Standing at the Sky's Edge: 2023 Olivier Winner Maybe Deserved It!by Randi / May 28, 2024Since I have no concept of time other than it is flying, I’m finally publishing this rundown of the birthday dinner I had – in 2024. For those who know when my birthday is, you’re laughing! This year, we went to Gauthier Soho, Alex’s original fance pants place, which we hadn’t been to since before it went vegan several years ago. But last year we went to Studio Gauthier, famous chef Alexis Gauthier’s other London restaurant. And I forgot to write about it! And I have to write about it before I can do the more recent one because that’s my rule! The tasting menu at Studio Gauthier was a perfect special occasion treat – impressive, delicious, and more accessible and approachable than a full-on extravaganza at Gauthier proper.
There’s more! Last week, I went back to Studio Gauthier with a friend for my birthday-week celebration of Bottomless Sushi. I’ve been waiting for YEARS to try Studio Gauthier’s Bottomless Sushi, because after practicing in NYC with my brother I knew I could do serious damage. Well, I overestimated my stomach, and although I’m glad I finally tried it, I’m okay with never. ever. ever. doing that again. Maybe no all-you-can-eat activities at all for me!
I still can’t explain the difference between the new restaurants – there’s Studio Gauthier (tasting menu), and then they have a separate menu with the Bottomless Sushi, and then there’s 123V (lunch counter and bakery possibly?), and there’s a chance they are both in the same room? they are not two completely separate entities? or maybe they are? and there’s also a new 123V outpost that is more sushi focused but also fancier? It’s all very dramatic! Suffice it to say, London’s simply teeming with options from this talented Frencho, probably my favorite Frenchman in food aside from that chocolate wizard on instagram who makes the Eiffel Tower and working bowling alleys out of chocolate and cake and is just like wheeee oui oui oui about it and then at the end takes a bite out of the art he made and it looks DELICIOUS but is also art, he really deserves having 16 million followers.
So first we’ll go over the tasting menu experience at Studio Gauthier and then the much more recent experience of the all-you-can-eat vegan sushi menu. It didn’t feel right to do on my bday proper when I was wearing a dress but the tasting menu is a lot of food too!
Since we were celebrating another year of the sun moving around the earth we chose the tasting menu, which at £50 is a great deal. They sat us in a fancy booth and brought us bottled water, which was annoying so we put a stop to that! If I had to pay for all the water I drink in a restaurant I might as well buy the restaurant.
First up were canapes: spring Barbajuan plant ricotta, parsley, chervil, and chives. Barbajuan is a little pastry filled with cheese and greens. I learned that! This was a nice little bite! Good! Small! Good start!
Next was one of my faves because it was two of my faves: big old piece of good bread, and hummus. Or, fresh house focaccia with wild herbs, with an artichoke and wild garlic dip. You can’t go wrong with any kind of bread and dip but this was really good. The focaccia was incred. I wonder if they sell that in the bakery I don’t understand.
Deciding to wait on the bottomless sushi was a great idea, because the next course was sushi! We had a selection of four rolls: the aubergine and cumin (great flavor combo but not really for sushi. wrong Asian!), asparagus and avocado (basic but well done! and where did they get good avocado?!), thin plant meat (this was THE BEST – I think it was their new 3D printed steak and it was fantastic. again not a classic sushi flavor but the quality of the steak outweighed that), and black kelp caviar (amazing). I think the little dollops of flavored mayos were unnecessary (read on for more about that).
I loved the next dish – the spring morel tortellini with dashi cream sauce and fresh enoki mushrooms. Well that’s according to the menu; I’m pretty sure these were fried enoki mushrooms. Like all pasta dishes in fancy restaurants, the one single piece of pasta was amazing and made you wish there were more than one, but that’s what makes it fancy and delicious!
The last savory dish was kohlrabi de la mer – a big old piece of kohlrabi in beurre blanc, with a green that wasn’t spinach but looked like it, and a big old piece of crispy. It was good, but probably the weakest of a (relatively strong!) lineup. The hunk of kohlrabi meant that every bite of it was just WOW KOHLRABI and just too much, and the crispy was flavorless. The greens were good! This dish wasn’t bad at all just could have been more inspired.
