Raise a glass: drink better, not more, this NYE
(Picture: Pexels/Polina Tankilevitch)There is much that is improbable about Trivet, the restaurant hidden on a street back from Guy’s hospital, by London Bridge. The name — a trivet is the mat, metal or otherwise, that protects a table from a hot dish — doesn’t immediately suggest wild success; it doesn’t especially suggest a high-end restaurant-cum-wine bar, either. Trivet first opened not long before the pandemic struck, surviving where countless other new spots couldn’t. And the location, as mentioned — this is not a restaurant anyone is likely to accidentally walk past.
Trivet, then, has its idiosyncrasies. One is co-founder Isa Bal; he is a master of wine who never drank the stuff until he was 19. His approach to pairing wine was not honed in old hotels matching Dover sole with white Burgundy; instead, his taste was sharpened and focussed attempting to match the likes of mock turtle soup, snail porridge and egg and bacon ice cream at Heston Blumenthal’s Fat Duck, where he worked for 12 years. As such, Bal is known for his unerringly precise palate, which was recognised at the start of this year, when he was named as Michelin Sommelier of the Year.
