TopJaw’s Jesse Burgess reviews Kinkally in Fitzrovia
The presenter of hit restaurant recommendations account TopJaw shines a light on London’s lesser-seen culinary hotspots. First up, a modern Georgian restaurant in the heart of Fitzrovia
Words: Jesse Burgess
Some of us just cannot help making things difficult for ourselves. Hospitality is not an easy business on any scale. But still, there’s a fairly obvious playbook regularly used to attract a respectable customer base: a familiar cuisine, popular menu items, a well-known team...
Kinkally on Fitzrovia’s Charlotte Street in the capital has decided against employing any of these. None whatsoever. Founder Diana Militski and her team have chosen to enter the lion’s den with no history of pop-up success, no big-name chef and no dish designed to make an influencer’s underwear twitch. Even the likes of Kricket throw a fried chicken dish on the menu to appease the culinarily shy.
And get this: Kinkally has tasked itself with the mission of educating London diners on a cuisine most have never heard of and very few care about. Those who sling grub at festivals print their offering – ‘GOURMET BURGERS’, for example – on huge letters above their truck, demoting the brand name to a small subline as, in that instance, their product is far more likely to attract customers 400 metres away than their brand name ever would. Word-of-mouth marketing isn’t too different: “I went to this pub yesterday that pours the best Guinness I’ve ever had”; “Their Detroit-style pizza blew my socks to the other side of the room”. But what about, “Have you heard of Kinkally, the contemporary Georgian restaurant, quite big on khinkalis?”.. Errrmm, you what?
The name Kinkally is a more phonetically friendly spin on the aforementioned khinkali, the classic Georgian dumpling – a key menu item here at the one-year-old restaurant. I’m an advocate of ‘dealer’s choice’, asking the server or chef to pick a few of their favourite dishes on the premise that they know far more than I do. It’s a method particularly helpful in a contemporary Georgian restaurant.
Bizarrely, perhaps the dish I think most about since my first Kinkally experience is the Romaine lettuce with Pecorino and sesame tkemali. Not entirely sure where they summoned that umami bomb from, but my god it took me by total surprise. The baked aubergine, satsebeli and vanilla matsoni is a spin on a very traditional Georgian dish using a slightly sweetened yoghurt. I’m told it’s a popular item on the menu and forms a solid component when hopping around small plates, but don’t expect to be telling your friends much about it. The Gurian style beetroot, however – made in a three-day pro- cess of dehydration and rehydration, which produces a particularly chewy and flavoursome beet – is much more memorable. Beef sourced from Walter Rose & Son in the West Country, and chopped with black truffle, is never not going to bring a smile to my face, but if I could turn up the crisp dial on the toasty base then I would have done.
Georgia is located at the intersection of eastern Europe and western Asia, and its khinkalis embody the country’s geography. The dumpling isn’t too far away from the dim sum you’d find in more eastern parts of Asia, but the denser dough and fillings of a khinkali feel more akin to that of eastern Europe. At Kinkally, its tempting examples are a colourful class, a far cry from the knobbly and rather anaemic looking khinkali readily available on the streets throughout the cities of Georgia (I imagine).
Wagyu, peppercorn plum sauce and Svanetian salt wrapped up in a picture-perfect dumpling sure did sound and look appealing. However, it was surprisingly outshone by the other khinkali dish placed before me – one of langoustines, wasabi and matsoni in a quite-frankly-stunning zebra-striped casing. A bountifully creamy and ever-so-spicy sauce satisfyingly bursts out as you take a bite – a dish so moreish you’ll find yourself using the rather tough khinkali top to desperately stab at the remaining sauce on your plate.
London, like New York, has a subterranean world of extremely compromised cramped spaces hidden beneath unassuming ground-floor commercial units. These underground areas are usually relegated to store rooms, toilets, kitchens and the occasional ropey private dining room. Sometimes, with enough imaginations from the right team, they’re transformed into remarkable, inviting spaces, equally as pleasant to be in as the much lighter floors above. Bar Kinky is a prime example – an incredibly well designed and very sultry cocktail bar, sat beneath the restaurant, and whose mightily impressive finish creates a totally different atmosphere.
So, rather than venturing into Kinkally’s world of intriguing desserts, I recommend you move downstairs. Time spent sat at the central stainless steel bar, sipping on a drink expertly made by the (perhaps unnervingly enthusiastic) mixologists is time very well spent indeed. I can recommend the lavender espresso Martini... Oh boy.
The reviews of this place, much like mine, are tantalisingly positive. Diana and her team have chosen the long game, a decision I have the utmost respect for. I should acknowledge that there is clearly copious financial backing here, evident from the outrageous fit-out and prime Charlotte Street location. This support has likely permitted the daunting task of trying to introduce a city to an unfamiliar cuisine. But again, Diana didn’t need to do this. Instead she’s taken the leap of faith fuelled by curiosity and an innate desire to promote Georgian food in London – and I for one am very happy that she has.
Read our interview with Jesse Burgess and his TopJaw co-founder Will Warr...
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