Many fine dining establishments are geared towards a more formal experience rather than offering a family friendly environment, Chris Honor has cleared spotted this gap in the market with his latest restaurant, Chriskitch Hoxton. Chris Honor has an abundance of experience working at top culinary establishments around the world; in the UK, he has worked at Gordon Ramsey at Royal Hospital Road and also worked at the Dorchester where he had a team of over 200 chefs. Apart from that he has worked in 5 different continents and that really shines through when you see the exotic nature of the ingredients and cooking techniques that he uses.
The restaurant is designed with a clean and elegant feel: black leather chairs, glass tables, plenty of natural sunlight from the glass frontage and an open kitchen where you almost feel like every table is a chef’s table.
Chris has come up with a delectable menu, where you conceivably want to order every single dish off the menu. The menu is divided into canapés, starters, mains and desserts. We started off with a very fresh tasting tuna tartare which was matched with avocado, chives, chilli and caviar. You will notice very soon, that each plate that is served is also a piece of artwork rather than just food for digesting. The importance of presentation has no doubt been impressed upon him through his many stints at top hotel restaurants around the world.
I am not always a fan of vegetarian dishes, they are either not filling enough, lacking in flavour or texture. However, the mushroom broth is as exciting a vegetarian option as you will ever see in most restaurants. It is paired with vegetable salad, Korean rice and crunchy bean curd skin. The taste of the mushrooms are strong in the broth, there is textural variety in the chewiness of the Korean rice and the crunchiness of the bean curd skin. Although I would have liked to see more mushrooms in the dish.
The slow-cooked pork jowl is appropriately decadent with the right ratio of meat to fat. Although it does come with an appropriate dose of roasted quinoa, asparagus and mushrooms.
All the dishes are a few pounds higher than what you would expect normally; however they need to understand you don’t go to Chriskitch expecting normality. It is a culinary journey with Chris through all the experiences he has gathered working in different continents.
baldwin@townfish.com