side by apparently marooned marble tables and sofas where the seat/height differential renders everyone infantilised. I know now what it must feel like to be a meerkat feeding, which is unsettling.

An open kitchen can hardly be described as a feature as it is barely visible across the concrete prairie. There is crafty detail, though: some of the narrower pipes overhead are painted a bold scarlet and much of the upholstery is in soft pastel velvet. The floor, as mentioned, is concrete: why no lino? But keep pushing at the two pairs of original heavy factory doors — the cooking is well worth the detour.

Tender: Pork belly, cavolo nero, celeriac and white cabbage choucroute
Matt Writtle

A little list of snacks that can up the bill — but it is a bill that can afford to be upped — includes crisply crumbed sauerkraut and cheddar croquettes, three in a black saucer surrounded by truffled mayonnaise for £5. The lactic acid of the fermented cabbage — made in-house, natch — is justified and delicious reproof to the creaminess of everything else.

From the main menu, Small Plates deliver that aforementioned roasted beetroot assembly that will have vegans the world over rejoicing as they note the gradations of texture in the root, aged garlic, dates and cashew nuts and the background music of a modicum of innate sweetness. Beef is aged too for a lush coherent tartare gilded with bone marrow and smoked egg yolk.

At dinner, grilled mackerel with oyster mayo and slices of pickled cucumber makes an ideal first course and at lunch another day a buttery, cheesy, flaky, earthy, warming slice of tart makes a welcome appearance. Shiny shallots with blackened edges adorn the top and later in the meal charring is a feature of the side dish of sweetheart (aka hispi) cabbage tossed with butter and shards of lemon zest.

Oxtail and potato hotpot — prepared Lancashire style — gets the best out of an often-neglected ingredient with plenty of swish flavours waiting to be lengthily drawn out. Tender slices of pork belly are accompanied by two kinds of brassica: cavolo nero cooked to a vivid green crisp plus white cabbage cooked in a choucroute with celeriac. The promising sounding side dish of salt-baked celeriac with chicken sauce arrives undercooked and mealy and thus disappoints. Maybe should have given in to triple-cooked chips.

Lino also offers notably well-crafted breakfast and brunch menus. Its stated aim to re-love, re-use and re-imagine is apparent in the excellent dessert of croissant bread and butter pudding flavoured with marmalade and coffee. There is nothing left on the plate of another choice, warm chocolate mousse with milk ice cream, chocolate biscuit and quince, for anyone to re-gift.

A further bit of good intention is the water policy. Unlimited filtered still and sparkling by Belu is provided for £1, all of which is given to WaterAid. And 100 per cent of the service charge goes to the team, one member of which, namely Claire, made our lunch extra enjoyable. “I wanted to invite her home,” wrote Amy, my stepdaughter, later “because it felt like nothing would ever be problematic with her in the room.”

Fay Maschler's favourite restaurants of 2018

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