Ekstedt At The Yard

Can a restaurant experience be brave, pushing the limits, yet deeply ‘analogue’? Thrillingly, yes. Wood smoke is in the air, even though the dining room is in the former red brick police HQ, now the striking Hyatt-owned Great Scotland Yard hotel, just off Whitehall. Not only is there a vast wood-burning domed oven & strictly no pizza on the menu, the open kitchen reveals dancing flames and glowing embers and cast iron skillets & medieval looking culinary accoutrements This is Nordic nirvana courtesy of Niklas Ekstedt, founder of the Michelin-starred Ekstedt in Stockholm, who turns out to be a (no longer) closet Anglophile (and perhaps points to the future in this era of fuel shortages?) The full seven course tasting menu is a must to truly experience the breadth of deliciousness achieved around ancient open-fire cooking methods eschewing electric ovens and gas burners in the kitchen. The first course is a scene stealer, oyster flambadou, referring to a cast iron implement with a cone the size of a tea cup and a pea sized hole at its tip to drop sizzling smoky beef fat onto the mollusc. This is probably the best oyster I will ever taste. Despite dining with an equally loquacious friend, we are both temporarily rendered speechless mouthing ‘wow’. The treat arrives with tiny crunchy balls of apple, bathed in beurre blanc, topped with a nasturtium leaf and explodes with pure, briny, revelatory flavour. This is not a meal for the squeamish or unadventurous. Next up is a ‘Nordic taco’ made from smoked ruby-red reindeer heart seared in a bowl at the table with all-spice and tart lingonberries to wrap in a fermented flatbread. It is so intensely, viscerally savoury and speaks of being deep in the wilds of Northern Scandinavia among the Sani, the indigenous reindeer herders Ekstedt grew up with who so influenced his primal ‘cooking’ technique. With the chefs (head chef opened Ekstedt’s wine bar) coming out of the kitchen to explain and present sizzling dishes, it reminds me of the exhilaration I experienced when I first visited Noma back in 2008 when New Nordic was truly new and I’d never tasted vendace roe, here served simply and exquisitely on charred, ember cooked leek. There’s a lobster dish with a most unusual juxtaposition of ingredients (a few surprises are de rigueur) and hay smoked mallard that comes with exceptional black pudding and trout roe, buckwheat and creamy, earthy turnip puree. It tastes like the soul of a forest. Dishes are explained with poetic pride as are the wine pairings (plenty of unexpected joys such as a Jura red) or soft beverages ranging from barley waters to rosehip, kombucha to freshly pressed apple juice. Dessert arrives as wood-fired cep souffle, improbably light and serendipitously partnered with the tang of wild blueberries and subtle resin of pine needle ice-cream. The dining room doesn’t have the rustic hygge of the Stockholm original I visited some four years ago, yet despite being within the hotel, it feels cosy and Scandi cosseting. Forget the booking frenzy surrounding Noma, somehow voted number one in The World’s 50 Best at its new address, here’s how to experience the Nordic spirit in London without prodigious outlay and push the boundaries of what’s delicious. Reviewed by Sudi Pigott