BACCHUS - Chef Nuno Mendes (London)

Bacchus é um restaurante relativamente recente, localizado na zona Este de Londres perto de Old Str. Com um dono Inglês Philip Mossop e o Chef Português Nuno Mendes, o restaurante tem feito grande sucesso e é actualmente muito referido pelos media. O chef Português de 33 anos, outrora finalista de biologia, faz uma cozinha com sabores Ibéricos misturados com ingredientes típicos Portugueses, com grande influência Espanhola e um toque Japonês (ingredientes e apresentação). Menú equilibrado com muitos legumes e germinados e muito colorido. Utiliza técnicas e ingredientes de vanguarda, que revelam a sua breve passagem pelo El Bulli como estagiário.

Bacchus is a recent restaurant, located in the East part of London in the Old St neighbourhood. The owner is a English called Philip Mossop and the Chef is Nuno Mendes a Portuguese with 33 years old, that used to study biology. Nuno Mendes mixes Iberic tastes with Japanese ingredients and presentation. Very well balanced menu, with lots of vegetables and very colourfull. He also uses techniques and new ingredients that reveal is passing trough El Bulli as a stagière.

Menu de Degustação / Tasting Menu

"Papos de Anjo" com queijo e sem calda, com sal, pimenta caiena e ervas aromáticas

Small Portuguese cakes called "Papos de Anjo", with cheese, salt and spices

Shot de ervilhas com hortelã e rebentos de beterraba

Sweet peas and pepermint shot with beetroot sprouts

Carne de raia, enrolada em fatias muito finas de abacate com caramelo (isomalte). Crumble de caril e molho de maracujá.

Skate and avocado roll with caramel topping (isomalt sugar), curry crumble and passion fruit sauce.

Mousse de caranguejo enrolada numa película filamentosa, rolo de gelatina a envolver ovas de peixe voador, cogumelos shitake, coulis de ervas e tosta.

Crab mousse with Tobiko ravioli, baby shitake, green herbal broth and coral toast

Salada de vegetais e frutos da estação com geleia de tomate (xantano), flores e quadradinhos de gelatina de vinagre balsâmico.

Salad of vegetables, fruits of the season, tomato gelee (xanthane), flowers and litle cubes of balsamic vinagre.

Camarões do paraíso, com duas texturas de ananás (desidratado e caramelizado) com gelado de coco.

Paradise Prawns seared pineaple, green olive sofrito and iced coconut

Geleia de presunto Ibérico, tomate frsco, azeite de alho em pó (maltodextrina), tosta.

Iberico ham gelee, summer tomatoes, bocadilho bred and garlic oil dust (maltodextrine).

Tamboril com compota de funcho, aveia torrada e açafrão molho de pimentos.

Monkfish fillet, fennel compote, safron toasted oats, ajo blanco and piquillo.

Peito de vitela cozinhada em baixas temperaturas, involucro de gelatina de leite de soja, cenouras, ginger ale, puré de cenoura e pimenta Szechuan.

Veal breast, soy milk gelatine, ginger ale, carrot pure and Szechuan peppercorns.

Morangos, rúcula e ar de wasabi.

Stawberries, rocket and wasabi air.

Coulant quente de chocolate escuro, com gelado de água de rosas, pós de: cacau, azeite de avelã em pó (maltodextrina) e pó de avelã ralada.

Dark chocolate, mangosteen, rose water ice cream and 3 powders: cocoa, hazelnut oil (maltodextrine) and grated hazelnut.

Petit fours

Trufa de chocolate com recheio de leite condensado, colher com puré de manga, copo com creme catalana e biscoito de manteiga com piri-piri.

Chocolate trufle with condensed milk on the inside, spon with mango pure, shot of catalana cream an butter biscuit sprinckled with piri-piri.

Is this the most futuristic pub in Britain? 

Cheese ice cream, apple air and a pint of lager - how an east end boozer is reinventing pub grub.

Jay Rayner
Guardian Unlimited 

Photograph of Bacchus owner Philip Mossop and chef Nuno Mendes by John Reardon

'Then I went to the Fat Duck,' he says wide-eyed, as so many often are. 'And that changed everything.' Blumenthal's menu of oysters with passion fruit, low-temperature cooked pigeon and smoky bacon ice-cream, excited him like no other. 'I began doing research. I discovered that there was this man called Ferran Adrià who was doing something like this in Spain,' he says now, mocking his own lost innocence. 'That there was another place called WD-50 in New York.' He started to travel and to eat. 'I thought it was really exciting. But I also knew I wanted to do something local, not West End. The fact is I still begrudge spending £400 for two people in a grand restaurant. I find it elitist.'

