Eating out with papa - Orasay

A Notting Hill restaurant with a wine list that will suit your fashionable friend but won’t frighten grandpa.

I liked 32 Great Queen Street, a now disappeared restaurant in Covent Garden, so much that I had my wedding reception there in 2009. Opened by Tom Norrington-Davies, formerly of the Eagle, it served what was termed at the time ‘modern British’ - things like chops, pies and potted shrimp. I must have eaten there 20 times before it closed in 2019. The wine list was mainly French with things like Muscadet, Picpoul, Beaujolais, and Mas de Daumas Gassac. In short, good honest wine. 

On one visit, however, a young Italian waiter came over and with what I learned to recognise later as a tell-tale gleam in his eye told me about a new Tuscan which they had on by the glass. Like a fool I went with his suggestion only to be presented with a farty smelling pale red that didn’t taste of very much. The curse of the natural wine evangelist struck again and not for the last time! 

Andy Lynes, a restaurant writer on Substack, wrote that there are certain restaurants that he avoids because they only stock natural wine. What puts me off most about the much talked about Yellow Bittern isn’t the school dinner cookery, the cash only policy or the proprietor Hugh Corcoran’s penchant for pictures of Lenin. It’s that you can only buy natural wine and there’s no list, you have to discuss what you want with the waiter. Would I dare ask for the least ‘natural’ wine they have?

At Jackson Boxer’s newish restaurant Orasay in Notting Hill there’s no need for such tactics because the list is arranged around how conventional your tastes are with headings like ‘white/textbook’, ‘extended skin contact’, and ‘proper amber.’ This means there’s less of a chance of being charmed into ordering something you won’t like by the waiter with the nose ring. 

Boxer is the chef behind restaurants like Brunswick House and the now deceased St Leonards in Shoreditch. I met him once at a wine tasting years ago and remember his tiggerish enthusiasm was rather frowned upon by some of the more austere members of the Circle of Wine Writers. In short I like Boxer even if he wasn’t such a good chef with a magnificent name.

I was a guest of my friend Genevieve Verdigel who wrote movingly here about visiting Harry’s Bar in Venice with the late Russell Norman. She’s a natural wine enthusiast but at Orasay we agreed on more than we disagreed.

First the food. The restaurant is named after Boxer’s childhood holidays on a remote island in the Outer Hebrides and it makes much of Scottish ingredients. The menu is divided into three sections. Snacks from £5-10, starters from £14-17 and mains from £19-29. Plus a couple of high roller dishes, bluefin tuna and Galloway rib eye. On paper many of the dishes sounded like they had one too many ingredients, this is probably not a restaurant I would have chosen from looking at the menu, but everything worked.  

Highlights included squid cooked in ink (above) with purple sprouting broccoli which might be the best bit of squid I’ve had since visiting a Galician restaurant in Roses when my wife and I were first married. The extra ingredient burnt ginger pulled it all together. Haddock in a bun with Sriracha was essentially a very upmarket fish finger sandwich - I can think of no higher compliment. We also had some deeply savoury ceps and brown shrimp pasta, a baba ganoush type aubergine thing, oh and some smoked eel, because I can never say no to smoked eel. The food is playful but not wacky. 

Rather like the wine list. We began with one of my favourites Tempier Bandol Rosé - totally straight down the line conventional and still probably the best pink in the world. From the natural adjacent section, we had a delightfully creamy Bourgogne aligote from Sylvain Pataille which justified all the hype around this wine. Then I tried a very good light St. Aubin from Prudhon which I used to drink years ago. It was even better than I remember, like essence of ethereal but ripe pinot noir. Finally just to show how square I am Genevieve ordered some crazy skin contact gewurztraminer that I didn’t like at all. 

I’m not sure how much it all added up to. More than I can afford, probably. Genevieve works for Hart Group which handles the marketing for Boxer’s restaurants, so this meal was comped. You could spend a lot less than we did and have a very good meal. Wine mark-ups are reasonable for Notting Hill, about 2.5 times retail and there are some under £40 (the new £25) choices. 

So thank you Genevieve and Orasay. It was great visiting a restaurant that was built around the differing needs of its customers rather then the whims of the patron. 

Orasay, 31 Kensington Park Rd, London W11 2EU