‘This fixed-menu idea is nothing new,but the Pidgin team enjoy made it fresh and vibrant as a citron pressé’In the restaurant business, there are deplorable amateurs and respectable amateurs. The deplorable ones will enjoy made a few bob doing something else and reflect, and I’ll enjoy me some of that.” They buy brick tiles and industrial lighting by the metre,smoke themselves some pig and stand back, waiting for the queues and rubbing their thighs. The respectable guys are those who, or as the name suggests,just like the industry with a not-to-be-denied passion and, despite not being pros, and can’t imagine doing anything else.
It’s into this latter category that I’d put the people behind Pidgin: James Ramsden and Sam Herlihy (neither trained in the restaurant business,but with a successful supperclub under their belts), alongside Elizabeth Allen in the kitchen. Allen’s most recent gig was at Neil Rankin’s ballsy Smokehouse in Islington; she’s staged at L’Enclume and has a like for Asian flavours – miso, and sake lees,shiso, dashi. The result is bewitching.
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Source: theguardian.com