![]() The scheme, which was introduced last April and is due to expire in September, enabled restaurants to maintain their business despite restrictions introduced to stop the spread of Covid-19. Industry body UKHospitality has called for the expansion of pavement licences, a feature of the pandemic, to be made permanent. Double Dragon has turned what was once home to many a sedate restaurant, into exactly that. Sometimes it can just be a great night out. Expect to see a lot of those torches on display here, because if ever food was made for social media this is it. The iPhone torch had to be pushed into service to get a reasonable shot. The cream-coloured dining room with its open kitchen is bathed at night in a neon electric purple light which drains out colours. You can have a look at my pictures of these dishes on Instagram where I am but be aware that serious effort was required to make them work. Both are served in glasses and amount to the same idea: creamy things piled on top of each other. There are just two desserts: a chocolate mousse with a coconut ice-cream and a cheesecake with blueberries and a Speculoos crumb. This is of, course, very silly but, like so much here, it’s also an awful lot of fun. It comes with a shot of cucumber sake for whoever pulls the gastronomic trigger. These are described as “roulette” because one has been spiked with a seriously hot sauce. We also use it as a dipping sauce for well-made spicy tuna maki rolls. A few drops of that on the salmon sashimi and it comes alive. No matter after last week’s buttered hispi cabbage, here is the great brassica scorched once again in big leaves with an invigorating ponzu, beurre noisette and dried miso dressing. Texturally, it’s a joy, but at first lacks sprightliness. In an echo of his Nobu days, but at a fraction of the price, there’s a salmon sashimi “pizza” for £10.50, served on a disc of golden, bubbled cracker with truffle-ponzu and wasabi fish roe. Or I could abandon the redundant notion of elegance. One observation: it is hard to eat a whole scallop with chopsticks while looking elegant. It’s a hollandaise that’s been on its travels. The fanciest dish is a couple of perfectly cooked, glazed scallops with a yuzu truffle sauce. Be sure to order the crisp glazed pork belly, in soft folds of doughy bun, with the sticky soy and peanut sauce and house pickles. The nasu dengaku, or aubergine grilled with a miso glaze, is as good here as I recall it from Kurobuta and comes with the added joy of a candied walnut rubble. Padrón peppers in gravy: this should always be a thing. We start with a generous £5 dish of Padrón peppers, roasted in the wood-fired oven, sprinkled with sesame seeds and swamped with a mustard miso and lemon dressing. There’s also a pleasing restlessness to it. When I last ate his food at Kurobuta I whined that, however much I liked his cooking, it was expensive. That said, all the things they are serving very much do the Hallsworth jazz hands thing of parading on to the table and slapping you repeatedly about the chops. I very much liked the sound of the kombu roasted sea bass with spicy shiso ponzu, and the wood-fired jumbo prawns with spicy lemon dressing. A little disappointingly, the menu currently on offer is shorter and feels like edited highlights. There’s an enticing section of wood-fired dishes, utilising the oven left behind by the pizzerias. The menu on the current website is lengthy. I can attest that the food goes very well with drinks. The website describes this new venture as an izakaya, serving food to go with drinks. He opened Kurobuta, before selling up and opening Freak Scene. He was once head chef at Nobu London before going it alone with his particularly raucous brand of Asian-inspired, miso-slicked, ponzu-dribbled crowd-pleasing boom and blast. Either way, it’s described as an extended pop-up that might well become permanent, and belongs to Australian chef Scott Hallsworth. I’m not certain, but don’t investigate the term on, unless you have a strong constitution the definitions run from the deeply scatological to the profoundly rude. Perhaps it’s a reference to the Japanese-made video game, featuring martial arts masters Billy and Jimmy Lee fighting their way through a dystopian New York. Photograph: Sophia Evans/The ObserverĪnd so I return once more to 84 Rosebery Avenue, which now has the words Double Dragon affixed above the door in bright red neon.
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