Hello and welcome to FREELOADER, a newsletter about biting the hand that feeds.

We ate everywhere last month – our heartburn is back in a big way – and we’ve got ungrateful opinions from around the capital. In this edition, we look at the plague of smart Italians spreading across London, we stop into 2210 to see if NattyCanCook, and there’s a note of praise for our fellow depressed food newsletters.

But first, we break from our regularly scheduled programming to address the latest type of guy taking rent-free residence on our grids and in our minds.

There’s a type of guy you might have seen on Instagram. He’s a chef, but is more likely to refer to himself as a ‘cook’. He seems to live in an airy upstairs flat with a charmingly small kitchen; lots of natural light, blocky wood chopping board, well-loved set of pans. He dons a lot of subdued menswear. Approachably handsome in the Cameron Winter mould, his food is knowingly rustic. Dishes are plated with virtually no ceremony - it’s uncomplicated and effortless. It’s all salads and white bean casseroles and herb butter and fistfuls of basil. A lot of Italian food, obviously; pasta e fagioli, tortellini in brodo, veal saltimbocca, chicken piccata. 

He hosts dinner parties and supper clubs with names like Sprig and Rind. These follow a similar aesthetic milieu: fun candlestick holders, reclaimed wood dining table, those blue and white enamel serving dishes. Table covered in a charmingly un-ironed linen cloth. Dynamic Vines served in bistro-style thick, squat glasses. They talk about how they love to ‘feed people’. It’s cosy and gentle, but like most cosy and gentle things, it has a strange air of aspirational fascism about it. The most important thing to this man, though, is seasonality. Seasonality makes this guy hard as a rock. And at the height of wild garlic season, he is currently in his most ferocious element. Meet the Plonkeur.

The Plonkeur wants you to think he’s some kind of Gen Z hybrid of Nigel Slater and Monty Don. He’s gentle and genteel, a green-fingered good egg who wouldn’t braise a fly. In reality, though, he spends his downtime drinking ironically blue BuzzBalls, smoking Marlboro Touches and watching his new favourite team, Arsenal, at an ‘old man pub’. He won’t admit it around the PR girls, but he’s been out late with Straker and thinks he’s actually a bloody good bloke. 

There’s a kind of soft western imperialism to the Plonkeur’s culinary output. God forbid he ruin the colour-coded aesthetic of his ‘grid’ with anything as barbaric and foreign as a Sichuan noodle dish or a norteño taco. It’s Guinness-infused Welsh rarebit, it’s chicken and tarragon, it’s pan fried seabass. A ‘refined’ Eurocentric palette of polished-yet-homely dishes, punctuated only by the rare appearance of some acceptably fragrant foods from the Far East. 

And where is the spiritual home of the Plonkeur? Well, you can be sure that every time St. John births a new Bread & Wine onto one of the capital’s alcoves, he’ll be there eating tongue and guzzling Bordeaux Blanc. Packs of Plonkeurs will fill out your Tollingtons and your Tiellas, attempting to source the briniest, cheesiest trendmaxxed martinis they can. They live in Hoxton, Hackney Wick and Haggerston, but their hearts really lie in Barnes, Petersham and Putney.

The Plonkeur is part of a wider ecosystem of quiet luxury, one that prizes a certain type of Zone 2 sprezzatura that is actually excruciatingly considered and overwrought. A person so pared-down that they themselves start to resemble their dishes; painstakingly prepared simpletons, desperate to give off an air of breezy insouciance. This is taste-by-committee, without a shred of individuality, just the acceptable outlines of a metropolitan softlad filled with nothing but Goodhood lookbook clothing, Victorian school furniture and bitter leaf salads.

Oudh 1722: Like a baby BiBi.

It wasn’t an ideal start to things at Ornella, but then again, this was our third smart Italian of the day, and we’d formed some opinions. The toilet was broken, we were told, as we stepped into a manic crush of a soft launch still in the midst of leaving the pad. Our options, should we need relief, were a deli next door, or the Spurstowe down the road. As such, nipping the loo throughout the meal became a Benny-Hillian caper of jinking past the heaving dining room, out through the unruly fug of the smoking area and out down the street for a fifty-metre piss jog, like alcoholic HIIT. You get these little flaws with a failure to launch. 