The dessert was by far the best part!
Although my bday preference is usually to make my own giant mess of a cake, this year’s dessert was a fine change because this was literally one of the maybe top 3 best desserts I’ve ever had in a restaurant. I cannot get over how incredible this little cake, their Louis XV cake, was, how complex all the flavors and layers and bits and bobs and magic and madness. There was chocolate mousse, there was a crispy crunchy layer like out of a Carvel ice cream cake, there was darker chocolate ganache, and the most incredible vanilla cream, and caramel, and hazelnut maybe in the crispies? I know not what it truly was but I know it was the best dessert in London. What a birthday treat! Not a bad deal at all for 50 quid (as they say) and I highly recommend it for a special occasion.
Now I don’t remember how the service was, because it was last year, but when I went back last week, it was solidly Not Great.
It’s Bottomless Sushi time!!
For £34 per person (and the whole table has to do it, for obvious reasons), you ostensibly get unlimited sushi. I wanted to ask if there was a record, because I intended to break it, but I never had the server’s attention long enough to make conversation.
Let’s start at the very beginning! I made a booking, which is recommended because even though it was fairly early on a Tuesday, it filled up by the time we were underway. Once we were seated, my friend and I were like, well we’re doing the sushi, right? So let’s tell them to get it started? And we could not get a waiter for like, 20 minutes. It was pretty incredible! and annoying! (It was not at all crowded yet.) Finally we got a guy and said well let’s do the sushi, can we try one of everything to start? And he was like well first we recommend trying the petit sushi set, and then after you have that, we can bring you the good stuff. He didn’t say the good stuff, he pointed to the left side column of the menu, which has the fancy tofu, steak, caviar etc rolls that the people come for. We were like, okay whatever! Listen! Do not listen to the waiter! Do not let them fill you up with the petit sushi set! Aside from the vegan salmon, which you can see in the picture is pretty impressive, it’s a waste of space. Lots of red pepper, I think some sundried tomato?? And only ONE inari tofu pocket which like, you KNOW there are two of us! (But funnily enough one was too many; it tasted like burnt and we couldn’t even finish the one.) Okay so the basic rolls here with avocado and vegan fish on top, that’s okayy , but the problem here is the use of roasted sesame seeds. If you are rolling the rolls in roasted sesame seeds, ALL YOU WILL TASTE, no matter what’s in the roll, is roasted sesame seeds. Not what you’re going for with sushi! Get rid of the seeds!
A little disappointing to start. Again the fish is impressive, but as you can see it’s just on top of plain rice. They need to incorporate the salmon into a more impressive roll, maybe with that avocado. It felt like they give you these, the nigiri style sushi where it’s a whole mound of rice with a slab of something on top, to fill you up before you order the good stuff. Do yourself a favor, stand up to the waiter, and start with the good stuff.
The complicated rolls (that we considered ‘the good stuff’ all, before we tried):
the crispy and spicy vegan tuna roll, with Korean spiced vegan tuna, avocado, pickled cucumber, spring onion, and zingy miso
the crispy rice ‘green dynamite’ with spicy tofu crab, guacamole, battered crispy rice, sriracha, and big ole slices of jalapeno
the crispy tokyo with kimchi and cauliflower
the asparagus tempura and avocado nigiri with truffle miso
the hoisin cucumber nigiri with peanuts and coriander
The biggest and most common problems with the rolls were the extraneous sauces, like the truffle miso dollops, that totally overpowered the flavors, and the egregious use of sesame seeds, for the same reason. The seeds also added a weird chewing experience that just did not work. All you tasted was roasted sesame, or truffle. Get rid of the seeds and the sauces and it would be great! You’ll save time, effort, money, and you’ll save these rolls from being ruined.
If you go, you need to order several plates of the 3D steak with caviar. Honestly do that hard and heavy before you think about anything else. Then do the Green Dynamite, the one with the tofu crab and the jalapenos. Unfortunately I think the best sounding roll, the V-Tuna, is one that was ruined by the sesame seeds. I wonder if you can ask for no sesame seeds! That would be a game changer! Ask for a plate of just avocado and salmon nigiri – no wasting space on the peppers or tomatoes unless you are out of your mind – and you are golden.
