One of the things that restaurant owners invariably find most annoying about critics — and we cannot do the full, unabridged list as we would literally be here all day — is that we visit too early. That, blinded by our manic desire to be first, we show up and paw at the glass like cats, desperate to be let in to pass judgment on something that isn’t quite ready. My rejoinder to this has always been that it is really an issue about the ceding of control as much as journalistic impatience; that, really, the “right time” to visit for most chefs will be some amorphous, faraway point in the future that’s specifically dictated by them.
However, I am willing to now accept that in the case of Chet’s — LA-based, Thai-American chef Kris Yenbamroong’s collaborative comfort food concept with Ennismore hotels — I almost certainly jumped the critical gun. Visiting last summer, when it debuted, amid sweltering end-times temperatures, as a four-month residency in the basement of The Hoxton in Holborn, my broad sense was of a fitfully effective, lightly confusing work in progress. But now it is time for me to eat crow. Because here is Yenbamroong’s creation as it was initially conceived: a huge, intricately wrought, all-day operation within The Hoxton’s new Shepherd’s Bush hotel — and it is truly a thing of screaming, irrepressible brilliance that prospers because it understands that US diner culture is about maximalist abundance of spirit as much as portions. I absolutely get it now. And I have scarcely been so happy to be reminded that first or even second impressions can count for nothing.
Chet’s is also, you could argue, not in the most obvious of glamour locations. Perched beside the ragtag, traffic-clogged snarl of the Shepherd’s Bush Green gyratory, the newest Hoxton is a visually incongruous 237-room behemoth in the handsomely rebuilt site of the old post office. Inside, the £35 million fantasy deepens and intensifies with a vast open lobby space, low California sunset lighting, jungly plants and retro booths. There is unobtrusive music drifting from the speakers but, on the two lunchtimes that I visited, the dominant soundtrack in the bar area was people on laptop video calls, endlessly “checking in on deliverables” and “circling back” in between furtive bites of crispy rice salad.
That Chet’s would be so quickly embraced by the remote working era’s waifs and strays is testament to the boldness, breadth and expert nostalgia of Yenbamroong’s food. The tuna melt is a case in point: a sharply laminated sourdough toastie, served with a double fistful of crisps, and barely holding onto its delectably unholy spill of herbal, larb-infused fishy mayo and melted American cheese. Smoke-wreathed wok-fried greens proved the kitchen can do subtle; sticky wings, meanwhile, had a moonscape of deep-fried crust and a sweet, punchy slick of fish sauce caramel. But it is the pineapple rice — a deeply spiced, kitchen-sink cascade that’s served in half a hollowed-out pineapple shell — that probably best encapsulates this place’s embrace of deceptively nuanced high camp and barrelling south-east Asian flavours.
Chet’s prospers because it understands that US diner culture is about maximalist abundance of spirit as much as portions
On the drinks side, this spirit was evident in the grippy orange wine from Litmus in Kent that we tried (as at Yenbamgroong’s US-based Night+Market, there is a heavy emphasis on natural wines) and the four-person “full moon bucket” rum cocktail that regrettably we didn’t. Yes, there were still stray issues — the battered, five-spice dusted riff on a steakhouse “blooming onion” lacked heat, crispness and its advertised tingle. But the gleeful expansiveness of the menu, and the reverberating sense of a passionate, talented team enjoying themselves, crowds out any stray missteps. At my second visit, after polishing off an inspired Thai tea cream tart, I stepped out past the marquee-style exterior sign that is a fitting herald for a restaurant that is an understated, box office addition to the city. I may not have got on with the dress rehearsal.But Chet’s full, blockbuster production is one I plan to experience again and again.
