The repetition of the phrases “modern British” and “seasonally led” are so droningly frequent that the veneer of these once noble ideas is all but lost. Too often it’s an excuse for an ideas-free kitchen to serve an English burrata with some Isle of Wight tomatoes and charge diners £16 for the pleasure. But what if we were to take a properly interesting, exciting, talked-about and Michelin-starred restaurant and look at what they do when the seasons change? That’s why I’m here, at Evelyn’s Table, to find out.
Making my way through Soho’s Rupert Court, past the walk-in reflexology parlour, a side door to the Blue Posts pub is revealed, and the beaming head chef James Goodyear is ready to receive his newest stagiaire.
Goodyear and I have history. In another life I spent a not inconsiderable amount of time at Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons, Raymond Blanc’s bucolic Oxfordshire restaurant, completing a front of house internship for a little over a year. My tray carrying and menu knowledge was just about up to scratch, if I say so myself, but the formalities and hierarchies of such things have their limits. Thirteen months was mine. Le Manoir was where Goodyear cut his teeth. He entered as a wide-eyed young commis and left after five years as sous chef, a quite meteoric rise in such a rigid environment.
I’m led down the narrow, ancient staircase, to a basement room. Dining stools are stacked, topped and tailed, to the right, while on the left behind the counter, three chefs labour in near silence, completing their mise en place. Denatas, the sous, is a quiet Lithuanian possessing an enviable CV spanning Ramsay, the Ritz, HIDE and Restaurant Story. He’s working on canelés little bigger than thimbles for the petit fours. To his left, Dan and Henry. Dan is finishing some protein on the hot konro Japanese barbecue whilst Henry tends to his mushrooms.
I’m shown the back of house. Miraculously, it’s smaller than the room we’re in. Like something out of Alice in Wonderland, these spaces are increasingly diminutive. There’s no secret prep kitchen; behind is just a pot wash on the left and a walk-in fridge on the right. The deep-drawer chest freezer is housed beneath the oven. The tiny proportions present Evelyn’s Table with more than its fair share of challenges. All the day’s work must be done in what later becomes the dining room and whilst I’ve not broken out the tape measure, I’d wager we’re in the territory of London’s smallest Michelin-starred kitchen.
Goodyear is moving his menu to the autumn season, an abundant, hearty, earthy time of year when late quince, mushrooms, gourds and game emerge. This transformation can’t happen all at once. Such small surrounds prohibit wholesale change and the new menu will be slow to complete. Intentionally so: one can’t rush a good thing.
Goodyear shows off his bounty. He’s a calm, composed man, enthused by the change of the season and the produce it brings forth. His CV, a topic to which we’ll return, includes time at Maaemo, the three Michelin-starred Oslo restaurant regarded as one of Scandinavia’s best. This time in the Nordics opened Goodyear’s eyes to the immediacy of ingredients on his home turf. We talk about fig leaves growing in London as I watch day-boat pollock get wrapped and steamed in them. We inspect meats and mushrooms, squashes and quince. We taste the pickling liquor. I’m handed a peeler and set about my first task of the day: peeling the thick-skinned quince.
Goodyear demonstrates his craftmanship and respect for the animal with a beguiling ease
Breaking down an iberico pork pig’s leg from the farm of Ledbury owner Brett Graham, Goodyear and I talk meat fibres and sinew. He effortlessly divides the leg into eight or so component pieces, each one utterly individual, to be cooked in their own way. The shankier hunks deserve hours to stew and melt, whilst an impossibly lean fillet-like portion seems ready to be pan seared and devoured instantly. A lesser chef might take a leg, wrap and barbecue it and be done. Goodyear demonstrates his craftmanship and respect for the animal with a careful, beguiling ease.
I move on to pod peas. Podding peas is properly menial stuff. It’s scutwork, the kitchen equivalent of making photocopies, but what it provides is unparalleled people-watching. Soft R&B permeates through the iPhone speaker in the corner of the room as the three boys noiselessly continue with their prep. Less space means more organisation and no one takes their foot off the gas: the work needs to be done by 4pm. Goodyear continues with his autumn dish development. Iberico pork will make up a kind of autumnal ‘still life’, with flavours of pumpkin, rice, kohlrabi, soy, courgette, nasturtium and sorrel all planned. First though, it’s venison.
Haunch and loin are barbecued and rested. We sample. The loin, less gamey in its early season youth, lacks the required tenderness, while the haunch is surprisingly buttery. I become acutely aware that I’m an over-the-shoulder interloper, watching a genuine creative figuring things out. He takes a plate and begins to build. Basing elements from hand-drawn artistic sketches and scribbled notes, Goodyear assembles the plum-purple venison alongside pale quince, barbecued greens, king oyster mushrooms (a bugbear as the expected ceps haven’t quite come into their prime) and long negi onions dusted with hay powder. It’s a rough draft, a preparatory sketch of the fare that will one day evolve into a main course. The result is not yet delicious, but these are the foundations on which extraordinary flavours will be built.