We saw this elsewhere, and we’re going to run them down speedily, as the point we’re making isn’t the one it seems at first. Coppa and wine, both were fine. The Carbone-riffic penne alla vodka was more al dentist than al dente; the veal schnitzel was tough, unpuffed, and needed salt in the crumb or a richer frying fat. And while it makes sense to list it on the menu in the Milanese style (orecchia d'elefante), it didn’t help anyone to put the phrase ‘elephant’s ear’ in our mind when chewing it. Both desserts were misses – one with floury, undercooked crème pât; the other a crème caramel that tasted burnt on a cellular level. It was a miss, and they happen – the more interesting question is why. 

Why did Ornella rush to open? It’s the sister site – that theme again – of another trendy trattoria, Lupa, launched by Carousel’s Ed Templeton, Naz Hassan (ex-Crispin), and swarthy actor-bro Theo James. Lupa, of course, not to be confused with Luca, Luca not to be confused with Bocca di Lupo, Bocca di Lupo not to be confused with Brutto, Brutto with Trullo or Burro, Burro with Tiella, Tiella with Dalla or Polentina, Polentina with Padella or Felicia or Marcella. And now, Ornella. Another smart Italian. Another one!

You can find every microvariety of Italian food in London, and the distinguishing factors grow evermore niche: Abruzzan barbecue restaurants, Emilian osterias, pan-Italian trattorie that conjure the best bits from Rome, Milan and Bologna into an evening’s vision of a stolen citybreak. Restaurateurs are rushing to open them – evidently – and the people who matter (money men and, to an extent, diners) still swoon over Italian like no other cuisine. “People romanticise it,” one anonymous industry figure told us, “they’ll come in and call it ‘the best pasta they’ve ever had’, when they don’t even know what good pasta is. It reminds them of being on holiday, simple as.”

It’s a shame that this hyperfocus is afforded only to Italian cuisine. Step forward, the brave restaurateur with a passion for the food of the Saarland, or Vitoria-Gasteiz; swap carbonnade for your carbonara. Instead, smart Italians keep launching with all the folly and false novelty of Bored Apes. As with the NFT craze, a lot of people are going to look very silly and lose a lot of money when things cool off. (Look what happened with the bistro-wave — have you been to 64 Goodge Street? Us neither.)

Ornella will do well, eventually, because the interior is nice and a famous person might bring their young child here. The teething problems will resolve – there’s a decent restaurant hiding in here, but currently it’s sealed behind a two-foot-thick steel door, in a broken toilet. But taken as an addition to London’s restaurant scene, we have no choice but to gesture at Yet Another Smart Italian, and a bubble that’s surely fit to burst. If you’re a chef with a loan, a dream and a business plan, there’s a whole other world out there. 

The Latimer: No hair, don’t care — predictably a winner.

You might think it’s all fun and games over at Ognisko, the opulent Polish restaurant in zhuzhy west Ken, but you’d be wrong. While you’re all stuffing your faces with pickles and drinking enough vodka to kill a donkey, the people at Ognisko HQ have more pressing matters on their minds.

“I was thinking that since I have been writing these emails,” a recent newsletter started, “we have gone through the global recession, Brexit, Trump 1, pandemic, invasion of Ukraine, Trump 2, tariffs, Gaza, and now the Iranian war – whereas for the eighteen years before 2008 the worst things that we had to contend with were the Spice Girls and Cool Britannia.”

“With the unrelenting news I think we’re reverting to a rather old fashioned fatalism - apart from world class levels of moaning - a Keep Calm and Carry on mentality (I used to have posters in the Loos here that said ‘I Can’t Keep Calm, I’m Polish’ - but they kept on being nicked - I don’t know if there’s a message there). Are we like that frog being boiled very slowly, not really noticing until we get served up à la Provençale.”

The Poles aren’t exactly renowned for their chipper vibes and sunny disposition (and, you know, fair enough really), but it’s interesting to see a bit of global cynicism pumped out through a restaurant newsletter, instead of the usual ‘we’re still open!’, or ‘tickets to our event with Hedonism Wines on sale now (£375pp)’.

It’s not just Ognisko having a moan-up either. King of the miserable missive, Ferhat Dirik of Mangal II, has been ploughing the forlorn furrow for ages now. His latest post, ‘Down II Clown?’ contains this gloomy bit of Goonerism: “Idealism can only get you so far. At this stage, I feel like a late Arsène Wenger, getting thrashed by debt and month-to-month survival own goals, because I simply refuse to invest in a goalkeeper other than Manuel Almunia, and because “defending” is a philosophy to be dismissed, and not a reality of football.”

