Viajante

Town Hall Hotel, Patriot Square, London

If you’re in line with the Nuno Mendes way of thinking, menus are out. Opting for a six-, nine- or 12-course dinner without knowing what might appear on your plate is in. The waiter asks if you have any allergies or dietary requirements, how many courses you’re opting for, and then you wait to see what emerges (the mystery even extends to wine matching). Luckily, the faith you put in the ex-Bacchus chef is rewarded with intricate, creative and artfully executed dishes. Portuguese Mendes once worked with Ferran Adrià at El Bulli and his standards are predictably high. The menu changes regularly, but from the Thai Explosion – a mini sandwich of chicken-skin ‘bread’ and chicken mousse filing – through to the wealth of seafood (scallops with butternut squash and mustard; seabass toast, garlic kale and São Jorge cheese; lobster with potato, confit egg yolk and saffron), Mendes’s food excites. Housed in Bethnal Green’s old town hall, stylish as the decor is, you can’t quite escape the formality. Nonetheless, everybody should try Viajante once, because here food doesn’t just accompany conversation, it is the conversation.