Rating
Cuisine
Fusion / Global
Appeals To
Curious and adventurous human beings. People who like to enjoy edible things that they’re not necessarily going to be able to identify or recognise
Down to earth Dalstonites and foodies visiting this part of London. People who like tasting menus, sparse decor, bloody good wine and places in East London that aren’t ‘very hipster’.
In A Word
Inventive
Right Wabbit
Hi there. We’re going to try and resist making any referenes to Keanu Reaves hugging cybergoth girls. Oops.
I originally hear of White Rabbit via Danny Cheetham – a man who jacked in a career as a photographer to start making the glorious ostentatious burgers of Psychic Burger and the semi-identifyable delicious food experiments we’re about to discover at White Rabbit.
White Rabbit is conveniently located just off of Kingsland Road, opposite a jazz bar. It’s medium to small in size, and set in what looks like an old shopfront.
In terms of food, WR is a bit ‘gastro’ for what you might expect in East London (can we come up with a better word for this already?). It’s fusion cuisine with a focus on seasonal ingredients (not that this is unusual, they just seem let it direct their menu more than most). They are doing some fun and experimental things that work quite well.
As for the atmosphere? No suits here, the place projects an air of casualness – the front of house staff are fashionable, young and don’t even lift. The decor is sparse, spartan and somewhat low budget. Having seen a lot of this in East London, I will call this ‘Shoreditch style’. Plain white – I like the unpretentiousness of it.
There’s also an open kitchen, so if you’re like me, you can go to the chefs with an incessent list of questions about how the hell they do what they do with the food here.
WR boasts a very mixed clientele here, of young and old. I would hazard a guess and say that it’s very popular amongst the locals. They play low volume, usually unidentifyable, often trippy electronic music that comes and goes as the night progresses.
The Drinks
I take a look at the wine menu and discover an entire new category of wine – ‘orange wine’. The waiter explains that this isn’t orange flavoured wine – just a kind of wine with an orange tinge. Seriously though, how the fuck is it that entire category of wine exists that I am ignorant of?
On that note – we pick a ‘Tommy Ruff’ Barosa which, in a first in my experience has managed to get 5/5 on Vivino (an app that basically knows shit about wine). At 14% and with a fuller body than Kim Kardashian after a few months of growth hormones and hack squats, it asserts it’s dominance over the other flavours in the meal we later enjoy. It works incredibly well with many of the courses (not that I am to know this at the time)
When this runs out (sad face) the waitress recommends that we try a Navarra instead of the Argentinian one that I was originally going for, letting us try both to prove her point. And she’s completely right. *tips non existent hat*
The Food
Some bread arrives, which my buddy Jason begins to demolish, Ion Cannon style. The butter is served on a stone, which not an onion bhaji. As far as I know, you can’t eat stones, though you can eat onion bhajis, as we are soon to discover…
The idea is that every dish comes out of the kitchen ‘when it’s ready’ and is for sharing, though the waitress tells us that they ‘don’t enforce this’ (my mind fills up with images of policemen truncheoning overweight people – thanks brain)
Asides from the standard ‘Straight Ups’ (single courses), White Rabbit do a 5 course tasting menu (£30) and 7 course tasting menu (£40). Since we’re hungry and decisions are hard, we go for the 7 course one and prepare for glory.
So, here’s what appears (and the order it appears in…)
Beetroot & Onion Bhaji
Slightly spicy and smokey, the beetroot lends a redness to it. It also comes in a mysterious creamy green sauce that neither of us can identify. Gastro bhaji shits on conventional bhajis and arrives only in singles, not the clusters that most Bhajis are served in. Quality, not quantity.
