Native

London Restaurant Serving British, Foraged, Game, Rare Breed, Local and Seasonal Produce. Native Serves Innovative food At An Accessible Price.Covent Garden

Native Restaurant Wild Food Covent Garden Neals Yard

http://www.eatnative.co.uk

Restaurant Review: Native - Good Things

Food-child of ex-River Cottagers ‘Imogen and Ivan’, the concept is simple and bang on foodie fad – bringing the UK’s wild and foraged ingredients to the table with some delicious little twists and fine flourishes.

Anything with a runny egg is a warm hug, especially when served with dinky flavour-packed, wild mushrooms.

I followed with baked Kobocha squash, served with goats curd, cauliflower bhaji, wild garlic splashes and a sprinkling of black onion seed; which turned up like a beautiful little work of art – although the serving was plentiful.

Whilst my companion chose South Downs venison, wild mushrooms, black Pudding ‘Stovie’ and sprout tops.

We shared a generous miso infused, charred Hispi cabbage and a side of potatoes and finished with an unassembled chocolate brownie cake with berries, a good choice with the Tuscan red wine we’d chosen.

Frenchie Covent Garden and Native on Neal's Yard restaurant review

It’s the first restaurant from Ivan Tisdall-Downes and Imogen Davis, who used to run a successful supper-club.

So then I walked outside and watched a human statue and bought an iPhone and got pick-pocketed and did all the other fun things that you can do in Covent Garden before I headed over to the second restaurant, Frenchie.

This is the first UK outpost of Grégory Marchand’s petit empire, which also encompasses a lauded Parisian restaurant and a wine bar.

And best of all the Cornish whiting, as robust and translucent as its larger cousin the cod, with various iterations of mushroom – button, shiitake, an extravagant smear of puree – delicate, subtle, utterly moreish.

While Native still has the nervous exuberance of a new opening, Frenchie is brimming with the kind of confidence reserved for restaurants that already know they’re at the top of their game.

Native: Genuinely exciting, lesser-seen cooking | London Evening ...

Partners Imogen and Ivan kickstarted Native on a Hackney street food stall in 2012 before progressing through supperclubs and pop-ups on their journey to this permanent location.

Imogen, who oversees front-of-house at Native, has a more tangential background in game — she also helps run a family falconry business using birds (including Twitter personality Rufus the Hawk) to keep pests away from places such as Wimbledon tennis matches and Billingsgate fish market.

To start, a wood pigeon kebab — featuring rare slices of meat served atop a pitta with beetroot hummus, pickled cabbage and harissa — is an enhanced version of a Native favourite from back in the street food days.

Strips of Lincolnshire Poacher with rhubarb purée and slices of roast quince atop quinoa crispbread is Native’s answer to a cheeseboard.

Final flavour: Genuinely exciting and unusual with seriously clever cooking, restaurants as good as Native simply don’t come along very often.

Native: restaurant review | Jay Rayner | Life and style | The Guardian

On a menu of four starters and four mains, significant numbers of the ingredients – pig’s trotters and cauliflower, Lincolnshire Poacher cheese and chick peas, eggs and cabbage – aren’t wild at all.

What’s more, many of the other ingredients which might have been foraged or shot in the wild, can be farmed, such as pears, venison, pheasant and clams.

For a start if the idea behind Native is such a good one, presumably all restaurants ought to be sourcing ingredients this way.

A non-meat starter of pickled pear and slices of salty Lincolnshire Poacher cheese manages to be much bigger and bolder than the sum of its parts.

According to the menu trends report from analysts Horizons, which studies the menus of 121 pub, restaurant and hotel brands, listings for mac ’n’ cheese are up 550%.

Native in Covent Garden | Restaurant review – The Upcoming

Aromatic hints of cumin are assertive in the dish, complementing the earthy, sweet flavour of the root vegetable, while pickled cabbage brings a welcome fresh and crunchy element.

The Berkshire Raspberries, Chocolate and Beetroot Cake, Buttermilk Ice Cream is everything a dessert should be: creamy, crunchy, sweet and indulgent.

Shavings of crunchy honeycomb add a chewiness that gives the dish a New Zealand hokey pokey feel, especially when eaten with the milky ice cream.

Little Caramelised Honey Truffles pack a bite-sized chocolate hit, coated in a thin dusting of high quality cocoa and topped with salt for serious flavour enhancement, while the Toasted Hay Ice Cream Affogato is the ultimate finisher after any meal.

Native Restaurant in Neal’s Yard is a little culinary gem in the area, worth visiting for the experience of eating game and wild food that hasn’t always been so readily available.

Native | Restaurants in Covent Garden, London

A teeny Neal’s Yard pop-up-gone-permanent celebrating the best of Britain’s wild, native food.

A Neal’s Yard spot celebrating the best of Britain’s wild, native food.

As with so many of London’s most exciting new restaurants, the team started with pop-ups and street stalls before finally taking on this permanent site.

Also in season is ramsom (wild garlic), which pokes up through the menu like an unruly but delicious weed: in a fragrant broth of teeny palourde clams with pheasant and pigs’ trotter, say.

Most tables are in the basement (tip: ask for ‘the booth’), but if you sit at the dinky street level kitchen bar, you can bask in the kitchen’s energy.