I’m glad I got to try this, because some of the sushi really was great and unique. And I haven’t had really good vegan sushi since Soy & Sake closed. (Beyond Sushi is pretty good but that’s been so long too). But those little sauce dots and the sesame seeds ruined some of the rolls. I know I said that 100x but it’s SO ANNOYING! It was so close to being great but they repeatedly took a great roll and smothered it with crap! Also, the service was incredibly slow. It was hard to order the sushi we wanted. At one point it took more than 10 minutes to get more water from someone. (Luckily the waitress who finally came over and got us more water was from then on super quick on the water, but that was like the last 20 minutes of our time there.)
Honestly though, I think the all-you-can-eat jawn is not for me. My friend and I felt so sick wayyy before we expected to. That’s a shittonne of rice we ate! I felt kind of gross after and I think I am gooood for life on trying to eat more than my money’s worth.
I would definitely return to Studio Gauthier, for the tasting menu (which changes regularly) or the a la carte menu. For the most part, the food is fantastic and it’s a great restaurant. Hopefully the service improves and they get rid of the sesame seeds.
Best part: CUTE DOG ALERT! I said hi.
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Dishoom: London’s Hippest Restaurant Pretty Good For Vegans
Not that I’m an expert on what the cool kids are up to, but when a restaurant is a) in Shoreditch and b) has at least an hour wait even on a Tuesday evening, I’m pretty confident in calling it the hippest. Especially when the majority of people in the mass waiting in line to get in are wearing jean shorts and black tights. So hip in these parts.
My marked-up menu, courtesy of the most helpful waitress
And Dishoom in Shoreditch (it also has two locations more westerly but East London is for the cooler people) is actually worth standing in that queue for. Billing itself as a Bombay Cafe, its spectacular street-food inspired-ish Indian food stands out in the sea of Indian food that composes East London. Unlike the majority of nearby Indian restaurants, you can feel secure as a vegan that what you’re ordering is, in fact, vegan. (I’ve had too many restaurant hawkers on Brick Lane (what are they called?) tell me a little too assuredly not to worry about the ghee.) The first time I went to Dishoom, when I asked my waitress what I could have as a vegan, she whipped out a pen and marked up my entire menu with her notes. It was hilarious and so sweet! Now, I’ve discovered that they have a whole separate dairy-free menu, showing items that are already dairy-free and what could easily be made dairy-free, so it’s a breeze to use that menu and just look for the items marked (v) for vegetarian. Yayyy fun game.
The thing to know about eating at Dishoom is that, if you are doing it right, your mouth will be on fire. Or at least by London standards. It’s hard to find legitimately spicy foods at mainstream restaurants here — they’ll be like, are you sure you want the 3 bells level of spicy wow it’s so spicy, and then it’ll be something you barely taste. And I’m on the wimpier side spicy-wise, so I’m not exaggerating. But Dishoom gets it so right. Some of the stuff (like the gunpowder potatoes, aptly named) is pretty killer, yet the taste of the spice outshines the heat of the spice, which is so important. So good! Oh, also, the other thing to know is that it’s pretty much the darkest restaurant I’ve ever not seen. Like scary ridiculously goth dark, so my pictures are even worse than usual if possible! Wheee! Let’s see what to order.
The thing to know about eating at Dishoom is that, if you are doing it right, your mouth will be on fire. Or at least by London standards. It’s hard to find legitimately spicy foods at mainstream restaurants here — they’ll be like, are you sure you want the 3 bells level of spicy wow it’s so spicy, and then it’ll be something you barely taste. And I’m on the wimpier side spicy-wise, so I’m not exaggerating. But Dishoom gets it so right. Some of the stuff (like the gunpowder potatoes, aptly named) is pretty killer, yet the taste of the spice outshines the heat of the spice, which is so important. So good! Oh, also, the other thing to know is that it’s pretty much the darkest restaurant I’ve ever not seen. Like scary ridiculously goth dark, so my pictures are even worse than usual if possible! Wheee! Let’s see what to order.
