Carousel

The food, prepared by chef Ollie Templeton, was delicious and experimental. There was a red line throughout all courses which made the experience even better. The ambience in the restaurant was very pleasant and it wasn’t too crowded.

As a friend of mine is working front of house at Carousel currently I got a great tip to come try Mathieu Perez of Percherons. Carousel showcases different chefs every couple of weeks and Mathieu is there to 20^th November for lunch and dinner sittings.
The restaurant was sparely decorated with large supper club sharing tables, dressed with roses and lots of gleaming glassware.
The menu for the evening featured crispy pork belly as the star — we can vouch first hand that Mathieu uses a blow torch to crisp up the pork belly (he set the smoke alarm off!)
The deal is 4 courses for £35 plus service, with drinks extra, including £22 for the paired wines. The style is supper club — so whilst you don’t need to talk to your neighbours, you’ll likely be sharing one of the large tables with others and dinner service starts at 7 for 7.30 first course.
I stuck to water and the apéritif of a pseudo Negroni using Grey Goose vodka — Nudge members get the cocktail for free with their membership!
We saw the bread coming out of the kitchen — warm from the oven, great sourdough with olive oil to dip — yum! The first course was turnip — I know that my Grandad would have said something about feeding turnips to horses, but feeding it to me with the oyster mushroom jus and salted radish was fine. The seaweed added another texture to the dish — the mushroom sauce was sublime!
The squid ink pasta risotto, whilst a black dollop and not too photogenic, was full of flavour — I’m now inspired to try making a pasta risotto myself, although I may forgo the squid ink at home — it looks like it would stain…
But I think my favourite dish was the octopus with heritage beetroot — perfectly cooked octopus with a flavourful sear on the outside and one of my favourite veggies in three different colours.
Sarah and I decided to share the special extra course of miso beef cheeks with Brussels — I’m not sure the miso flavour came through, but it was a good dish netherless. Sharing was a good idea as 5 courses each would have been a lot of food (especially with that great addictive bread alongside!)
Then the star of the show, the crispy pork belly with classic cauliflower purée and not so classic pickled celery leaves and clementine, this all worked wonderfully well together and I can vouch for that blow torched crackling being worth the smoke alarm!
The most unusual dish though was the dessert…
Creamed corn with Stilton and pastry. The strong flavour from the Stilton worked really well with the creamed corn and the pastry added texture — so unusual but actually surprisingly good!
Sarah had the matching wines with the meal — all natural wines and lot of them very young (2015!). Not for everyone, but worth trying, the match of the minerally wine and the creamed corn course was great, it really cut through the strong Stilton.
Get down to Carousel ASAP if you want to try similar from Mathieu — check out their website for future pop ups too, it’s a Carousel of talent with a new chef featured every couple of weeks :)

Was here for Celine Pham’s modern Vietnamese showcase lunch. I absolutely loved everything.
Starter of grilled octopus was mouth-​watering. I couldn’t put my fork down till I had had every piece of it. My main of pork with potatoes and sesame sauce was also perfectly done. She had braised the pork just appropriately and every ingredient was very flavourful.
Loved the ambience — simple, spacious and modern. I appreciated the little details like the abstract paintings on the wall — made me feel like I was dining in an art studio of sort.
Service was prompt and good. They went out of their way to bring my friend extra potatoes in lieu of bread as well.
Would love to go back!

Superbe découverte. Localisé sur une rue parallèle aux grandes artères, il y a peu de chance de passer devant sans le vouloir. Le lieu n’étant déjà pas très connu des londoniens, j’opte pour une petite french review, en espérant convaincre nos touristes francophones de passage à Londres de confier un de leur repas au Carousel.
Avant de parler de l’expérience on the spot, deux mots sur le concept. L’idée du Carousel est de confier leur cuisine à différents chefs, à tour de rôle. Peu de chance donc que vous vous ennuyiez de cette formule de midi, ou de ce menu du lundi soir. No routine, looove it!
Le jour de notre passage, à l’occasion d’une rencontre Elites londonienne, le chef contrôlant les opérations était le chef résident (oui, oui, y’a pas que les DJ ;-) et c’était vraiment, vraiment, bon…
— Entrée: délicieuse, à base d’asperge et de petits pois. Saveurs délicieuses, papilles heureuses!
— Plat principal: il était à base de betterave et elle était ultra-​ultra réussie. Je tiens à le dire étant donné la difficulté à cuisiner cet aliment! Par contre, c’était très «vinaigreux». J’aime le vinaigre donc ça né m’a pas dérangée mais certains se seraient sentis un peu trop «acidifiés» je pense.
— Dessert: certainement un des 5 meilleurs de ma vie! Un riz au lait sur le papier, mais tellement plus en réalité. Un mélange de saveurs et d’épices indéfinissables mais qui toutes rassemblées vous emmènent loin… (Ah? je né parle plus à mes compagnons de table depuis 10 min? ;-)
Quant au service: PER-​FECT. Des serveurs souriants, attentionnés, bref, adorables.
Et la déco, les photos en parlent. J’ai personnellement adoré, ce parallèle chico simplissime.
JUST GO.

Round and round we go, slipping almost seamlessly from set of one set of diners to another, from one set of chefs doing a mini residency to another, an actual ‘permanent pop-​up’. Thing is, its not really permanent as they only have the space for five years then it will be something else again.
The question would really be is this place more Carousel and less Russian Roulette? Done right they could get a new review every few weeks with top new chefs ‘just having fun’ and getting a reputation for an innovative unique time (especially as they only have about 30 covers a day over two sittings). In addition to their ground floor restaurant space they also have an upstairs and down stairs for exhibitions and events (receptions, launches, weddings) so defining this place is a real challenge.
I came here on Thanksgiving and really only found this place from small articles online gushing about this new, innovative and interesting place near Paddington. There was little time to arrange and my American friend had to get back to Oxford, that, combined with my ignorance of the area meant going for a place that was a little bit of a mystery, indeed it was even Unilocalless.
Tickets must be booked in advance and are quite pricey at £45 a head, quite a sum to ask for if there isn’t a menu or a review around to guide you. When I arrived I was the first there and wondered if I’d made a terrible mistake. It soon filled and the price gets you canapés, a glass of prosecco and three courses from a small menu.
The service was really very personal and friendly with the founders clearly very proud of their place, making time to talk to each of the five or so groups there. The current resident chefs are the founders doing a month long residency, Ollie Templeton (ex-​Moro) and Max Pasetti (ex-​Bocca di Lupo and Trullo) and they have produced a truly wonderful menu.
We started with beautiful mackerel dish on a bed of fennel mint and grilled orange with a shallot vinaigrette (divine). We also had a Buratta cheese dish with grilled aubergine, mint and black chilli that just worked.
For the mains there was a roasted poussin with freekeh (I’d never heard of freekeh and still not sure what it is but there is no photo as it was eaten really quickly!). We also had a pan fried hake with mussels and fregula (also amazing!)
Finally after giggling our way through the food we finished firstly with a lemon and Seville orange cake and astonishingly moreish cardamom yogurt followed by donuts with marscapone and red wine prunes (suggested by the chef… who was right).
Every dish was a hit and this residency ends on the 18^th December before they change. So far it really does feel like a showcase where the chefs are free to ‘have fun’ and cook for a small audience. I would suggest that you spin the roulette wheel and jump on the Carousel, its worth it.