From Russia with fusion food
Novikov
50a Berkeley Street, W1J 8HA T NW1 7JN , Tel: 020 7387 5277
FOOD ***
SERVICE ***
ATMOSPHERE ****
Cost per person without wine: £50
It’s Russian, it’s huge, it’s in Mayfair and it has doormen inside and out, guarding its two restaurants and thumping bar. To me this sounded dubious, a blingy hangar where brash meets trash.
But Novikov works – if you can get in and aren’t scared of heavies on doors at 7pm. The two restaurants are Asian and Italian (hey, why not?) while the bar is just…big. And very noisy.
THE ASIAN RESTAURANT
Asian is the comfortably vague term that best suits this smattering of Chinese, Malay, Singaporian, Thai and Japanese. “Asian”, applied to cuisine, often means a tacky mishmash. But Novikov just about pulls it off: the night we went, the fashionista set were in situ nibbling on black bream and Chinese greens in one-shouldered dresses with their hedge fun honcho husbands cloaked in Prada and Berluti.
We sat by the kitchen, along a wall of glass, and felt like we were in the middle of a photo shoot: staff rushing past us between fast-rotating tables of chowing glamazons. Next to us, chefs were chopping through a jungle of crab claws, raw fish, meat and vegetables.
The food was not Michelin-starred in taste or pretension, but it was, by and large, tasty. It’s not ruinously expensive, though not exactly cheap and cheerful, either. The likes of charcoaled grilled wild turbot costs £28; braised pork belly is £12 and five pieces of sashimi/ngiri will set you back £9-£19. You’ll have to order side dishes, too.
Connoisseurs will be appalled, of course. Japanese served alongside Malay? Heaven forfend. Some of it the food is indeed problematic: over-sauced and painfully random-feeling. But the cocophany of umami-rich flavours (umami is defined as the sixth taste and it basically just means “yummy”) certainly seems to satisfy the vulgar streak in some of us.
Salads are good – they have to be when most of the clientele are rake-thin. We had a simple bowl of green leaves with soy lime dressing and a plate of Sardinian tomatoes with coriander and red onion (the Asian billing gets a bit lost here). Over on the sushi list, the yellowtail and tuna was not the silkiest in the world, but was fine.
Yuzu-scented black cod was rich and aromatic – “black” fish is a benchmark for any European restaurant with pan-Asian pretensions thanks to Nobu. Braised pork belly with spicy sweet and sour glaze was honeyed and melting, and black pepper beef was just what the doctor ordered (for the patient craving Hakkasan-style pepper beef, that is).
Novikov makes a virtue of choice, and the selection here is entertaining if deeply unrefined. If the idea of having sashimi of botan ebi with caviar followed by duck fried rice and king crab leg in blackbean sauce sounds good, this is your kind of place. If you’re a purist, step speedily away.
THE ITALIAN RESTAURANT
Although it opened after the Asian restaurant, there is nothing second-best about the Italian eaterie – at least where space, noise and over-the-top design (fake wrought iron Tuscan fences and so on) is concerned.
My advice is: let your hair down and dig in – or go home. The large table of Italian businessmen sitting next to us swigging Barolo certainly seemed to be doing the former.
A waiter who irritatingly insisted on addressing us in Italian gave us bread, then summoned a man with a great big basket of raw meat, which was intended to help us make our main course decisions. It all looked good and markety, peeking out from a red checked cloth, though – being mid-sentence – we were a touch startled by the basket’s appearance, then somewhat overwhelmed by the appearance of multiple waiters/sommeliers/bread men/fish men and so on.
Back to the menu. Skip the plates of cured meats and vegetables to begin with – they were all pretty average. Also definitely skip the sea bass carpaccio as it tasted of socks. The plate of burrata was very good though: it was like eating milk, and it brought me straight to Puglia.
There’s a perfectly attractive list of pasta and rice but as is so often the case with this section of the menu, it’s hard to justify the cost – we had a spaghetti with garlic and clams which was too skimpy and not refined enough for its £20 pricetag.
I recommend going for whatever the meat or fish for two is. There was lamb when we were there (it looked in good nick) but we went for a sea bass that could be had a variety of ways – steamed, roasted, salt-baked and so on. We had it salt-baked and it was lovely, the flesh soft and cottony and, erm, salty.
For puddings we succumbed to a blast of pseudo-Italianate decadence: tiramisu and a chocolate fondant with pistachio ice cream as an extra. Yes, it was greedy, it was hedonistic, but it was very Novikov, and – ultimately – good fun.