Perilla

Perilla Restaurant London

Perilla Dining

Perilla is a modern neighbourhood restaurant based in Newington Green.

Using humble ingredients of the highest quality, the food focuses on a modern interpretation of classical European flavours, in an informal and relaxed dining room.

http://www.perilladining.co.uk

Restaurant review: Perilla, Green Lanes | Foodism

Looking for a cool neighbourhood restaurant?

Expect minimalist dishes with intricate flavour combinations, and a compact tasting menu if that's your thing.

After a cocktail, we stuck with a rosé syrah from Pays D'Hérault in France, from the list's “rosé and orange” section, which saw us through each course of the tasting menu.

Perilla's at its best when dishes are uncomplicated in make-up, allowing textures and flavours to shine.

The rightly heralded walnut and peeled grape with custard dessert – one of two on the a la carte menu – had just the right balance of sweetness, acidity and crunch, too.

Perilla: restaurant review | Gasholder

Because owners, head chef Ben Marks and ex-Polpo front-of-house Matt Emmerson, have investment from, amongst others, restaurant bigwig Philip Howard, who ran The Square in Mayfair, where Ben previously cooked.

Both menus feature nearly the same dishes, with a couple of additional options on the former, so it makes sense to “not think about it”, as the pal Rich puts it, “and eat what we’re given”.

Photo: PR The next couple of dishes are universally liked by our table.

In a ‘casual fine dining’ way, Perilla, fashionably light on meat, with an emphasis on brassicas, serious flavours and colourful presentation, is similar to Hackney’s Pidgin, Paradise Garage in Bethnal Green, and Smoke Salt, the Islington pop-up.

This is box title Find Perilla at 1-3 Green Lanes, N16, open daily except Monday.

Perilla, London N16: Restaurant Review - olive magazine

Housed on a trendy corner in North London in Newington Green – and with backing from industry big hitters Phil Howard of Elystan Street, Martyn Nail of Claridge’s and Thomas Kochs of Café Royal – Perilla’s got good foundations.

Brick walls have been stripped bare, the original yellow black terrazzo floor has been exposed, while the tall windows that wrap around its triangular frame look out onto the green and pour light onto wine cages and a mix of tactile wooden and marble-topped tables.

Just down from Green Lanes, famed for its Turkish restaurants, Perilla’s short but confident menu is a stark contrast for the area.

Hung yogurt, hiding amongst the florets, creamy and sharp, was rejoined by yogurt whey (separated during the straining), and little green blobs of yet more broccoli, puréed with garlic, onion and seaweed.

A grilled “pluma” of pork was daringly pink and all the juicier for it, and refreshingly partnered with parcels of hispi cabbage, stuffed with tangy sauerkraut and little pockets of pork liver parfait delivering yet more savoury goodness.

Fay Maschler reviews Perilla: Seeking thrills up in north London ...

A five-course tasting menu (must be taken by the whole table) with only one item — roasted kale with smoked cod roe — not also offered on the short à la carte is maybe a habit left over from running supper clubs.

In the main course there’s a fish, a meat and the riot of broccoli and cabbages with hung yoghurt.

A chef has peeled us the grapes that have come from that estimable local shop Newington Green Fruit & Vegetables and each grape is topped with a tiny leaf, giving them the appearance of spooky eyes peering up from the custard mined with small pieces of nut.

The texture of a whole flabby mussel coated in egg yolk on a piece of rubbery egg white brings to mind that children’s game where blindfolded you are fed things said to be body parts… Monastic is a word that crops up in her bread and butter email.

Marks and Emmerson may have to consider the requirements of a neighbourhood restaurant as well as what seems perceived as a destination venue — and maybe eat out more on the days without lunch service... The industry backers could put in another tuppence ha’penny too.

Perilla: A restaurant for people who like methodical madness ...

Perilla in Newington Green, I have heard, took over from a dining spot named That Place On The Corner which, friends say, was a child-centric themed café based on the schtick that every day was one long, never-ending kid’s birthday party.

It feels like one moment I was wearing crop tops, drinking at The Prince, eating at Rasa and trying to get a job on The Big Breakfast then, in a blink, it was 21 years later and I’m in a seasonal European restaurant, drinking elderflower soda, wearing Mint Velvet daywear and eating potroast broccoli as a recreational pursuit.

Perilla is the epitome of modern Newington Green.

Perilla is instead for modern N16 diners who appreciate aesthetics — those who get a sharp thrill from a crowd of chefs, at least half a dozen, who are hanging their own yoghurt and shredding cod heads to mix with juiced turnip in order to create a fishy slaw.

Three of us ate and, for convenience, ordered everything on the menu which, in hindsight, made the lunch a little bit samey: a cacophony of green sauces, white curdy puddles and sliced cucumbers.

Perilla | Restaurants in Stoke Newington, London

If so, I think I might have found it at Perilla, a massively welcoming and creative new spot in Newington Green, that sits in a space last occupied by a very un-hygge kids’ party venue.

There’s nothing Scandi about the food here, which is broadly Anglo-European and offers fresh, uncomplicated spins on familiar dishes, with interesting top-notch ingredients.

But the vibe at Perilla, which started life as pop-ups in Dulwich and Clapton, is so immediately soothing, unsnobby and stylish in a homely way, that you might forget that it’s not Copenhagen, but the dreary bottom end of Green Lanes on the other side of the restaurant’s massive greenhouse-style windows.

These dishes were mixed in with some Sunday specials, including an excellent half roast poussin with leek and crushed potatoes, and a more straightforward plate of lamb – chunks of rack, shoulder and leg – with a good accompanying ratatouille and seaweed pesto.

I’ve walked past Perilla a few times in the early evening since eating there, and each time I’ve seen the friendly staff huddled around the kitchen hatch as a gang, chatting, getting up to speed on the day’s menu, swapping notes, tasting food.