Cornerstone
Hackney Wick, London
In graffiti-scrawled Hackney Wick, Cornerstone is spiritually as far removed from chef Tom Brown’s native Cornwall as it’s possible to be. Yet here in E9, miles from Brixham, Padstow and Rock, this one-time Nathan Outlaw protégé is serving some of the most scintillating seafood cookery around. With its concrete floors and exposed ducts, it doesn't look like your average fish restaurant. It doesn't sound like one either; the hip-hop playing on our visit – at a mercifully low volume – was questionable. The menu follows the fashionable multi-course formula, encouraging diners to bookend three courses with appetisers (slivers of chalk stream trout pastrami) and a composed cheese dish (Wookey Hole Cheddar with ginger cake and pineapple, say). Meat is notable by its absence. Who needs a steak, when you can rearrange the letters for skate with peppercorn sauce and fried onion rings? Tom Brown, and head chef James Toth, use all the skills at their disposal to demonstrate the versatility of seafood. The accompaniments to that trout pastrami, for example, include a whipped crab and miso butter plus a spicy oil made of the shell. Sea bream tartare (a Cornerstone standard) is a riff on steak tartare with Japanese seaweed furikake and yuzu ponzu. It’s good but rich: the whole egg yolk dominates the dainty portion. Hake Kyiv, a magnificently executed thing oozing a pool of outrageous truffle butter, is similarly rich; a garnish of cauliflower purée doesn’t make a dent (is it too predictable to wish for chips or a salad at this point?). Desserts have always been a strong suit: a dark chocolate torte with mint pays homage to a bubbly, minty childhood favourite. Prices are high, with service at 15% and the cheapest bottle of wine costing around £40 (we counted just 10 bottles sub-£60).
