I’m loving pop-up dining experiences right now. The fact that they’re always changing, the variety on offer, eating at shared tables with random strangers, meeting new friends and my personal favourite – BYOB. Bring your own bottle isn’t always an option, it all depends on the venues licence, but working in wine during the day I love to idea of brining my own favourite tipple along. It also helps that this venue is a mere stones throw from where I live – I suspect it may all get rather addictive.
This is in fact the second time I’ve found myself at the London Cooking Project and again my love for the place hasn’t changed. The space really is great and very convivial, you can’t help but make new friends in this place. Food wise I came back for the same chef too who’s supper club is named – The Shared Table. The brains behind The Shared Table is Mark Greenwood – he’s Michelin-trained and has worked in top restaurants across Australia and New Zealand. The food on my last visit to this pop-up was good, but this time around however dining on its Tex Mex Madness menu, the food is even better. Mark’s pop-up is going from strength to strength. We started with some gorgeous Brixham crab taquitos paired with Mark’s home-made hot sauce. Each bite was full of flavour and a real delight to eat. It was followed by little pots of pickled melon cleanser – an unusual smell to the dish but it was mouth-watering on the palate.
My least favourite part of the meal was this dish pictured above. It was by no means bad, but making our way through this Tex Mex journey I felt this tortilla Tex Mex soup with crispy bites wasn’t needed nor punchy enough. A similar feeling was felt throughout the table. More heat and a little more depth – it could be great. With winter quickly drawing in, that heat would be very welcoming – we all found ourselves spooning in that delicious home-made hot sauce from those taquitos.
But then the food got straight back to normality and produced what I believe is Mark’s best dishes to date here at The Shared Table. A gorgeous (and huge) wedge of succulent pork belly with perfect crackling, good meat-to-fat ratio and it all cut through like soft butter. The accompaniments were also rather spectacular too. Very hearty and very warming. A simple but very flavoursome vegetable couscous mix, fresh & vibrant slaw, new potatoes slathered in onions and herbs – but what made this dish a real winner was the bowl of sauce. I really have no idea what that sauce was exactly but it was rich, sweet and complex. It reminded me so much of tamarind paste, though I’ve probably got that wrong. Either way it didn’t matter because it was utterly delicious.
My last visit to The Shared Table resulted in a slight eggy taste at the end of the meal with a not so great panna cotta so I was hoping I wouldn’t get a repeat experience. And I didn’t. Instead we ended our meal on an incredible high with a dish so good it quite literally left us in silence. Salty pecan and apple crumble pie with milk ice cream – need I say much more. The crumble was perfect, the pecans were moorish, the apples soft and supple, the ice cream – pure heaven. If there was a dish Mark should never taken off his menu, it should be this.
Reflecting on my last experience of The Shared Table this meal was such an improvement from my last. It was moorish, filling, rich and most importantly – still very much about sharing. Mark’s obviously got a lot of talent up his sleeve and it’s still relatively early days for the chefs pop-up history. I’ve no doubt it’s only going to get better – especially if this meal was anything to go by.
8/10