Watermelon is safe
First off, the drinks. When you’re about halfway through your wait, you’ll probably have made it to the bar waiting area, where you are given beepers that beep when your table is ready beep beep. Dishoom’s bar has a pretty lovely non-alcoholic section, mainly because it exists, which is rare here. Do yourself a favor and get the watermelon sharbat, which is fresh watermelon muddled with mint, lime, and sea salt and served over ice. It’s REALLY good, and it’s not very sweet, which is perfect if you are a respectable person with a pink drink and not a drunken foo’ on a hen party with a pink drink. Do yourself another favor and DON’T I repeat DON’T be tempted to get the Kala Khatta Sharbat, even though you’re intrigued, even though the bartender LITERALLY tells you that he doesn’t want to make it for you because you will hate it and how can you ignore how tempting that shit is, even when he really begs you and your friends not to try it, even when he begrudgingly concedes that it’s his job to make what you want and that you can try it if you really want to but that you will really still hate it. He’s right, yall. IT’S AWFUL. It’s kokum fruit juice which apparently is in the mangosteen family according to webs but I’d believe it was part of the this-tastes-like-burnt-wood family, chilli (yes, in your drink), citrus (that’s okay), and FREAKING BLACK SALT. Yeah, like the crap we vegans add to shit to make it taste all sulphury like freaking disgusting eggs, they put in this drink. That’s not even the best part: the menu says this mishmash of ingredients better served for making a table are “left to rest” before being strained over ice. It “will take you straight back to Chowpatty beach”, they promise, which now I believe is a threat. Moral of story, don’t get that, even though I’m pretty sure you’re going to try it now because human impulse.
Moving on. The best things, as in any restaurant, are the starters. I will always start with the same things at Dishoom because they are so good: the veg samosa, obviously; the okra fries, even more obviously; and the bhel, not obviously at all because what even is that? My friend the Wayfarer (who is Indian and therefore an expert on Indian food and she really liked Dishoom so there) ordered the bhel one time and I’m obsessed now. It’s like a really interesting bowl of cereal if you added both sweet and savory things and were like, what am I doing, this makes no sense, but it’s delicious. It’s puffed grains with pomegranate seeds, which sounds perfect, but then onions and tomatoes, which is like whaaat, and then lime, tamarind, and mint seasonings and the thing’s just crazy enough to work. It’s really addictive! I would never have thought to try such a messed up bowl of cereal but I’m so glad I did. As for the samosas and the okra fries, come on, it’s fried goodness, get like 4 orders of each and you’ll be okay. Oh also the menu description for the okra fries reads “Fine lady’s fingers for the fingers”. So that’s a plus, I think.
Okra fries, the only good picture because Wayfaring Siv took it, and she’s a freaking award-winning travel photographer who was positively slummin’ it taking pics of my food so yeah it’s actually visible
Samosas, better than samoas or vice vs.? Discuss. |
Bhel is belle |
I also have enjoyed the Far Far in the past, which is described as “carnival snackery”, colorful fried crackery things that are salty and somehow lemony. But they are easily found in my nearby ethnic groceries so they’re not my restaurant constants.
The fun continues with the more-substantial-but-still-small plates. We get to eat vegetables now, with both kachumber and ‘a bowl of greens’. The bowl of greens is usually too overdressed and vinegary and salty for my taste, but I get it every time because I need greens at every meal or I get grumpers. It’s spinach, snow peas, and broccoli with lime and chili, and sometimes it has too much lime, sometimes too much chili. It’s not the most consistent dish on the menu, but it is the most green.
The kachumber is the classic salad that every Eastern culture has, what I’ve always known as Israeli salad but everyone knows as someone else’s. It’s tomato, cucumber, and onion chopped up. You know it. It goes well in falafel wraps. You’re probably thinking, oh kachumber is a cute name that kind of sounds like cucumber, I see why they chose it. No, it actually means beating someone up nicely. Okay monster man.
The fun continues with the more-substantial-but-still-small plates. We get to eat vegetables now, with both kachumber and ‘a bowl of greens’. The bowl of greens is usually too overdressed and vinegary and salty for my taste, but I get it every time because I need greens at every meal or I get grumpers. It’s spinach, snow peas, and broccoli with lime and chili, and sometimes it has too much lime, sometimes too much chili. It’s not the most consistent dish on the menu, but it is the most green.
