Kid
53-55 Frith Street, W1
About £125 per head
I suppose we should get ahead of this because you’re all going to hear about it eventually: yes, I did try and get into Kid via the window instead of the door. Critics are supposed to highlight the problems restaurants have that they are unable to perceive themselves, and Kid’s main issues are their window looks like a door and their door looks like a wall. And what that means is I spent a long time looking baffled at two corner windows that form outwards into a door-looking glass box, before — he’s not going to do it? — and then — he’s not going to do it, is he? — finally getting brave enough to push two fingers against them, looking for some give or sign of a hinge. There was none.
At some point, you have to zoom out and look down upon yourself. You have to articulate the thought: you are a man pressing his hand uselessly against the coolest new restaurant in London. You have to ask questions about your life, and where it might go from here.
Eventually I got inside (a friend helped). The building is lined with grey bricks and built around a spectacular double-sided charcoal grill and has heavy black curtains and moody low lighting and everyone here is good-looking, which is all to say it’s very cool here. Of course it is: Kid is the first restaurant from Sertaç Dirik, one of the two brothers who made Dalston’s Mangal II what it is (ie the restaurant you’re most likely to find me in if you are ever hunting me for sport), and Bib Gourmand-addict David Carter, of Smokestak and Manteca and OMA and Agora. It smells good, it sounds good, all the choices of tile texture are purringly mature. It’s sort of like being on a date with a sexy older man in a turtleneck and knowing that yes, despite yourself, you’re going to do something appalling later in his car.
I have made the mistake of coming with an eater who has a shellfish allergy, which means my grand ambition of starting the meal with “every meze” is foiled: I make eyes at every bowl of taramasalata that goes past me for the rest of the night, every plate of bluefin ezme. It feels ludicrous to spend so much of a paragraph on dips, but here we are: the smoked aubergine and garlic (a perfect temper of smoky and creamy, topped with a handful of potato straw-like grains, a dip that made me say “oh MY!” out loud, a phrase I have never actually said before) and muhammara (red pepper with even more walnuts on the side and a crumble of white cheese, which had me scooping it into my mouth) were both laugh-with-surprise brilliant, and came with puffy, perfect, blackened-off-the-grill pides.
There was other stuff, too — a fried-and-stuffed courgette flower served with a just-so dribble of honey, which snapped with green bite; the house sucuk, served with a blob of grilled peach puree, worked so it was bouncy and healthy like an Olympic pommel horse medallist; the lamb belly with sweetbreads, a three-skewer arrangement they could use as January if they ever need to make an erotic calendar about the Maillard reaction, which came nestled on a half-bowl of exceptional grilled onions; some pickles I would compare to the best in the city. But we’re wasting time. You want to hear about the goat.
The meat pulls from the bone if it just looks at a spoon
Kid — inspired by trips Carter and Dirik took to Anatolia, to cook kid goat over fires — obviously had to have goat on the menu. The dish, to share between two, is a must-order, cooked and served in a clay pot, a chunk of meat that’s caramel-brown on the outside and pulls from the bone if it just looks at a spoon, served on a glossy freekeh stew studded with just-biteable chickpeas. It’s an amazing dish: rich without being over-indulgent, refined without being particularly pretty, and heavingly filling in a way that undoes the past decade of small plates. “Have you had the kid at Kid?” is going to be the new “have you had the Jackson Boxer burger?”, just watch. As in: a lot of people are going to lie about having had it just to sound a bit cooler.
I leave feeling full and sexy — which is what you want from a restaurant, really — as well as planning another trip to tackle the mixed kebap for two and, with a less allergic companion, the rest of those meze. It’s always good to get to a restaurant before it starts winning all of its awards, isn’t it? If I were you I’d plan to get there in the next… 16 days?
What you say
Adam Lee:
“Fabulous experience. Greeted warmly by the host and sat at the counter table (amazing view of the kitchen). Friendly and attentive service without being cloying and check backs from senior staff at points in the meal too.”
Percy Nichols:
“Incredible food and shocked at how affordable it was for a buzzing new Soho restaurant. You really couldn’t tell this was a new opening.”
Ali Cakmakyurdu:
“Absolutely smashed it. Highly recommend this spot. Put a spin on traditional dishes while keeping taste on point.”
