Ben Marks and Matthew Emmerson’s second restaurant has landed in Clerkenwell
Perilla has been a fave of ours since it opened on Newington Green in 2016, so any follow-up restaurant from the team was always going to be big news (and come with big expectations). Happily, Morchella, now open on the site of an old bank just off Exmouth Market (which had most recently hosted the Double Dragon pop-up), more than meets them.
If Perilla’s interiors are stripped back – literally to the plaster – then Morchella’s are pared back, with soft tones, parquet floors and beautiful burnt orange chandeliers creating a familial bond between the two restaurants. There is one identical feature, the menu and cutlery are sequestered in drawers inside the table, which has become something of a signature over in Stokey.
The two restaurants diverge more clearly on the menus, with Morchella having much more of a Mediterranean slant than the pan-European offering at Perilla. Chef Daniel Fletcher (ex-28 Market Place and a Great British Menu alum) is leading the charge in the kitchen, spotlighting seasonal produce from the Med as well as from British farmers and day boats.
An opening salvo of focaccia seasoned with pepper dulse; impossibly light cigars of spanakopita; and spindly, well-fried salt cod churros with chunky romesco sauce set was a very strong start to what proved to be a very good dinner. A trio of fish dishes followed, starting light with a buttery tangle of scallops and wafer-thin slices of cauliflower mushroom. Things turned richer with a tender piece of hake covered in a luscious sobrasada sauce, and pearly white monkfish atop cuttlefish, finely chopped to mimic the texture of grains and swirled into its own ink, creating an arroz negro minus the arroz.
The kitchen can do meat just as well – the salt-baked poussin daubed with chilli sauce is bang on flavour-wise – but they do make you work for it. The bird fits snugly in the dish it’s presented in, making it tricky to carve up and share out. The plates you eat off are also small, so you don’t have much real estate left for the meat, especially once you’ve added parmentier potatoes and some of the superb iced salad to the mix.
If we wanted more for the poussin, it was the opposite for the gorgonzola dulce with mustard fruits; after such a feast, a thinner slice of the cheese would have been plenty. There were no such sizing issues with the lemon tart, a generous wedge of yielding filling, lightly brûléed crust and crispy pastry.
Before opening the team stated that they wanted Morchella to be an extension of what they’ve created up in N16 – with a buzzing dining room and fantastic food, in an area not short of decent places to eat, we’d say they’ve done it and then some.
84 Rosebery Avenue, London, EC1R 4QY
morchelladining.co.uk