I begin my next task of cleaning delicate girolles, running a paring knife down its soft stem and trimming only the very base. Like podding peas, the assignment is one which elevates ingredients courtesy of the servitude of those preparing them. In short, it shows the diner that someone cares. I start removing elderberries from their stalks. Gently toxic when raw, these will only need a quick blanche to become bright, sharp and rich. They’ll be added to a taster of venison sauce, providing a pop of acidity among the gamey richness.
Next: blacken the quince on the Japanese barbecue. It’s hot and stiflingly close in the kitchen and I’m in awe of the team who stand this heat every day. I peel off the charred outer layer of the fruit, revealing the caramel-sweet flesh to be used in a miso purée and in later experimentation.
With five or so hours of mise en place out the way, we eat. A bloomed, crisp focaccia sits next to pasta and mussels. It’s hearty, freshly made, calorific, glorious. My hands are still purple from the elderberries. The front of house team joins us and between them, there is only 90 minutes to transform the prep-come-canteen into a restaurant.
It’s easy to get drawn in here. The basement has no windows and coupled with the intimacy of the space, it could easily become a black hole of time. The clock, then, is always watched, preparations are always careful and breaks are never missed.
Evelyn’s Table sits just 12 guests at a time, with two sittings per night. I wish I could have stayed behind the pass for dinner, but such is the space, the only ones permitted are actually serving, no room for a spectator. Generously though, I sit as a punter and watch this ballet unfold over dinner.
The day-boat pollock is a marvel, one of the greatest pieces of fish I’ve ever eaten
Ikejime trout, with an impossibly light trout mousse, arrived first: a stunning opener. The day-boat pollock comes fragranced with a soft, almost coconutty essence thanks to those fig leaves, and is cooked low to perfection. Served with grapes and coco beans, it’s a marvel, one of the greatest pieces of fish I’ve ever eaten. The duck lands with Henry’s raw sliced mushrooms, the texture a wonder, likely only to be improved when those stunning seasonal ceps reach the restaurant (which by the time of reading, they will have done).
Front of house in such confinement is blended with the kitchen. Both the chefs and the sommeliers and the front of house manager serve and clear the counter diners as one. No glasses break, no one gets in the way. Even when the fire alarm unexpectedly and repeatedly goes off (a technical fault rather than any real danger, although instinctively we all glare at the barbecue) this team remain unflappable.
The wine flight from the talented team of Danielle, Honey, Isabelle and Lubna deserves significant attention. They take the core of the flavour profiles present on the menu and go to work, experimenting with jazz-like experimentation, playing with central themes of the menu and freestyling. This results in the most surprising, lively companion pieces imaginable. Milk oolong tea, clarified and cooled from a boutique Basque producer, pine soda with grüner veltliner juice, wild cherry with peppercorn spiked HÅjicha green tea, Te To Te saké and Devonshire cider; these pairings could only be served by a team pushing the creative boundaries at every opportunity.
Throughout dinner what becomes apparent is how the CV of this talented chef has prepared him so completely for the job at hand, each kitchen experience uniquely equipping him, shaping him, and in turn, this great, tiny restaurant. Le Manoir was (and still is) a bastion for learning the basics. It’s French high gastronomy where saucing, dish-building, flavour profiles and combinations are engrained. It provides an invaluable, classic foundation. In turn Maaemo instructs greater seasonality, harnessing immediately available ingredients from one’s surroundings, habituating a harmony with the natural world. Goodyear’s time at San Sebastian’s Mugaritz exemplifies technique, unafraid of open fire and coals as well as an incurable hunger for technical invention. These three formative environments create the Venn diagram of Goodyear’s talent, embodied here, with wonderful clarity, at Eveyln’s.
This is a restaurant gunning for its second star. The great Italian chef Massimo Bottura once said that the quality of a dish is about more than just the quality of ingredients, it is about the quality of ideas too. I’ve always liked that. It’s saying that as beautiful as those Isle of Wight tomatoes might be, if the idea behind them is at fault, the dish won’t work. Evelyn’s Table serves the kind of food that resets the benchmarks of words like “modern” and “seasonal”. This is a restaurant gunning for its second star.
The night in numbers:
* Quinces barbecued: 35
* Price of the tasting menu: £125
* Staff working the two-part dinner: 6
* Guests served: 24
* Canelés eaten before service: 3
