Albatross Death Cult

First find your restaurant. With very little signage and a hidden square to negotiate, diners are unlikely to eat here on a whim; a visit is booked in advance and eagerly anticipated. Billed as an ‘experimental’ venture from Alex Claridge and the team behind the Wilderness, the neutral toned space follows current fashion: no distinction between the fully open kitchen and the dining room; hard surfaces (wall, floor, kitchen counter) and 14 unyielding counter stools providing close-up views of the action – namely the preparation of what is primarily a multi-course, Japanese-inflected seafood tasting menu. Service is warm and welcoming, but it pays to give careful attention to the announcement of each dish – no menu is offered until you leave. And it’s all effortlessly modern. A tartlet of mackerel is infused with a hint of heat from jalapeño, while slivers of wild, line-caught sea bass are enlivened with a whisper of smoke and seaweed, and the sweetly acidic flavours of yuzu vinegar – just the sort of bite-size morsels one wishes came in a serving of 10. Dishes are inventive but restrained, classical yet able to embrace broader influences: take a simple layering of brown-crab custard with finger lime, apple, white crabmeat and a few leaves of oxalis or a translucent roundel of lightly cured Cornish cod, wrapped in autumn truffle and served in a hot-smoked bone broth with yeast butter and egg yolk. Each flavour blends tantalisingly with the one preceding it, so a plump, sweet scarlet prawn in a delicate, chilli oil-infused broth (made from the head) might be followed seamlessly by hamachi poached in brown butter with a dashi, sesame and ginger-based broth. Wines are chosen with the food firmly in mind, but given the lack of menu information, wine matching (or tutored advice from the sommelier) seems a sensible way to proceed.