Review: Counter Culture, Clapham

So you finish a long day of house moving activities, lugging boxes and driving back and forth across London, and it’s almost 9 in the evening and you realise it’s a long time since lunch. And you don’t have a kitchen yet and besides, it’s almost 9 o’clock. So you wander out into Clapham (your new home town, dontcha know?) still in the clothes you’ve stood up in all day. And then you stop at the first place that catches your eye and find yourself having an eight course tasting menu at Counter Culture.

Okay, maybe normal people would have gone for a curry.

Counter Culture is bijou, about a dozen seats and an open kitchen/bar with nothing more than a couple of portable hotplates. They have the kitchen at The Dairy next door to lean on for the actual cooking. Our menu was very autumnal, and really concentrated on British produce.

First thing to note: they do a mean sourdough at The Dairy and it’s just as good here, with whipped chicken fat rather than butter. There’s also a nice bite of roast and pickled cauliflower in a yeasty broth. Stuff gets more interesting with the first proper dish: curls of sweet roast onion, thin sliced of fresh chestnut, nuggets of roasted chestnut and a delicate marjoram cream with lovage oil. Fresh chestnut was a new one on me, and brilliant. The unmistakable sweetly nutty flavour is in there, but the taste is fresher.

Another stand out dish was mushrooms in a complex and funky sauce with a pronounced yeastiness. To be scooped up with wafer thin crisps of yesterday’s bread, it was enormously satisfying and seasonal. So was the main course, a rich puree of vivid orange squash topped with softly braised lamb and a smashing granola. This wasn’t the usual over-sweet breakfast rubbish, the earthy and nutty flavour of the various seeds in it added a whole lot to the dish. I enjoyed the side salad of leaves with fermented wild garlic stalk curd dressing.

Shout out to the pre-dessert! Half of a tiny but juicy hedgerow apple, it’s core removed and replaced with a bright and tangy sweet rose vinegar gel. Absolutely brilliant. The main pud was a lovely burnt orange cream, hiding lots of bits of burnt orange complemented with some ginger crumb.

And the best part? This tasting menu was a bargain £35! I’ll be honest, it’s not as refined and polished as a white tablecloth menu. But it is most certainly a whole lot of good food, great ingredients and inventive cooking for a tiny London price. They have some jolly good wines by the glass too. I was really impressed by Counter Culture. Handy it being just around the corner!