The Loft Project

To those who remember my first experience and wonderful birthday present at the Loft Project. It has been barely a few months and I'm back!

This time, it was for chef Sam Nutter who works in the development kitchen in the now No. 1 restaurant in the world, Noma.

I truly had no idea what to expect. Will I be getting dishes that are typical of Noma? How much influence integrates into your own style of food from your training?

Nordic cuisine it was not as I was greeted with pub snacks upon arriving. A seemingly British welcome!

We were served beer with beech nuts, pork crackling and vinaigrette egg as snacks. Those beech nuts and pork crackling were awesome. I found myself gravitating towards eating more of those them snacks as we had to wait for some severely late arrivals. I was hungry!

Seeing our hungry faces, Sam came out with a tray of puffed up dough balls which holds a mushroom filling. It was so fluffy and light with just the right amount of grease. It reminds me of Yorkshire Pudding and this is his re-interpretation of it. I find myself making a number of these seemingly re-interpretation of classic British food as the night continues. I happily immersed in these tiny delightful discoveries.

Finally, we were requested to take our seats for the dinner to start.

By now I was quite hungry and it didn't help that the bread was so inviting with a fantastic crust and with a smothering swipe of butter and ooh la la, it was hard to stop myself. It was a struggle between me and the ever being replenished bread basket during the whole service. My mind says to keep the space for the food while my heart speaks 'Got to have more of the bread'.

It was with some relief when the first course arrived. A vibrant and colourful display of the Salmon roe with cucumber and dill. I like the play of textures and it was a teasing invite to the rest of the dinner. It did remind me of the classic prawn cocktail but a much better version.

Next came three stalks of leeks with a different condiment on each. I never knew that leeks could be so juicy and my favourite was the hazelnut combo.

One of the great things about the Loft Project is the option to walk around the kitchen and even help out if you so desire. I was put to work serving some dishes during dinner, that might have been Sam's way of getting me out of the kitchen. Lol!

The blue mussels, potato and shallots came laid in a unique swirling design that I couldn't help admiring. Dip the spoon into and under the layer of potato and you find mussels swimming in a broth. If I thought what I had before was great, this is foodgasm indeed. The vinaigrette broth complimented and cuts through the starchy mash potato and works so well with the mussels. Eating this, I was reminded of Shepherds Pie. I did say different British food pops into my head as I dined away.

Fish was next with pike being served with a sauce that tasted quite mineral but was so good that I couldn't resist more bread to mop it up.

We each received tiny mugs of Sloe Gin and Sam passed out the twigs that were used in the gin that came from the tummy of the Grouse? I thought I heard wrongly but that was what he said, these were the twigs that were fermenting in the grouse's tummy!


The Wemmegil Grouse with ramson berries looked like a blood spattered painting. The berries lends a zingy and tangy balance to the grouse.

Topped with a chocolate of powdered mushroom, how seductive and romantic did that sound? That was described by Sam when I asked about the top layer of the next dish, mushrooms, yolk and herbs.

The multi-layers of different mushrooms harmonises and shines with the creaminess of the yolk which lingers at the end.. Sip on your matching wine and the wine opens up the food and brings an overall lightness.

With the Pork Belly, rhubarb and onions being Sam's favourite, I was quite looking forward to it. I have to say that this didn't wow me as much, crunchy crackling and the texture was yielding to the pressure of the knife with a slight rubberiness to the fat with no unctuous ending taste. It was really good but maybe I'm too used to the chinese roast pork.

The first dessert of rose petals, beets and yoghurt was warmly received as I think I only just had enough space for desserts now. The perfume of roses is the first note to hit you and you'll be thinking, roses? These were pickled which changes the texture, paired with the natural sourness of plain yoghurt and the sweetness of beetroot, it was a trio of flavours and textures. I love it.


The second dessert of the night comprises if tiny balls of apple in a malt caramel sauce and thyme.