Scallop Ceviche, Squid Ink, Fresh Gherkin, Gooseberry
The whole peppercorns add some crunch (and arent as strong as you might expect them to be) the scallops in the ceviche style are super delicate and hide behind the rich flavour of the black squid ink
Roasted Watermelon, Black Olive Candy, Salted Ricotta
This is fucking awesome. The sweet and chewy watermelon works amazingly well with the salty (yet simultaneously sweet) candied black olive toppings. The ricotta is almost like an afterthought. A happy afterthought following some kind of culinary wet dream. How the balls do you make ricotta taste like that anyway? *shrugs*
Cured Salmon, Walnut Miso, Horseradish
And speaking of that sauce – they’ve managed to make a miso that also tastes like chocolate (again, how?). This needs more walnut pieces and to be… I dunno, immense in size. The salmon plays second fiddle to the miso whilst the walnuts look on in horror.
Also, faces are high in protein – Super great!
Leeks, Hazlenut, Belper Knolee [Ed: don’t know what this is lol], Brown Butter
Damn son this is a buttery leek and there’s also stuff on here that I can’t identify. The black dust is charred leek, with a charcoal flavour that stands completely seperate from the rest of the dish. Interesting idea for a garnish. The hazlenuts are infused with super Shoreditch chef voodoo that make them taste far stronger and better than they should (I assume they’re just roasted really well).
This dish goes splendidly with the Shiraz – the flavours have sex in my mouth.
Also at this point I realise that their food timing for the tasting menu is nigh on perfect. Food comes and goes just at the perfect time.
Courgette Flowers, Tamarind, Ricotta
TEMPURA-XENOMORPH
This starts a conversation about Katy Perry that dissolves into Aliens references. But yeah, I have never eaten this before. It’s tempura style batter (slightly crunchy) around what I assume is the…exotic texture of the courgette flower.
I actually wish the batter wasn’t there so I could see what it looks like, but that wouldn’t work because the batter actually contains ricotta (hooray!). It sits on a sweet and sour kinda spicy sauce that I recognise but can’t identify. I don’t like battered things so this isn’t really one for me – though I admire the ingenuity.
Megram Sole Miso Aubergine, Wild Rice Congee
At first I look at it and think ‘oh fuck it’s another one of those accursed pinbone fish’ – but this turns out to be very easy to eat – as it basically seperates from the bone. We slice it in half, down the middle and go to town.
The rice congee adds some texture and completely absorbs the fish’s taste. It also comes with a piece of …squashed(?) aubergine that has an intensely charred, roided up aubergine flavour. Again, my mouth gets confused and excited (a recurring theme at WR). You can use this and the congee as a garnish.
Cornish Lamb Belly, Green Potatoes, Broad Bean Tops
A rich, pesto-y sauce slathers the green potatoes (green being the theme here, I assume) – which is very splendid. Then I try the lamb. Motherfucker that is some special taste right there – the texture of gammon mixed with one of the most solid tasting lamb sensations I did ever consume.
At some point I go down to the kitchen and ask the chef how the hell they make this one – apparently its a lot of slow cooking and allowing the fat to solidfy and then some other stuff that I forget/don’t understand. I get emotional eating it.
White Chocolate Ganache, Basil, Strawberry Sorbet
Like many other things here, this also makes your tongue excited and confused. There are also mysterious crunchy bits (these are eaten but never identified). The sorbet is a little island of sharpness in a sweet sea of grenache. The dish reminds me a little of the sweet yoghurts I used to eat as a child. Inventive but I guess I’d have got more satisfaction out of cheesecake or something…
The Verdict
There is some extremely exciting and inventive food shenanigans going on at White Rabbit – and I’d recommend that you head down there and order the shit outta that tasting menu so that you get to experience many of them.
Relative to other places in London doing semi-gastro-nouvelle-avand-garde-global-kinda-undefinable food such as this, prices are quite reasonable. The venue and atmosphere also lacks the pomposity and occasional…elitness of other spots doing the same. Also, their wine heavy drinks list is super great.
Faces are high in protein! Super great!
Would return, over and over again.
Super great!
The Details
A 15-16 Bradbury St, London N16 8JN
P 020 7682 0163
W http://www.whiterabbitdalston.com/
T @WhiteRabbitEAT https://twitter.com/WhiteRabbitEAT
