Latest opening: The Water House Project
What: A trendy-yet-not-overly-hipster East London restaurant. Located about 10 minutes north of Bethnal Green tube overlooking Regent’s Canal, The Water House Project is part restaurant, part supper club, and serves an ambitious menu that’s probably best described as modern British.
Who: Former Galvin La Chapelle chef Gabriel Waterhouse. Entirely self-funded, The Water House Project was launched six years ago while Waterhouse was still working for the Galvin brothers. Originally held at his house, the project graduated to a temporary site on Hackney's Mare Street a few years back and has now finally found a permanent home on Corbridge Crescent.
The vibe: With its double-height ceiling the space is on the large side but - against the odds - manages to create the impression of a semi-domestic room thanks to some impressive interior design, not least a ‘borderless’ kitchen that flows effortlessly into the dining room. The overall aesthetic is probably best described as Nordic-meets-East-London - think raw concrete walls, exposed M&E and Noma-esque chairs. The experience is ticketed, offering a nine-course tasting menu with paired wines for an all-in price of £100. Given the length of the menu and attention to detail on display in both the cooking and overall experience, it’s a relative bargain. Indeed, the competitive price point highlights the efficiency that serving guests exactly the same menu and seating them all at the same time brings, with far fewer staff needed to cook and serve top-end food (such an approach also dramatically reduces wastage). The 32-cover restaurant is currently open Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday evenings, with guests able to specify whether they want to be seated on one of two communal tables or on one of the eight smaller tables dotted about the room.
The food: Waterhouse’s food is creative and technically accomplished. A trio of snacks (which rather generously count as just a single course) include doughnuts stuffed with braised pork belly; and pickled gooseberry and kipper deftly packed into crunchy shells. Other dishes include slow-cooked egg with celeriac, autumn truffle, hazelnut and brown butter; Herdwick lamb with aubergine, cumin, black garlic and mint oil; and a daring pre-dessert palate cleanser of cucumber, coconut, dill and herring roe.
To drink: The meal starts with a cocktail - on our visit a surprisingly successful amalgam of Jerusalem artichoke and craft vodka - before moving onto natural wine. The selection on our visit was well-chosen, in general showcasing producers on the less funky end of the natural wine scale.
And another thing: With a stated aim to ‘challenge the perceptions of fine dining’ by offering an experience akin to a dinner party rather than a typical restaurant dining room, The Water House Project has penned itself a tricky brief. But it largely hits it. What’s offered does indeed feel distinct from a traditional high-end restaurant experience. Waterhouse is not the first chef to experiment with such a model - other examples in London include Maos and the more recently opened Evelyn's Table - but his efforts provide further proof that this is a viable way of doing things for high-reaching chefs.
