To be a veteran Londoner is to be reflexively befuddled by Canary Wharf; a surveilled, corporate theme park that transforms, at the weekend, into a culturally barren ghost town of shuttered Prets, bored families looking at massive fountains, and bodycam-wearing security guards.
Or, at least, that’s how the script is supposed to go. On a recent, blazingly sunny Sunday evening, no one in this Lego metropolis seemed to have got the memo that they were meant to be either off in glitzier postcodes or tucked away in their enormous high-rise apartments. Crowds streamed from the Tube and out into fragrant gardens; electric boats of day drinkers scudded across Wood Wharf’s mirrored waters; and the place felt, with its multicultural, boba-slurping hordes and light bouncing off futurist surfaces, like a prosperous sci-fi utopia magicked out of thin air.
And then, squatting at the heart of all this, there was Roe: the all-new venture from the consummate hit-makers behind Fallow, and a restaurant that neatly embodies some of the contradictions of its misunderstood environment. Roe is unfathomably huge, shot through with a slick, ruthless flintiness and, for all its chef-pleasing ingredients, unabashed in its pursuit of mass-appeal. It probably shouldn’t work. But it really, really does, and the reason for that is its digitally savvy founding team — chefs Will Murray and Jack Croft, plus operational consigliere James Robson — that recognise even a blockbuster restaurant lives and dies on its microscopic details and meticulously wrought moments of deliciousness.
It’s hard to overstate the scale of it. Roe pretty much occupies the entire, cylindrical ground floor of a jutting residential skyscraper. Inside, a space with no real capacity limit (it’s officially 500 covers with an outdoor terrace) has cleverly been broken up into an unearthly undercroft by reams of marble-topped counter, a space-age stretch of open kitchen, a little aeroponic farm by reception, and 3D-printed sculptural cladding, inspired by coral formations but vaguely redolent of malevolent fungi in The Last of Us. If fevered speculation about Fallow’s accounts is one of the hospitality industry’s favourite pastimes, then Roe’s fit-out is the confirmatory Ferrari on the driveway.
A snack of padron peppers and English peas lit the touch paper beautifully: a vigorously blistered, oiled tumble of greens with the sprinkled crunch of buckwheat and a rambunctious salt and pepper seasoning. Breaded nubbins of garlic mushrooms hit like a freight train of moreish, kombu-dusted umami. And then, between gulps of Atlantic Pale Ale, there was the polyphonic riot of pork scratching-strewn cuttlefish toast, and mint sauce-doused lamb ribs so succulent and yielding they practically fell off the bone under nothing but a hard stare.
It’s hard to overstate the scale of it. Roe pretty much occupies the entire ground floor of a jutting skyscraper
Which all just about primed us for the deranged brilliance of a flavoursome, puffed flatbread heaped in barrelling, richly spiced pork and snail vindaloo. “I was not expecting that heat,” said my pal, with a delirious grin. This enlivening eclecticism and digital age visual flair is part of the Fallow team’s established signature. Murray and Croft (working here with head chef Jon Bowring) may emphasise the sustainability of their cooking, but the inspiration — whether it is skewers indebted to Turkish ocakbasi or a dessert riff on mint Viennetta — tends to come from a high-low, quintessentially British approach that is classical in sensibility but irreverent in spirit.
If there were blots then they were faint — the somewhat repetitive reappearance of yet more padrons alongside a perfectly nice (yet perhaps not wholly necessary) venison mixed grill platter. We finished with a piece of meat fruit-level trickery: a banana parfait set by what I imagine is a complex, custom mould into the shape of a perfect, vanilla-flecked whole banana, accessorised with sticky tendrils of candied skin, and a ravishing drenching of warm rum caramel. If it was another flex, another show of financial might and technical capability, then it was the best sort; a fitting visual motif for a restaurant and an area that is not what it first appears. Roe is both big and clever. And what could have easily been a victim of sequel bloat feels, instead, like one of the defining, gravity-defying openings of the year.
