Andrew Clarke and Jackson Boxer, the pair behind Brunswick House and St Leonards, have gone west for their latest restaurant, Orasay, which opened last month in Notting Hill. The restaurant is inspired by the Hebrides (Orasay is a tiny island within the Inner Hebrides) with a strong focus on seafood – lobster, crab, scallops, oysters, razor clams and langoustines and the like. We went by for a weekend lunch and there really were only a couple of meat options on the menu so we got into the spirit of things and went with fish and veg all the way.
Things got off to an extremely excellent start with a little snack of ‘fried bread with anchovies’ – warm pockets of dough topped with anchovies and a sort of zingy caper mayonnaise. You could eat these by the bucket load and leave Orasay feeling very happy indeed. The second snack wasn’t far off the high benchmark set by the little anchovies: another variation on ‘bread with fishy things’, this was a round potato flatbread topped with smoked whipped cod’s roe and pomelo kosho and we demolished it.
A lot of the other produce – leaves, vegetables, honey, and eggs – comes Jackson’s organic farm in West Sussex. We were able to test a lot of this out in the next two courses, including the asparagus with egg and lardo (ok so we had a bit of meat), which was a perfect little spring plate. Even better, however, was the roast leek and Jersey Royals with crunchy sweet peas, topped with flakes of fresh crab and a warm butter sauce.
Up next was roasted cauliflower with charred hispi cabbage, almonds, and dill, which felt far more indulgent that it sounds. Then there was roast cod with brown shimp and an encore for those sweet spring peas; it was a very good dish but perhaps didn’t elicit the same excitement as earlier dishes that really nailed it.
Orasay was a great experience over all, with the quality of ingredients and cooking being very apparent throughout. We can definitely recommend adding this one to your hit list.
31 Kensington Park Rd, London W11 2EU
orasay.london