The kachumber is the classic salad that every Eastern culture has, what I’ve always known as Israeli salad but everyone knows as someone else’s. It’s tomato, cucumber, and onion chopped up. You know it. It goes well in falafel wraps. You’re probably thinking, oh kachumber is a cute name that kind of sounds like cucumber, I see why they chose it. No, it actually means beating someone up nicely. Okay monster man.
Bowl of greens to the left, all you greens to the box on the left or something like that I don’t know
Gunpowder potatoes
I’m pretty sure the most-ordered item at Dishoom is the gunpowder potatoes. I am not basing this on any research or you know even asking an employee, just going by what I believe in. Potatoes are good. These are super spicy potatoes, skins on, smoky and grilled till they crack apart and then tossed with seeds and herbs. They are normally tossed with butter as well, but the dairy-free menu assures you that they can be made without. Given the strength of the dry heat the potatoes give off (like Austin!), I bet butter helps calm the spiciness. If I’m right, that means the dairy-free potatoes are even hotter and more gunpowdery, so vegans are badasses. Nice.
My big bowl of beans, every time
So as you can see, the small plates at Dishoom are pretty great and numerous. Unfortunately, there’s really only one entree for vegans, but it’s really delicious: the Rajma-Chawal. It’s a little cast iron pot (but an enormous portion) of slow-cooked and deeply spiced red kidney beans in a thick, dark red sauce, served over basmati rice and topped with fresh herbs. It’s really good, considering it’s what you’re kind of forced to order. I’m still not upset about the lack of entree options at Dishoom because these damn beans are so delicious, and because by this point in the meal I’m stuffed to the gills anyway of fried littles and random tomato cereal. What I am upset about is that the basmati rice is the only rice or bread accompaniment that is vegan-friendly. No naan here. But that’s okay when there’s a decent offering of vegan dishes at a place where all your omnivore friends will be dying to go, and that’s the best part: Not only is Dishoom the place to see and be seen, maybe, at least regarding hipsters, but it’s the perfect place for a mixed group of eaters.
DISHOOM, SHOREDITCH, LONDON
Water speed: Oh London, please stop it with these little tumblers that are the length of my pinky.
Service: Decent and helpful, but they are hard to flag down because this place is always super heaving with a constantly moving crowd. Such crowd.
Bathrooms: There’s never a line (yay) because there are at least 5 stalls, but they have that weird England-basement-but-sort-of-also-the-camp-kitchen smell.
Food: Good, fun, spicy.
Bonus: It’s like being in an ad for Topshop with all those stockings and shorts combos and all those big floppy hats even at night and all those men with ironic beards and my god I’m surrounded by hipsters.
Morimoto Philadelphia: The Original Sushi Lovers’ Paradise Has Wonderful Vegan Options
Despite living in Philadelphia since Morimoto opened, I never ate there until after I became vegan. It might seem like unfortunate timing to many, but the vegan options are so wonderful that anyone, vegan or omnivore, would be more than satisfied eating fishless here. I called the restaurant when I was helping The Humane League make the new Philly Veg Dining Guide, and the person I spoke with was so excited to talk about their fantastic vegan options that it warranted inclusion.
It’s still milk! |
Now it’s tofu! |
I’ve tried many dishes and still not all of them. I started with the yosedofu, which I’ve heard is one of Morimoto’s most famous and beloved dishes for vegetarians and non-vegetarians alike. Perhaps the most authentic dish on the menu, the yosedofu is a soft tofu that is made at your table. The server brings a clay pot of fresh soy milk to your table, stirs it with a flourish, and covers it for 10-15 minutes. When the time is up, the lid is lifted and you magically have a dish of solid tofu! It usually comes with a crab sauce, but the vegetarian option was some type of carrot-y goo. The tofu was insane, obviously the freshest you could ever imagine, but begged for a strong sauce. This goo was not that sauce. I ended up using a lot of soy sauce to give it the necessary kick. The video below shows the waiter stirring the soy milk for way longer than you need to watch it.
The tofu, now plated
Speaking of the soy sauce, the #1 rule for vegetarian dining at Morimoto is to ask for the vegetarian soy sauce! What kind of soy sauce isn’t vegetarian by default, you ask incredulously? Morimoto’s house soy sauce, that’s what. It’s ‘infused’, or some other fancy word, with fish sauce. E. Gads. Like I said, #1 rule.
