Sometimes a restaurant is so ridiculous that I phone my editor before I’ve even opened the menu, demanding he clears space because all the words babbling behind my eyes need to flood somewhere. “The Ivy Asia’s got a candyfloss-pink glass stairway. And lifesized models of samurai warriors by the urinals in the gents,” I rock and gibber. “And you can eat sashimi in black garlic and yuzu foam while overlooking St Paul’s Cathedral. And they have a pudding with chocolate soil and samurai horns made out of biscuit!”
“But isn’t it just another branch of The Ivy,” the editor says, “of which there are now at least 30?”
“Well, yes, but also, no,” I reply, because no matter how hard you try, it really is difficult to refute how The Ivy has recently expanded and diluted its brand, from Krug down to buck’s fizz. The Ivy’s mothership in Covent Garden, once so headily glamorous and très exclusive, has spawned babies from Edinburgh to Bath, and now everyone can enjoy a sprinkle of the pixie dust one felt eating bang bang chicken next to Biggins back in 1991. The problem with The Ivy roll-out is that, without the celebs, the paparazzi scrums and the six-week wait for a table, these pleasant, dependable brasseries are not roaringly different from a Côte.
But I’ll tell you what is different from a Côte? The Ivy Asia, with its Shrek-green, bubbling Vesuvius glass floor and bowls of Mongolian cheese (tastes exactly like paneer) in a light, jalfrezi-style sauce. This new-era Ivy is ostentatious, incongruous, showy and daft, but, overall, joy-making even as you sweep through the doors. As well as joy, I also felt gratitude that I wasn’t one of the hostesses freezing my lower portions off in a dusky-pink, bum-skimming, silk frock with bare legs and heels.
You’re possibly by now wondering, “But Asia? What part of Asia? How can food simply be Asian? That’s 44,579,000 square kilometres of food traditions.” Are Korean pork bao with kimchi a thing? Is buttermilk fried chicken strictly “tempura” if it’s served in an avocado and jalapeño sauce? Did sashimi ever benefit from foam?
Eating here requires the same mindset as when watching a Jason Statham film: thinking is not going to help. Just enjoy the spectacle. The Ivy Asia first showed its face in Spinningfields, Manchester. This new London venture has taken a prime tourist and corporate hotspot within walking distance of St Paul’s great dome, replacing Jamie Oliver’s Barbecoa, which closed because no one wanted lukewarm pork loin served belligerently. Or maybe it was because of Brexit.
I snuck in on a Sunday, in one of my more vague disguises, when the place was at a third of its capacity and had more managers on the floor, managing other managers, than it had tables filled. The open kitchen had a legion of chefs. Even so, service was hysterically slow, although two and a half hours of waiting for a few dishes gave me time to get engrossed in a stand-off between middle management and upper middle management about the December rotas.
Still, it’s early days, and the place will no doubt find its feet, because when food did arrive, it was fairly decent. We ate fresh, fatty tuna sashimi and smoky, barbecued mackerel nigiri, then plump yet delicate steamed prawn dumplings that came with a frankly unnecessary miso foam. Soft-shell crab bang bang salad had enough peanut, sesame and fresh crustacean to make it a star of the show. The crisp tofu bao bun with miso mayo was also rather good, but unpretty, because the honking tofu “cutlet” was too big for its bun. Restaurant reviewing has many Spinal Tap moments, and this bao made me feel a bit like Nigel Tufnel with his mini-bread disaster. Black cod was the right mix of sweet and umami, with soft, yielding, white flakes. Miso-marinated baby chicken was a rather unattractive, chopped-up, breadcrumbed schnitzel affair. Prices for the large dishes whisked us off to whopping bill land, coming in mostly at between £25 and £48 a pop.
Pudding was worth the wait, though by this point I’d been there so long, my eyebrows needed threading. I had planned to have the tirayuzu, which is tiramisu made with pandan leaf and Roku gin, but then I saw the samurai going to other tables. This is £9.50-worth of Valrhona dark chocolate “soil” set on a dark chocolate mousse laden with chocolate brownie on vanilla ice-cream with chocolate pearls and biscuit horns sprayed gold. The whole thing forms a sort of samurai’s face that, after a few spoonfuls, looked more like Groundskeeper Willie off The Simpsons.
Relax your brain; enjoy the glacial, emerald floor. No one can say, in difficult times, that The Ivy group saved its skin by being boring.
• The Ivy Asia 20 New Change, London EC4, 020-3971 2600. Open all week, 11.30am-11.30pm (9pm Sun). About £75 a head, plus drinks and service.
Food 7/10
Atmosphere 9/10
Service 6/10
