Kitchen Theory is one of those strange restaurants that doesn't look like a restaurant at all. Hidden away among the London backstreets around Holborn and Chancery Lane, it's the sort of place that, were it not for kindly staff waiting on the door to usher in hesitant journalists, could have you knocking on doors for hours before you arrived at the right spot. Most restaurants, from McDonalds to The Fat Duck, tend to make it pretty clear that within lies a place to gorge yourself on your choice of burgers or snail porridge, but Kitchen Theory is a side-door sort of establishment that uses the air of a speakeasy or underground club to add to its considerable mystique.
Perhaps the real reason behind the site's rather lacklustre signage owes to the fact that it isn't really a restaurant at all. Billed as a 'London-based design studio' providing 'Multisensory Dining Experiences', Kitchen Theory is the brainchild of chef-cum-creative director Jozef Youssef who, in collaboration with various science bods, foodies and psychologists, crafts eating experiences which go far beyond the serving of tasty grub. Behind Youssef's philosophy is the idea that we eat with our eyes, hands and ears as much as we do with our mouths, leading the charismatic culinary creative to craft the Kitchen Theory experience, an eight-course taster menu blending high-end gastronomic innovation with the sort of show and spectacle that would make P.T. Barnum jealous. Free food in the form of in-office cookies and half a Diet Coke down the local pub are usually enough to keep me from banging on the boss's door, so such a proposition had the salivary glands going into overdrive.
