Since October of last year pop-up restaurateurs the Dead Dolls Club have been based in an old store on Kingsland Road in Dalston, serving stews and cocktails to a discerning Hackney crowd. They’ve recently changed tack and invited the St Albans-based Foragers in to provide an eclectic new dinner menu, and I popped along last night to check it out.
Visitors to this candle-lit space with its tromp l’oeil decoration can treat themselves to a meal from the Forager’s three course menu, which changes weekly according to whatever wild ingredients they’ve been able to find out in the fields and the forests over the previous seven days. Amongst the offerings this week are starters of beetroot with goat’s cheese, pickled deceivers (a type of wild mushroom!) and candied walnuts, or you could go for the very more-ish dish which I tried – pink wood pigeon meat with buttered leeks and hazelnuts coated in a truffle vinaigrette.
Main courses include an intriguing butterbean Kiev, a delicate and generously proportioned piece of pollock sitting on wild broccoli accompanied by a tart anchovy and chili oil dressing, or for the meat eaters there’s the option of a rare venison steak with confit onions, wild horseradish and steak-cut chips. The latter comes dressed with rock chives, which when we looked them up turn out to be one of the many foraged ingredients on the – they are often found occupying the cracks and crevices in rock gardens where they are used to deter pests who have a thing for alpine flowers…
For me, the high point of the evening was the dessert menu – they’re currently serving a choice of lemon posset with rhubarb and nuts or goat’s cheese and fennel with a piece of real honeycomb. I sampled the latter and you’d be surprised how well fennel, which is usually used in savoury dishes, compliments the phenomenally sweet honey. I could have eaten several more portions of the desserts – they were both absolutely superb.
The Foragers menu at the Dead Dolls Club is very reasonably priced given the quality of the dishes – starters come in at around £6.50 and main courses range between £9.50 (for the vegetarian option) to £17 for a large portion of the venison.
You can follow both the Dead Dolls Club and the Foragers on Twitter for more information, and the Foragers also have a permanent venue in St Albans – the Verulam Arms – which you can find out about here.
About Pete Stean
