Stuck for ideas of what to display at the centre of your restaurant? Freshly-opened Brompton Asian Brasserie by Novikov has an unusual suggestion: on a console table at the middle of the room, beside a woven basket full of white orchids, stands a glass ice-bucket filled with small bottles of sparkling water. There’s another noteworthy ornament, on the counter which divides the dining room from the open kitchen: among the oysters, razor clams and other shellfish on ice, three immense orange crab limbs stand upright in a vase like the world’s weirdest floral display.
What was once a bright, Ottolenghi-ish corner-site luncherie in the heart of Knightsbridge has been transformed, seemingly overnight, into an intimate, opulent Asian restaurant. The current London restaurant-decor clichés of raw brick walls and industrial lamps are sidestepped. Yes, there is one half-wall of standard-issue bevel-edged white ceramic tiling, but any areas of exposed brickwork have been painted in deep reds and olive greens, the ceiling is hatched in dark wood (no industrial pipework here) and the lamps over each table are big silvered bowls with proper bulbs. (They did, however, dim sharply at 8pm, then seemed to suffer a kind of reprieve around 10pm. I’ve never been quite sure why restaurants do this.) The windows, which in this site’s previous incarnation allowed passersby to study in detail what everyone inside had ordered, are now partly covered by intricate Thai-style “screens” in unvarnished wood that offer window-side diners a little privacy without blocking out the light. It’s a very grown-up, attractive space – and a refit so fresh that the menus still smell strongly of printer ink. The music is disarmingly clubby, though played at a decently low, unobtrusive volume: it’s lively, but more perhaps bar soundtrack than restaurant. (That said, it did alert me to a really nice Bat for Lashes remix I hadn’t heard before.)
I’m sure it would be an exceptionally good burger, but still, it’s an odd inclusion; a West London thing, maybe?
The menu, a road-map sized sheet, is divided into sections for sushi, dim sum, tempura, robata grill items, small dishes, wok-fried items, sides… and “European dishes”. Yes: it’s quite possible to come to the Asian Brasserie and order a burger and chips. I’m sure it would be an exceptionally good burger, but still, it’s an odd inclusion; a West London thing, maybe? There’s a manageable wine list, with a number of bottles in the £20–£25 range and a number of wines served by the glass. There’s only one sparkling wine by the glass, though, and it’s Veuve Cliquot. I suspect that’s a West London thing as well.
My companion J., seeking to be virtuous, ordered miso soup for a starter, which he pronounced delicious (he didn’t mind that he was given a dessert spoon to eat it with); I went straight to the deep-fried items. Black cod parcels – wrapped in golden filaments of pastry, a belt of seaweed fastened around the centre of each as though to prevent it bursting apart excitedly – were light, the fish perfectly cooked inside its batter, and complemented by a mango sauce so delicious I felt like seizing J.’s spoon and guzzling the lot. Impressively, there was none of the unpleasant greasiness so common to lesser Asian restaurants’ deep-fried repertoire – things which look the part and which you gobble down with alacrity then immediately feel somewhat… dubious about, gastrically, as though you’ve been drinking straight from the fat fryer.
On the grill menu, hangar steak, cut into sections chunks the size and shape of maki rolls, had great flavour (with a black pepper sauce proving to be a gravy of exceptional chocolaty richness and depth) but J. had reservations about its slightly chewy texture. At £25, you feel, there shouldn’t be any such quibbles. I grappled with lamb cutlets rolled in Thai spices – my morbid fear of picking up food with my hands necessitating some difficult manoeuvring with chopsticks – which were wonderfully charred-edged, with a great depth of savour, and served at perfect medium rareness.
The kitchen’s speciality dishes are its maki rolls, and justifiably so: a set of soft-shell crab rolls, big as Wagon Wheels, stuffed with avocado and tiny red popping roe and finished with panko crumb, were the last word in texture – there was crunch from the crab and crumb, unctuousness from avocado – and flavour, the lightest of spice in the mix making redundant the blob of wasabi on the side, which would have overwhelmed these rolls’ subtle seasoning.
Among familiar desserts are two innovative newcomers: a mango tiramisu, and a green tea crème brûlée. A little overwhelmed by mains, we shared the latter. Aesthetically it is not the most prepossessing dish – the burned sugar topping, mottled green and brown, recalls grilled asparagus – but the flavour is excellent: an initial light green tea taste gives way to a more traditional vanilla, but you’re left with the familiar not unpleasant, ever so slightly furry texture in the mouth that you’d get from drinking green tea. Unusual, but clever, and served with a soap-pink sorbet of guava which could convert the agnostic to this fruit.
They don’t eat late in these parts: by 11pm, ours was the only remaining table, and the open kitchen was being cleaned before our eyes. Early in the evening it had been quietly bustling – there are about forty covers on the ground floor, so it was a polite, West London sort of bustle – but provision has been made to meet anticipated exceptional demand: downstairs is a whole other dining room, served by a whole other kitchen, and which features three attractive booths with plush seating and Chinoiserie wallpaper – moodlit little cocoons, deeply appealing. C
Brompton Asian Brasserie by Novikov, 223-225 Brompton Road, SE3 2EJ, London
020-7225 2107