Surprises, by definition, are never found where you expect them. Up from Abbey Road and a good walk from St John’s Wood High Street is Blenheim Terrace. It is not one of London’s most assuming roads. At one end, there are the £4 million houses, but at the other is the Post Office collection point that’s never open, and a pair of dry cleaners on opposite sides of the road. And among them is an eight-seat fine-dining restaurant, home to one of London’s most obsessive, impassioned, meticulous and compulsive chefs. He’s also a talker. And no one’s ever heard of him.
This is Elliot Moss — actually, Stirling Elliot Moss, but more of that to come — and the restaurant is Plu. In its own words, it serves “a modern international menu with a French accent”, which is a way of obfuscating the fact that it does whatever Moss wants. “I sort of think that everywhere else, there’s a compromise somewhere, so here there isn’t,” he says.