Next I tried a dish that I have been craving daily ever since I had it, the cha-soba, which are green tea noodles, chilled, with scallions, wasabi, sesame seeds, and shoyu. I don’t know how these subtle noodles won me over but they did. I didn’t quite get the green tea – maybe I don’t actually know what the flavor of green tea is if it’s not over-steeped actual bitter tea – but there was a special, new taste to them that was lovely. I love noodles. Noodles noodles noodles. Watch them go down. Down into my belly.
Noodles. Every time you eat them, you get smarter.
See you tonight! Sushi! Sushi!
Surprisingly, the sushi rolls were less impressive, though of course delicious. At a place like this, you’d expect even their vegetarian sushi rolls to be as innovative and remarkable as the fishy rolls. But, although the seasonal vegetable maki and the shiitake mushroom rolls were great and I could eat 100 of them, they were basic. They weren’t noticeably better than anything I’d get from the local great but non-veg sushi place. Maybe I’m just super-spoiled by Beyond Sushi, the all vegan sushi joint in NYC, which I have pretty much every single weekend. Okay, I’m definitely spoiled by Beyond Sushi. But shouldn’t Morimoto be better than a counter in Chelsea Market? He needs to add some creative vegan sushi to the menu.
Two of the main entrees can be made vegan, and while I didn’t get them, I will need to next time because they both sound great. One, the ishi yaki bop, is rice cooked with vegetables and tofu (for the veg option) in a hot stone bowl that crispifies the components, like a bi bim bap. I know you are shocked I didn’t get something with the word bop in it. Next time. The other option was another rice and tofu-based dish that sounded wonderful.
Two of the main entrees can be made vegan, and while I didn’t get them, I will need to next time because they both sound great. One, the ishi yaki bop, is rice cooked with vegetables and tofu (for the veg option) in a hot stone bowl that crispifies the components, like a bi bim bap. I know you are shocked I didn’t get something with the word bop in it. Next time. The other option was another rice and tofu-based dish that sounded wonderful.
My favorite dish was the yasai ramen, an already vegetarian soup with vegetable broth, rice noodles, and Japanese vegetables. The vegetables were not as plentiful as I would have hoped (or cut small enough! It got messy), but there were lots of those stick-like mushrooms that I love. And more importantly, the broth was superb. It was the best soup broth I have ever tasted. Stuffed at this point, I still needed to finish this enormous bowl. I would go back and just get this ramen. I wonder if Morimoto does orders for pick-up. This huge bowl of perfect soup was only $12, too, so it’s pretty much the same price as any ramen you’d get from any street corner noodle shop. What a great deal! The rest of the menu is pretty incredibly expensive, but this ramen is so filling and delicious you’d be set just having this and proving to your friends that eating vegan can be cheap, even at four-dollar-sign restaurants! (Just don’t ever split the bill evenly. Ever. Always say, “Nah let’s each pay for what we got.” Jesus.)
Someone remind me what my favorite kind of mushroom is called.
MORIMOTO, PHILADELPHIA
- Water speed: Decent, but the glasses are too small. What is it with fancy restaurants and tiny glasses? Give me enormous beersteins or something!
- Bathrooms: Downstairs and lovely, as expected in fancy restaurants. HOWEVER, my biggest gripe was that one sink was marked as ‘out of order’, but was just running nonstop. I talked to the hostess and she said “Yeah, that’s broken.” I asked if someone was called to SHUT THE WASTING WATER OFF, and she said yes but like, how long does it take to get a plumber to just shut off the water? How long did they let it run? Ughhh stabby.
- Service: It was fine at first, but then in the second half of our meal, our waitress was nowhere to be found. It got so bad that we were going to order dessert, and then too much time went by that it was like bedtime so we just asked another waiter for our check. When it was time to pay, our waitress came back and looked super out of it. I blame the rampant drug problem that occurs behind the scenes at fancy restaurants.
- Food: Delicious and interesting, for the most part. Great place to bring omnivores for a special occasion (it is expensive!)
- Bonus: Eating at an Iron Chef’s restaurant is pretty cool, even if he wasn’t there.