A reservation at South African restaurant Kudu’s new home in Marylebone threw up many questions. Can a well-loved Peckham restaurant really relocate to fancy-pants Marylebone and retain its homespun charm? And, what is a “Kudu kit kat”, and could it even remotely capture the joys of my red-wrappered, lifelong support system? The KitKat is, after all, a design classic, so tampering with it makes me uneasy.
Within moments of being seated, however, another question arose: how many miles do you need to run to counteract the aftereffects of Kudu’s bread with curried butter, which comes melted, glossy and with gently fried curried leaves? Grab hunks of this warm bread and stuff them greedily into your mouth. It’s an eat-as-if-no-one’s watching kind of starter, which went down well in Peckham, but in Marylebone, the women wear white trouser suits and pale, unspongeable fabrics, so let’s hope there’s a good dry cleaner close by.