What he wanted, he says now, is to serve 'avant- garde food at a reasonable price. I couldn't see why it couldn't be done. After all, it doesn't cost more to cook like this.' He already had his site, having set his heart on the knackered old Bacchus, at the end of Hoxton Street which even its admirers would accept will never be on anybody's sightseeing tour.

The problem was finding the right chef. He met over a dozen. They did things for him with sea bass and cannon of lamb. They did reduced French-style sauces. 'It was perfectly nice, but completely uninteresting.' Then, one day, he stumbled across Nuno Mendes, a Portuguese-born chef who had worked at El Bulli, happened to live around the corner from him in Shoreditch and who was desperate to be given his own show. 'We went back to my flat and cooked for about a week. He was amazing, because of the things he could do with a conventional kitchen.' Mendes, who is 33, looks the part, too: a sail of black fringe hanging down, carefully sculpted beard, and dark eyes that sparkle when he talks about the dishes he's preparing. 'The new food is a breath of fresh air,' he says in his American-accented English after years in New York and New Mexico. 'We can play with food, we can have fun with it. But I also like making ingredients as good as they can be.'

One weekday afternoon he leads me into the small open kitchen at the back of the pub where his non-English brigade is preparing for that evening's dinner. He shows me a piece of pearly-white vac-packed cod, with a little butter and seasoning. So will he be boiling this for 48 hours like that newspaper article suggested? He laughs. 'We'll cook it for 13 minutes in the water bath,' he says. 'The texture is amazing. Sous vide for me is not about changing expectations. It's about making ingredients taste as good as they can.'

Still, it's clear this is not like other kitchens. Nothing is roasting down in the oven. There is no stockpot bubbling on the stove, only a big pan of milk for the dolcelatte ice-cream. I raise an eye-brow at the thought of a blue-cheese ice-cream. 'Really all we're doing is serving a version of the cheese plate you get with pear. Only here the cheese is part of an ice cream.' I ask him about the green apple 'air' on the menu. 'We do that using lecithin. It's an emulsifier which makes foams come up perfectly.' And then he says, 'The thing you have to understand, though, is that we're not scientists. We're cooks. The technology is simply about control and consistency.'

That evening I am served a tasting menu by the young and enthusiastic team. There is a Bacchus Bubble Bath cocktail to start, its foaming head fragrant with lemon grass. There is a taster of apple purée with a sprightly foam of yogurt and the sudden crunch of salt. Mackerel comes with tart rhubarb purée and crisp crumbs of gingerbread, building up a curious interplay of salt and sweet. A single fat scallop, cooked sous vide, has a soft, gel-like quality beneath a pillow of that green apple air. Cinnamon-rubbed pork comes with shards of tarragon-flavoured crisp caramel, and there's a small piece of fillet steak with a grain-mustard crust and luxurious buttery truffled potatoes. Finally there is that dolcelatte ice-cream with the pear cake.

Does everything work? No, not entirely. Ingredients cooked sous vide are famed for their softness. Meats can come out incredibly tender. But what they can lack - like that jellified scallop - is texture: a bit of crunch, a bit of contrast. And sometimes Mendes likes to throw one ingredient too many onto the plate, a little flowery rosewater into a sauce, for example, a dark smear of soy sauce beneath the pork. But, for the most part, it is delicious and never less than intriguing. It plays with your head in the way lamb shanks and fish cakes never can.

Mendes recognises what he does may be challenging. 'But I stand behind it 100 per cent. I'm not just trying to shock people. This is what I believe in.' Trying to get others to believe is a different matter. Already some of the restaurant critics have declared themselves baffled. Mendes is philosophical. 'We accept that some people will like it and some won't.'

Clearly there are enough people who like it. Bookings are up and they have introduced a lunch service. And last month, a restaurant critic rallied to their cause, giving Bacchus four out of five stars, declaring Mendes and Mossop complete stars and praising their 'lovely, adventurous little restaurant'. The review appeared in the very same newspaper which had run a news story declaring sous vide the enemy of good eating. The irony is not lost on Mossop, who sees it as an inevitable part of the strong reactions that a restaurant like his is always bound to encourage. For now, though, he says, they are simply looking to the future. Much like their food.

Bacchus, 177 Hoxton Street, London N1 (020 7613 0477); www.bacchus-restaurant.co.uk.