In the age of social media, the viral chef rules supreme.
It must be frustrating for some chefs these days. When all you want to do is focus on cooking and running a kitchen, success can seem to depend just as much on being a social media personality as it does on your culinary skills. I’m sure many chefs choose a back-of-house career for a reason, and constantly being expected to create content probably isn’t one of them.
Chefs like Matthew Ryle, Adam Byatt, Will Murray and Jack Croft have all enhanced their reputations by pulling back the curtain on how to prepare restaurant style dishes. Each has amassed hundreds of thousands of social media followers and, I’m sure, bolstered their booking sheets as a result.
Will and Jack are the duo behind @fallowchefs, which currently has an eyepopping 1.6 million followers on Instagram. They’re also the chef patrons of Fallow, a restaurant that’s located just a minute’s walk from Piccadilly Circus and is currently ranked at 89 in the National Restaurant Awards.
Billed as serving “conscious gastronomy”, Will and Jack have done a fine job of creating menus that are both aspirational yet accessible. Dishes include crowd pleasers like a dairy cow burger (£19) or crispy fried chicken buns (£10) as well as more challenging plates such as sweet and sour pig head (£59).
As we sat at lovely high table in the window at Fallow on a Sunday lunchtime, we were surrounded by families with toddlers, groups of tourists and chichi couples, many of whom were getting stuck into a Sunday roast. Fallow have certainly succeeded in pulling in a broad customer base – a bit like Cardiff’s Pasture, which seems to appeal to everyone.
As we’d been on the booze on Saturday night, we stuck to alcohol free drinks - a fresh and fruity Dragon Punch (£11) made with tea, apricots and mint, and a highly gluggable Beavertown 0% (£8) pale ale.
We ordered a bunch of snacks, small plates and larger dishes to share, and a smoked leek Caesar salad (£16) was the first to arrive. Layered with sweet charred leeks, crisp leaves, nuggets of salty pancetta and crunchy croutons coated in a briny anchovy charged dressing, it was a first-rate salad.
Next to show up was a silky smooth, creamy and umami rich mushroom parfait (£18) with a wonderfully complex boozy twang of port, madeira, and brandy. It was served alongside slabs of charred sourdough. I thought Tom Simmons’ version was as brilliant as mushroom pâtés could get, but somehow this was even better.
Crisp and sweet corn ribs (£9) were coated in a compellingly savoury and smoky spice rub made with kombu and smoked paprika. They were a simple yet highly addictive snack.
Smoked beef dairy ribs (£15), with just a few mouthfuls of meat left on the bone, were also just the right size to live up to their snack billing. I'd love to have had a go at one before it had been stripped of most of its meat. Stupidly tender and richly beefy, they were excellent dredged through a pool of intensely umami reduced cooking juices.
A cod’s head (£29) was our main event and it looked like a monster, both in portion size and personality. But in fact, it was a delicate beast that required plenty of burrowing around its various nooks and crannies to extract the equivalent of a small fillet of fish. It was well worth the effort as the meaty fish was glorious drenched in a spicy and glossy sauce that tasted like it was 50% sriracha and 50% butter.
Finally, sweet and juicy heritage tomatoes (£12) were piled on top of a bed of creamy labneh and cleverly seasoned with the crunch of seeds and fragrance of deep-fried curry leaves.
At this point, the efficient yet standoffish service that we’d experienced up until now, ground to a halt and after fifteen minutes of waiting for our table to be cleared, we gave up and asked for the bill (which included an eyebrow raising 15% service charge).
I was seriously impressed by the elevated yet crowd-pleasing food at Fallow and I can see why Will and Jack’s cooking has amassed them over a million followers on social media. It’s slightly frustrating that it was let down by indifferent service as it didn’t come close to the level of the excellent cooking.
The Details:
Address - Fallow, 52 Haymarket, London SW1Y 4RP
Web - https://fallowrestaurant.com/
Telephone - 020 8017 1788
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