Kid, London W1: ‘Fat, richness, sharpness, all in perfect balance’ – restaurant review

Our main course arrived heavy and somewhat intimidating, and left picked completely clean

Earlier this month, a kind-of Turkish ocakbaşı opened on a corner in London’s Soho. The brains behind Kid are chef Sertaç Dirik and restaurateur David Carter, and I say “kind-of” because, yes, while it has a Turkish-influenced menu – sucuk with grilled peach, pide, börek, hummus, içli köfte with aged beef – and the whiff of live fire, nothing either of them does is ever remotely straightforward, hence the buzz around their new place.

Carter founded Smokestak a decade ago in Shoreditch, a wild, Americana-tinged barbecue joint where, somehow, he made brisket in buns and peach cobbler old fashioneds London’s hottest ticket. Five years later, he opened Manteca, also in Shoreditch, a reimagining of the Italian trattoria for the 2020s, followed by Oma, his Greek-influenced Michelin-starred venture in Borough, and its little sister Agora, and all of them remain dependable places where you get serious bang for your buck. All of those influences – American smoke, Italian flair and Greek boldness – are present and correct at Kid. Dirik’s story, meanwhile, has about it elements of TV’s The Bear: a Copenhagen-trained chef cajoled home to bolster the family business and going on to create the hugely loved Mangal 2 in Dalston. What Dirik and Carter have in common, aside from reputation, is a love of setting fire to stuff, in a culinary sense rather than in a Prodigy’s Twisted Firestarter sense. Kid’s Galata mackerel is testament to this: it’s almost completely blackened and has an incredible hit of smoke in its flesh.

Continue reading...