And you know what? We love it! More nihilistic newsletters, we say. Better than a digital specials board, or a Claude-penned reminder that ‘summer’s on the way’. Life is pain!

Galvin Bistrot & Bar: Saw a cyclist get launched into a bush while I was trying to enjoy my dark chocolate mousse.

Herne Hill is a bit of a ‘shrug’ of an area. It’s squeezed between the generally more interesting Peckham and Camberwell, trying to cadge the airs and graces of Dulwich while retaining the edge of Brixton. You might spot Jay Rayner exiting his favourite local chip shop, Ken’s on Half Moon Lane, but that’s probably about as exciting as it gets. So it’s probably for the best that a fun and exciting Caribbean restaurant has opened there, though one whose own sense of joy is somewhat marred by an unnecessary need to fit in. 

2210 by NattyCanCook is the brainchild of Nathaniel Mortley, a charming and good-looking fella with a great story; stabbed at 16 as part of a honey trap, a bit of saucy drug dealing here, a bit of prison time there, and now as great an example of a reformed character as you could get. After gaining traction on social media for his elevated Caribbean food and a residency at The Greyhound pub, he opened 2210 late last year. 

If you’re the type who starts sweating at the sight of a serrano then brace yourself, because here, even the drinks burn; a scotch bonnet spicy marg was a powerful heads-up as to what was to come. A quartet of starters arrived and turned our table into a bit of a funfair coinpusher game, dishes edging spookily towards the end of the table. Roti with scotch bonnet-infused butter was as unctuous as it sounds, and crispy pork belly, cooked perfectly with melting fat, came with a smoky peppery sauce and a kind of green mango gel. The star, however, was the ackee and saltfish spring roll, piquant and genuinely thrilling, doubly so for the ambitious, Bottura-inflected sauce splash, which when it works, works.

A main of jerk chicken, rested on its side shaped and like a broadsword, had the acrid bitterness of the fire balanced with pineapple, and was served with the softest, airiest rice and peas maybe ever made. On the plate beside, rugged slices of wiri wiri lamb cooked to a wonderful softness, seasoned with confidence and enhanced with the quality of sauce work. These dishes were colourful, and had some old-school fine dining plating - a smear of beetroot here, a bobble of fluid gel there - which we found charming. It’s nice to see a bit of the old razzle-dazzle, when every restaurant now wants their food to look like it came from a Soviet stolovaya, but drizzled with expensive oil. 

We give this effusive praise, though, to make a spectacle of one other main: the ‘Rasta Pasta’, a piece of overcooked, overbrined, unsliced lobster tail beside an overseasoned bed of spice-dusted orzotto, which assaulted the tastebuds like a MasterChef invention test. Fun name, sure, but a conceptual failure of a main course, and also, the most expensive dish on the menu — do not order.

The disparity between thought and expression was not limited to the Rasta Pasta. When we looked down at our plates we saw amazing creativity, a deep understanding of flavour, and certainly of place — south-east London in its highest culinary form. But then we’d look up, and see this strange, uneven room, painted an odd and off-putting colour, adorned with a triptych of massive, completely anonymous magic-eye artworks. A giant plexiglass funhouse mirror in front of new-build-foyer wooden slats. It looks like a funeral home from The Sims. Where, exactly, were we meant to be?

It felt like an appeal to respectability, yet had no connection to the meal we were served — an appeal that belies a lack of confidence in one’s own offering. Sat in that dining room, we felt like we could’ve been anywhere, eating anything. You don’t find that, say, at Shwen Shwen in Sevenoaks, a Sierra Leonean restaurant in the South-East with similar ambitions. See the success of Chishuru, Akara and Akoko, or Jamavar, Gymkhana and Ambassador’s Clubhouse — if you want to change the perception of an unheralded cuisine, a thousand details add up to one impression.

And then we look down again at our desserts, an incredibly deft coconut pannacotta and a sturdy plantain cake, and we’re sucked back into the joy of what’s being made here. Natty certainly Can Cook, and his electric food deserves an electric environment, befitting of the joys on offer here — not one that makes you feel like you’re in an upper-tier airport lounge in Zagreb. 

*

Pass the Gaviscon, that was a spicy one. Should put some culinary cats amongst the provender pigeons! What are we like, eh?

Thanks so much for reading. We’d love it if you told your friends, shared some bits that made you laugh, made you cry, made you scream with rage and/or ecstasy. You can follow Kieran and Joe on Instagram, and you can email us with your thoughts, feelings and free-meal invitations at [email protected].

Until next time.