Kudu restaurant review, Marylebone: Like eating on the South African savannah
At Kudu in Marylebone, beer-pickled onions cut into teardrop shapes are put on top of my prime rib, which comes not on a wooden board but on a fancy plate. On the other side of the table, a whole monkfish is served with pickled fennel and sea beets.
These are two examples of restaurateur couple Amy Corbin and Patrick Williams’ gastronomic approach to braai, the South African style of fire cooking. The practice is more typically associated with great but predictable sling-it-on-the-fire meat, but the husband and wife duo are elevating the cuisine from its “basic” reputation in the capital.
Standing by the imposing braai cooker in the open kitchen in the middle of the restaurant, Williams doesn’t mean “basic” in a rude way. London has a thriving braai scene, such as Farringdon’s Vivat Bacchus, but in Marylebone they’re doing something new and unrecognisable.
Kudu restaurant in Marylebone: you feel as if you’re dining metres from where they felled the beasts on the menu
There is fancy food at Kudu. Of course there is. But the restaurant, which makes you feel like you are dining on the South African savannah, is an equal pull. The fitout by London-based Fabled Studio has created one of the cosiest rooms in the capital. There are frescoes depicting deer and antelope, and the colour palette has been tonally matched to the shades of the Karoo desert. You feel as though you’re dining metres from where they felled the beasts on the menu. Ropes replace a traditional ceiling to give the feeling of being in a makeshift tent, but the poshest type imaginable. It’s immensely relaxing, and absolutely gorgeous.
Not that it’s gone down particularly well in Peckham. Corbin and Williams ran Kudu there for the past eight years, the restaurant becoming something of a south-east institution. Marylebone doesn’t need another fancy establishment, and my friend, who went to the original and lives in the area, feels torn about this glow-up. We wax lyrical about that for a bit, then get distracted by some killer food.
Kudu bread with malay butter is finished at-table by a mildly terrifying-looking hot coal, but for the fear you are rewarded with the delicious flavour of charred, freshly baked doughy bread. We swerve meat for one dish only to try this with curried pickled shallots that achieves meat-level richess. Enormous tiger prawns from the starters list arrive bathing in a herbaceous peri peri sauce.
We share the dry aged prime rib with the pretty pickled onions on top. It is interesting meat, flavourful meat, considered meat, the kind of thing someone with a lot of time on their hands and a very nice cooker makes for you when you go for Sunday lunch. Like the bread, the beef fat crispy fingerling potatoes are rocket fuel and went viral in Peckham.
Like a new potato cosplaying as a roastie, they are more lightly roasted than the typical Sunday lunch fodder, so they retain the freshness of a good potato, combined with high quality butter and beef. We’d already overeaten but my friend demanded we order more. Maybe it was her way of getting back at them for closing in Peckham. Out popped more glistening greasy carbs which we inhaled.
Then the monkfish potjie with fennel and sea beets, the tender fish holding its own against the charred flavour of the braai, and served in a fancy jus with tiny bubbles, the sort of thing you’d find decorating the fish course of a fine dining tasting menu. The sommelier paired everything with some delicious South African wine, and admitted that five percent of the list must remain Old World to please the clientele. Did he like it that way? I got a diplomatic answer but his face told a different story.
Kudu is a special place. The sort of place where the vibe is as special as the food. A cocktail bar is opening upstairs soon, I’ll be back to drink a few too many glasses of red and squint at the antelopes on the wall until I feel like I’m back in South Africa again.
Go to kudocollective.com