Neil Rankin's Temper City to swap curry for tacos
Chef director Neil Rankin, who launched the first Temper in Soho in late 2016, says the restaurant will be changing its offer to be more suitable for the City crowd. Menu items will include BBQ meats and tacos, as served in Temper Soho, as well as an extended tostada menu.
Temper City opened a year ago in Angel Court in the City with curry and gin as its main proposition. Dishes included tandoori chicken with red curry sauce; green curry spiced mussels; and grilled fish with a green curry sauce as well as a separate seven-strong thali menu.
However, Rankin says the curry menu has proven to be too restrictive in its City location, particularly with lunchtime trade.
“At lunchtimes with the curry menu we have struggled,” he says. “We’re the opposite to everyone else in the City; we’re OK in the evenings but curry for city workers at lunch is quite a hard stretch.”
“With City, if you’ve got 10 people dining, and Bob from accounts doesn’t like curry, they’re not going to go there. We need a more populist menu.”
The new menu will be more all-day focused with more smaller plates, drawing on the success of the offer at Temper Soho. “This will be Temper Soho on steroids,” says Rankin.
The curry concept hasn’t been completely shelved, with Rankin saying that it could be revived if he was to find a more suitable, most likely smaller location. “The curry menu for me is our favourite and the most loved menu we’ve ever done, it’s the one I’m most upset about losing. But I can’t change the customers to suit a restaurant.”
A full interview with Temper’s Neil Rankin and managing director Sam Lee will be published in the August issue of Restaurant, out on 4 September.
