Jimi Famurewa reviews Silo: Unapologetically earnest but surprisingly convivial

Ambience: 5/5

Food: 4/5

If, like me, one of your vague resolutions for this sparkling new decade is to be a little less cynical, then a meal at Silo in Hackney Wick is going to present you with some challenges. Because truly, you will probably not have been in chef Douglas McMaster’s trailblazing zero-waste restaurant for very long before you have a distinct sensation. Specifically, the feeling of being cornered at a party by an eco-evangelist who really, really wants to tell you how they can comfortably fit a year’s rubbish in a jam jar.

You will know, for instance, that Silo’s swirl-patterned plates are made from recycled plastic. You will know that the restaurant spurns single-use packaging. And you will also know, ultimately, that Silo (which drew international acclaim in Brighton for five years before McMaster transferred it to London) is not so much another restaurant opening as it is the headquarters of a benevolent sustainability cult, staffed by leather-aproned believers with an intense gleam in their eyes that is at once inspiring and intimidating.

But here’s the thing: for all the unsexy talk of revolutionary virtuousness — of its £22,000 compost-creating ‘anaerobic digester’ and lampshades made from fungus — what makes Silo work is quite straightforward. Yes, it is an unapologetically earnest endeavour where each piece of produce seems to be heralded by a lengthy LinkedIn profile (‘This retired dairy cow was six years old and we think she hated the rain’). But it is also, from the instant you gobble the jolting, citric freshness of a dinky blood radish cannelloni, a place where spellbinding, veg-focused cooking is served by passionate, engaged people.

Keeping it very simple: the interior of Silo

And it also massively helps that, mere months into its life, it already has the feel of an elite electronica-gig-cum-private-view. Shoving into the space above Crate Brewery on a packed-out Friday night, my wife Madeleine and I found, seemingly, every hot, Veja-trainered creative within a five-mile radius all laughing and swirling skin-contact wine in the vaulted, industrial gloom.

There is presentational swagger to the food, too. An ambitious, ever-changing, six-course tasting menu (cleverly projected on to a back wall to eliminate paper waste) that, for reasons of space and sanity, I won’t list fully. Highlights came in the form of ‘badger flame beets’ — cold, sweet and apricot-hued with cow’s curd and a verdant moat of bay leaf oil — plus fore rib of mature bull, delivered from the vast open kitchen by McMaster himself, the sort of humble, Britpop-haired god-king who is also a waiter. It was slow-braised into otherworldly, flaking ribbons that even my lapsed vegetarian, steak-phobic wife couldn’t resist jabbing a fork towards.

And then there was the coal-roasted Jerusalem artichoke with Stilton-like Stichelton sauce: a rushing collision of smoke, fluffed sweetness and ripe tang like the narcotic pleasure hit of God’s own cheesy baked potato. The things in my wine-fogged memory that didn’t work as well featured process-heavy flourishes, such as a confrontationally vigorous sage and squash seed pesto, where the pursuit of zero-waste cleverness seemed to crowd out common-sense restraint. Plus the puddings — minimally sweet, accessorised ice creams made, respectively, from squash and linseed — were more like challenging, hair-shirted experiments than sinful doses of exuberance.

But then, this is Silo all over and its unblinking, contagious zeal is part of its incendiary charm. McMaster has created something radically serious but surprisingly convivial; a stirring, immersive twin riposte to the idea that restaurants are innately wasteful and that ethical establishments have to be exercises in parsimonious tedium. Silo may be a reinvented culinary wheel, but it rolls along in a pleasingly familiar fashion.