Cheese 8
Glazed Ham 9
In his “Moon Under the Water” George Orwell set out the parameters that his ideal drinking hole should adhere to. Uncompromisingly Victorian architecture; bar staff who know your name; austere but delicious snacks of mussels, morsels of cheese, pickles and snappy caraway biscuits; a place to get a solid lunch, a cut of a cold joint and a boiled jam roll. The genius of the essay was that each reader can picture their own version of this pub clearly, substituting in their own local and perhaps some of their own idiosyncrasies for Orwell’s. But close your eyes and look at the pub again. Does it not look like…40 Maltby Street?
Chicken, bacon and hazelnut terrine 8
Onion, oatmeal and Lancashire tart 7
Warm salad of Jersey Royals, brown shrimps + watercress 8
Food is first devoured as words. I learnt this from Redwall, Brian Jacques’ woodland romp of mice, moles and otters set against the backdrop of a red stoned abbey. The scenes which left an indelible mark on me were not the quests or battles but the descriptions of food during the abbey feasts, carefree images of joy during peacetime before evil disturbs the natural order. Tables groaning under the weight of cobblers, crumbles and pies, hotroot and shrimp soups, leaves and fruits I’d never eaten — gooseberry, nettles, watercress, elderflower, white turnips fragrant with nutmeg. Later I would buy the Redwall Cookbook and never make a single thing from it — I realised I was in love with the descriptions more than the reality of eating these strange vegetables and nut cheeses. But some seeds must have been sown within me, this food; seasonal, nativist, homely but revelling in pleasure, is 40 Maltby Street’s food.
Asparagus soup, smoked cods roe + a poached egg 8
Asparagus fritters + mushroom ketchup 5.50
40 Maltby Street is London’s best and maybe only pagan restaurant — not that Steve, Raef, Kit and Anna have some kind of Wicker Man arrangement — it respects and venerates the seasons through food, in how certain dishes may appear on the menu maybe once or twice, burn brightly and not be seen again until the next year, how Christian festivals are marked and subverted using food and wine as pleasure. Epiphany cakes, hot cross buns, Spring Tastings turning Easter into a Clapton bacchanal, mince pies. What is biodynamic farming but a form of neo-paganism anyway? The walls of the arch are lined with the produce of batshit winemakers who farm using phases of the moon, quartz crystals, burying skulls naked on Midsummer’s night. But you can’t argue with the end result.
Part of the fun of going to 40 Maltby Street is knowing what was on last week and seeing the new debutante on the menu when it appears on Wednesday’s Instagram, a gastronomic version of a mixtape drop: asparagus, leeks and spring onions in the greener months, girolles, pumpkin and salsify when it’s no longer possible to sit and drink outside. No menu is more in love with its own language — sometimes it feels like ticking off bingo. Eyes down: fritters, soup, crumbed, tart, ham, terrine, chilled, warm, and a _ egg. Ah, we have a row!
Duck livers, cured pork + creamed nettles on toast 8
Crumbed lamb breast, stewed artichokes + aioli 10
Roast monkfish with mussel and mousseron rice 16
Grilled rump steak, chard, crispy onions + mustard 16
Sometimes the language of the menu is subversive. Italian and French words are generally avoided when a sturdy English one will do, even if they might describe the dish more accurately to a first-timer. Rices, never risottos. Ices, never granitas, custard slice, never millefeuille. At one point I thought this linguistic duplicity was because it was trying to hide the fact it was more of a French restaurant than an British one, but now I think it’s both a reclamation of those foods as British and a nudge that British food is and always has been European.
Butterhead, elderflower + pickled kohlrabi 6
On today’s menu I told the woman I was falling in love with that I couldn’t be with her yet. I went to 40 Maltby Street without her and sent her a picture of the salad showered with elderflowers, she sent back a picture of a Richard Olney text on the ‘delinquent salad’ She told me that he understood, just like 40 Maltby’s chef Steve Williams does, that ‘for a truly hedonistic experience, each tiny detail must be absolutely just so’. The next evening I was in Osaka and she was in Bermondsey. It would be precisely a year until we could have the salad together when it reappeared in the blackboard’s firmament again, unchanged solely with the addition of mint.
Rhubarb + ginger ripple with toasted oats 5
Almond, prune and lemon cake 6
Apple ice 3
She told me she would take handsome prospects to 40 Maltby Street on dates, as only someone who understood why she loved the restaurant would understand her. I’ve often thought two lovers, or at least two people who want to be, is exactly right for dinner there — it’s enough to make you really think about what you want to eat and strip out all the unnecessary dishes, and to take advantage of the closeness of the seats, of hands scrabbling above plates that might accidentally meet. It’s also enough to order every dessert and not feel too bloated for whatever comes afterwards.
40 Maltby Street is closed
Two years later and we’re thinking about elderflowers again. The scent hits us like a wall in Burgess Park and we pick enough to take home to make fritters, while some are used on an apricot tart with sweet pastry appropriately picked up from a now shuttered 40 Maltby Street. Suddenly our whole life seems to be filled with tiny flowers: thyme flowers, coriander flowers, marigolds. The window for flowers is small but we have no intention of stretching them out in cordials or syrups; we devour them immediately.
There is no elderflower salad this year, but the flower has appeared again in a sour cream and elderflower sorbet that will sit for a while longer in our freezer, until the elders are no longer laden. The sorbet is both delicate and tart, and makes us laugh at how good it is. To paraphrase AA Gill “seasonal eating actually means getting elderflowers three times a day for a month and then not seeing it again for nine”. I’ll take that. Nothing is ever new, so everything is new; every variation, combination, every meal shared with a new companion, the same companion who is now different. The elderflowers are already turning brown on the trees. There is an urgency that with each iteration and repetition we are closer to the final menu.
