London/Lisboa
Two restaurants shadow-box in a concrete shrine. One turns out bright plates that forecast Portuguese sunshine, unfussy and confident: ripest Datterini tomatoes frolicking with cod tripe and almonds; clams in a sea of their juice, bobbing with garlic and coriander; freshest peas reunited with their shoots, draped in paper-thin cured pork and spooned with sorrel emulsion.
The second turns out ascetic artworks, admired for their abstinence. Duck breast, uniform pink, frazzled skin breaking rather than shattering, precise and perpendicular to wan “grilled leeks” lacking even a rumour of char, a slick of whey caramel for sweetness. Rich girolles and spongy, fibrous chicken of the wood in a crass sludge of anchovy. Two restaurants. Never the twain shall meet.
These two restaurants are one restaurant: Londrino. Waiting on an anonymous Bermondsey backstreet, the room is decorated agnostically: grey tiles with a pep of orange nod to hospitable Lisbon walls; neo-industrial lighting and austere wooden tables wink at starry tyre manufacturers. In many ways, it’s fitting: chef-owner Leandro Carreira spent time at Viajante under Nuno Mendes, the kind of restaurant that would serve an iberico ham macaron after cod, parsley and potatoes. He also spent time at Mugaritz, a restaurant responsible for both vanguard-wrecking cuisine and making an onion seem cooked rather than, um, cooking it, as well as Lyle’s and Koya, two London restaurants which execute very particular approaches to what cooking and eating should be with room for wit and whimsy.
Where Koya and Lyle’s succeed — and where Londrino struggles — is in making something new and exciting out of contrast and competition. English breakfast udon at Koya feels playful and at home; Lyle’s’ monastic plates of crayfish or prawns are best enjoyed sinfully, heads for sucking. While a selection of whole crabs promises happy mess and a bar menu plays petiscos’ greatest hits remixed with Ducksoup or 40 Maltby Street, eating at Londrino is too often a tussle. Overly friendly service preaching from the hymnbook feels cultish; sharing dishes that are uncomfortable table-fellows feels ungenerous and ill-considered; at times, it feels as if the cooks are spiting their best instincts in service of The Creed. It says a lot that rich, smutty brown crabmeat is repurposed and renamed as silken foie, served with a monument of brioche.
And then, there’s ice cream. A speckle-blue bowl filled with orange, a white dish piped with pink. Both offer a thrill of cold, as well as flavour — everything else is served ambient. Or tepid. The latter is an exquisite strawberry sorbet, anointed with more strawberries somewhere between compressed and dried. It tastes of fruit, a sunny evening on the banks of the Douro or the Tagus; it presents as a rarified exhibit, two kitchens tussling still. The former is winter melon, clove, and anise. It starts custardy and rich, sweet and spicy, melting into floral perfume, as if a melon has burst in your mouth. It’s the kind of ice cream that can only be made by someone who understands joy and pleasure and excess as much as flavour affinities and technique, a perfect union, two kitchens become one. Carreira has always said Londrino will not be a Portuguese restaurant, but instead Portugual through a London lens. That lens could do with a wider aperture, letting in some light and wit to illuminate the common threads between its distant homes.
For now, its soul is out of focus. That melon, clove and anise ice cream represents everything that Londrino could be, but it also highlights everything it isn’t. At least, not yet.