[Non-photo Review] For full review, please go to: http://wp.me/pwXBH-La The Loft Project with Samuel Miller from Noma Summary:The Loft Project is an innovative concept within the London underground restaurant scene. While its genesis consisted of its creator, Nuno Mendes, using the space an experimental kitchen to develop his cuisine and offer it up to paying diners, it has evolved into a kitchen that welcomes exciting guest chefs from around the world, who take up residence for 1 or 2 weekends with the permanent kitchen staff. The table of 16 is bookable by anyone on a first-come, first-serve basis and makes for a unique evening out, with high caliber and innovative food surrounded by a random group of diners. On this occasion, I had the pleasure of sampling Samuel Miller's food, who is currently sous-chef at the world-famous Noma in Denmark. Both I and my dining companion were blown away by the food and the experience as a whole and I would highly recommend an evening at The Loft Project to anyone who is up for this type of experience. When you can't make it to the mountain Behind the times as usual (whether due to laziness, wallet consciousness or purposeful intention is anyone's guess), I had been espying The Loft Project from the distant shores of my laptop for some time. Come to think of it, maybe this was because I was a veritable 'underground restaurant' (that's 'supperclub' to us Yanks) virgin until I recently popped my proverbial cherry at the Hidden Tea Room (which, by the way, is fantastic see my photos here). Buoyed by this experience, I had worked up sufficient courage to make another foray into this mysterious and very en vogue world; however this time it would be for dinner, it would be haute and it wouldn't come cheap. What tipped me over the edge, pray tell? Well, I have been aspiring to visit the now world-famous Noma in Copenhagen (along with a number of other restaurants in that fair city) for over a year now. Somehow, this culinary cruise ship has never pushed off shore, so when I saw that the sous-chef from Noma would be the 'chef in residence' at The Loft Project in London in a few month's time, I quickly secured two places on one of the three nights that he would be presiding over this above-ground, subterranean epicurean mess hall. For once, the mountain (well, at least part of it) had come to me. But let's backtrack briefly as, in my haste, I seem to have gotten slightly ahead of myself. For those who are not already familiar with it, The Loft Project (TLP) is run by Nuno Mendes and his partner Clarise. Nuno is a Portuguese chef who formerly ran the kitchen at Bacchus in London and has had experience working with many modern-day culinary masters from around the world, including the likes of Ferran Adrià at El Bulli, Wolfgang Puck and Jean Georges Vongerichten. TLP started out as an experimental test kitchen where Nuno would invite paying guests to sample his innovative and ever-developing cuisine. As he has now finally opened his much talked about new restaurant Viajante (which in Portuguese means 'travellers'), TLP has now evolved to host exciting, and mostly younger, chefs from around the world for a limited number of nights (normally over weekend evenings). They in effect become 'chefs in residence' for that week (or weeks). There are by my count three permanent kitchen staff who support the head chef and also a waiter-cum-sommelier who runs the floor. The visiting chef sleeps above the open-plan kitchen/dining room space, literally in the loft. Samuel Miller is a 28-year old Northerner from Fulford on the outskirts of York and is following a family tradition in food, i.e. his father is also a chef. He spent over two years at double Michelin-starred Champignon Sauvage in Cheltenham alongside David Everitt-Matthias (where he came second in the Young Chef of the Year awards in 2004), and since then had stints at Mugaritz and El Bulli, before going on to work for René Redzepi at Noma, which as most readers of this blog will know, was recently crowned the #1 restaurant in the San Pellegrino World's 50 Best Restaurants awards in London. My companion for the meal was the Phantom Medic (who not that long ago had dinner at El Bulli, which I interviewed him about), and we decided to go on a Friday, the first night of Sam's three-day residency. As we rolled up a tad early, we decided to take a walk around the veritable mish-mash of buildings on the stretch of Kingsland Road that TLP occupies. We decided to duck down below to the canal, and after meandering for a while, and came upon a few surprising discoveries. Firstly, once you got down to water level, things looked a bit nicer there were a lot of modern developments along the waterside and we even singled out a floating vegetable allotment behind the complex where the loft is located. Secondly, we stumbled upon a tiny café called Towpath occupying two carved-out open units overlooking Regent's Canal. The food is Italian and