The Man Behind The Curtain

Let me preface this with saying that I have been to ‘The Man Behind the Curtain’ before. I was blown away by new flavour combinations and the general whimsy of the place. So what if not every dish fit the bill, it was new and exciting and fun, what’s not to love.

Let me follow that up by saying I came home last night and googled the LD50 of maltodextrin.

The restaurant itself is hidden behind locked doors, although there is a large ‘open’ button to press on the doors. Down the stairs, and it is decorated entirely in black, white and mirrors with no natural light at all. The only colour is the Michelin star on the wall.

We were sat, very briefly, in the lounge area and then taken to our table. Look at the napkin holders! Why, I don’t know, but cute, yes?

The menu is large and glittery. Of course it is! The menu is fixed (terribly sorry madam, if you’re allergic to scallops you cannot have the scallop course and there is no substitution… I’m quite used to not being able to have a fish course but I am usually offered the vegetarian alternative), but there is a choice of wine flights, from £195 for the prestige pairing to £45 for the juice pairing. Admittedly when you break it down it’s 10p/ml of juice, but I’m not a big drinker and I do like juice so we all went for that option.

If you fancied a glass of champagne though – that started at £47 a glass, going up through £80 to £160 a glass.

Course number one was exceptional and exciting. A little china egg filled with tuna tartare, scrambled egg and furikake. Course number two was even better – little tuna hand rolls to be dipped in ‘toast gravy’ and tuna nigiri with a compté croquette. I didn’t know you could mix tuna and wasabi with cheese and choux pastry but you can and quite frankly you should. 10/10 would eat again.

Also they went really well with the juice.

Then we had beef tartare. Again, I’ve never had beef tartare before – this was beautiful and delicious and I think if I do have beef tartare in the future I will be disappointed.

So far, so good – three courses, three excellent dishes. No protein (other than the

egg) has been cooked at this point, and I think if this was a cookery competition eyebrows would be raised but all of it has been prepared beautifully so on we go.

Course number four, Dalí to Deli, was very dramatic. Who wouldn’t want to eat a prawn served on a telephone? The prawn, we were told, was marinated in the tikka mix for 4–6 hours and then gently introduced to a barbecue so it was only partially cooked. Then the heads were deep fried so you could eat the insides… no thank you! I mean, I did of course, but ew! Would not recommend.

At this point it was about half past 9. The waiters were very attentive, our water glasses always filled, but… why so slow? The food thus far has barely been cooked?

I forgot to photograph the next course. This one was cooked, and contained actual vegetation! Purely white, and served in a white bowl there was an ‘iced tomato, basil and vanilla consommé’ sitting on top of a pure white garlic soup. We were advised that the consommé was on top and we should mix the two together. How? Consommé is liquid, how is a liquid on a liquid? Aha! It is a trick! It was solidified with maltodextrin! Mix the two together and you get an overly garlicky mixture with an unpleasant mouthfeel. Neat trick but, like the prawn, very much style over substance. I’d rather eat something tasty than something weirdly sticky and slimy at the same time.

However, onwards and upwards! ‘Fake fois’ came next. I don’t know whether it was real or fake fois gras. I don’t really approve of fois gras. Well, I don’t approve of it at all, but when it is served on a menu that I don’t have a choice over I will eat it

because it is tasty. Alas. This was not tasty. Served in a little tin with caviar on the top, with a tiny slice of toasted brioche and ‘whipped beef fat’ to use as butter it was overly rich and quite frankly inedible. Style leaving substance far far far behind.

Next was the scallop course so an excellent time to visit the bathroom. Down some more steps, the men’s toilet had silver men’s shoes on the door and the ladies’ a silver pair of Kurt Geiger heels.

Of course, it was no ordinary toilet. Of course. It was a Japanese style toilet with a heated seat, bidet jets and a drying jet of air. It might have been more comfortable if there had been an instruction book!

The scallops, I am told, were tasty, and the sauce odd but not entirely unpleasant. High praise indeed.

Our next dish was ‘Emancipation’, the signature dish of the restaurant. Emancipation is defined as ‘any effort to procure economic and social rights, political rights or equality, often for a specifically disenfranchised group’ and in this essay I will… no, wait, that not right! I will ask, however, how the dish fits the description.

I have had this dish before. It was one of the most delicious things I have ever tasted, I was delighted to see it back on the menu, irrespective of the pretentiousness of the name.

The last time I had this dish, it was a reasonably chunky piece of cod with matchstick fries and a dashi sauce and dashi is beautiful. There are some Japanese cooking techniques that have such precise, clean flavours, and dashi based sauces fall into that category. I am a big fan of umami.

Needless to say, the dish has changed. The cod was cooked beautifully, but the matchstick fries were replaced with.. something unidentifiably grey and crunchy, and all dashi flavour was overtaken by vinegar. Something grey was hidden in more maltodextrin powder – maybe the vinegar? At least the squid ink gave me something to write with.

It was gone half past 10 by this time. Well past my bed time. Most of the restaurant was empty. Time for the showstopper! We were given large padded leopard print placemats and an entirely black dish was placed on them. We were told that we could eat the eggshell! We should break the egg and then mix the yolk in, and eat the whole lot. Fancy pork, egg and ‘smoked toast’.

OK so the pork was delicious. And the egg yolk was runny just the way it should be. But the egg shell added… nothing at all, it was actively unpleasant. I don’t know where the smoked toast was, and I couldn’t identify the thick substance underneath and holding up the eggshell. Maybe it was a smoked toast purée? Maybe it was some mashed potato – although it might have been maltodextrin starch I was tasting as it was again filled with the substance.

Maltodextrin does not feature anywhere in the food pyramid. Just saying. And although it’s not toxic it is entirely fake.

Pudding time!

Thank goodness. It’s 11pm and I am ready to go.

Dessert one was super cute. A little mini cupcake with an edible wrapper and an exploding passion fruit centre. Eat it all in one mouthful we were advised and we did and it was lovely.

The meal did end on a high. We did not get ‘sex wax’ for which I am grateful as, you know, bed time, but the ‘chocolate’ was meltingly delicious. Very sweet, little bit savoury, hidden bit of goats cheese (sheeps cheese? Not sure) in the middle, I would eat that again. I also approve of the only coloured cutlery we were given, a matching red spoon.

We then had tea and macarons in the lounge area again – bubblegum, orange and chocolate caramel flavours, 2/3 being nice isn’t bad!

Overall though – whilst the meal started on a high and it ended on a high, the middle was a meandering disappointment of variably cooked protein and maltodextrin. I’m all for dedication to a theme. I do appreciate the effort that has gone into making the entire menu black and white with pops of colour here and there, but that shouldn’t compromise on flavour or the provision of a balanced meal (I do like a vegetable) and if it does… well either the premise is wrong, or it needs more work and it shouldn’t be served.

When it comes down to it, in the Wizard of Oz, the man behind the curtain was a lost old man, desperately trying to maintain his façade of mystical grandeur with a series of sleight of hand tricks. I can’t decide if Michael O’Hare, like the wizard, is in on the hustle – he is certainly is raking in the cash — or if he has become so caught up in his own delusion he thinks this is acceptable. All I know is that I won’t be going back.