Orasay was chef Jackson Boxer’s Notting Hill paean to Great British fish. And very good it was, too. Everything was sustainably caught or potted, and everything was beautifully done. But times are hard, and serious fish costs serious money. To the point where it was impossible to turn a profit, despite the place being eternally packed. Welcome to the harsh new world of restaurant economics. So Orasay has shuffled off this mortal coil, to be replaced with Dove, serving ‘elevated comfort food’, the sort of tucker, according to Boxer, that you always want to eat, but can’t be arsed to cook at home.
Black tomatoes with sour cream and crisp chilli oil: ‘Flavours are big and bold, but never overwhelming’
There’s deep-fried lasagne for a start, a small, crisp square of truffle-scented succour, all pert pasta and oozing taleggio. What’s not to love? A contender for dish of the year, and we’re barely out of January. Not so much elevated as exalted. But there’s more, much more. A plump red prawn draped in a silken veil of lardo sits atop a burnished potato cake. It’s a one-bite wonder, the mellow richness of that surf and turf tempered by a sly jolt of yuzu. Ricotta dumplings – the pasta with just the right amount of chew, the filling as light as a sigh – are bathed in a lusciously throaty lobster bisque. Flavours are big and bold, but never overwhelming.
Even a tomato salad – which in the depths of winter is surely the very definition of hope over experience – delights, the firm fruits slicked in sour cream and crisp chilli oil. It’s clever, fragrant and quietly joyous, delivering, just like every other dish, on both taste and texture. A half roast Herb-Fed chicken is splendidly succulent, bursting with well-brought-up flavour, scattered with golden croutons and braised Tokyo turnips, wallowing in a buttery, herb-infused café de paris sauce. This is proper food, albeit with a gently sophisticated burr.
The room, made for long, languorous lunches and dinners, has changed little since its Orasay days. Boxer works the room enthusiastically in his occasional breaks from shaking the pans downstairs, while service is as warm and friendly as it always was. It’s sad to see Orasay go.
But this Dove has wings.
About £35 per head. Dove, 31 Kensington Park Road, London W11; dove.london