Roganic

Where do you start with Roganic? It represents the first foray into London for Simon Rogan from L’Enclume. The restaurant is only planned to last two years and was billed as a pop-up on that basis. That only served to distract people from the restaurant itself.  The space is fairly small and very basically decorated. The tables are presented with simple mats and cutlery, with a stone in the centre of each that joins in as the meal starts.

Ben Spalding  is the chef in charge and the food is only sourced from England (with one exception) with some emphasis on foraging consistent with the ethos of L’Enclume. The menu is constantly changing depending on the seasonal availability of the ingredients. This means that if you look at old reviews there’s a good chance that the dishes you want to try are long gone.

No visit to Roganic is complete without discussing the front of house and the people present during my visit were great. Not overly familiar, knowledgeable about the dishes and happy to talk at any time which can make a huge difference when you’re a solo diner.  

To the food.

Roganic has 3 menu choices. Three lunch courses, six lunch/dinner courses or ten lunch/dinner courses. The menu has so many intriguing options that if you have time the ten-course menu seems the obvious way to go.

Squid ink paper with aioli, cucumber foam & linseeds turned up as the canape and looked spectacular. It was the perfect kick-off although the squid flavour was difficult to really identify However, the cracker, cucumber & linseeds went together really well and the whole mouthful was melt-in-your-mouth gorgeous, particularly the lovely light cucumber foam & the linseeds. I wish I could have ordered more again and again and again.  Just delightful. This dish proves that linseed is more useful than just as a wood finisher and paint binder. 

Everyone talks about the bread at Roganic with part of the presentation adding a smear of butter onto the rock on the table. The bread is very good but I held back in anticipation of the multiple additional courses to come. However the chestnut & thyme wafer is spectacular and that’s the one I ordered multiple times.  

A large part of the charm of Roganic & L’Enclume is that the menu features ingredients that are fresh to most people. First up – Millet pudding with grains, burnt pear & Devon blue with bone marrow and dill oil. The millet pudding is a risotto type dish where the cheese flavour comes from the Devon Blue. The pear adds crunch and the bone marrow adds the contrasting meaty element. The dish as a whole is spectacular with all elements blending perfectly. 

Next up – another truly brilliant dish. Braddock White, Pickled Roots, Ox Eye Daisy & Salt Beef, Chervil Puree. The Braddock White is a slow-cooked duck egg yolk. It rests on toasted seeds with all other ingredients distributed round the plate. The dish did not have a weak link and all elements work together perfectly together.  Writing about it now, I want it again. Fabulous. 

Smoked Langoustine. Cured char, purple spouting broccoli & chokeberry vinaigrette, crab apple puree, chokeberries. This dish was carried in under a glass dome filled with smoke that was removed as it arrived at the table. Chokeberry vinaigrette was added as it rested on the table. The smoke slowly dissipated to give time to assess the dish in the wonderful remaining fug.  Overall, the dish was very good and the langoustine was delightful where the contrast between the sweet langoustine and the smoky flavour worked together really well . The char did not seem to contribute much to me but that is a minor criticism of the dish as a whole because it was still delicious. 

Next up, the first meat & potatoes dish. Billed on the menu as Mr. Little’s Yetholm Gypsies where the Yetholm Gypsy is a speciality potato.  The meat flavour comes from frying the potato in chicken fat that gives a rich depth of flavour to the potato. In addition, crispy chicken skin is added to the plate and is unlike any chicken skin you're likely to have had previously. My favourite element was the snow peas where the thinly sliced fresh pods added crisp, fresh flavours to the whole thing. Goats curd and clam juice were also added to the dish and the properties of all of the elements balanced really well to give a hugely satisfying dish. Wonderful. 

Moving on, it was time for fish. Ben Spalding had shown photos of his experimental dish with Dab on Twitter. The restaurant dish showed that it was close to being fully realised when he released those photos. The dish consisted of Dab baked in fennel salt with Sea Beet, Parsley Root & Sweet Cicely, Morecambe Bay Shrimp & Parsley root puree.  Dab is an uncommonly used flatfish and the dish showed that this is a real oversight. The lovely delicate flavour of the dab was nicely complimented by the Morecambe Bay shrimps. As with the previous course, the vegetables really helped make the dish sing and in this case the parsley root & puree combined with the fish perfectly and were among my favourite parts of the dish.

The next course was the “main” of the 10-course menu. Yorkshire pheasant, pumpkin, muesli & Buckthorn plantain. Standing outside the restaurant, browsing the menu this was the course I was most looking forward to. It was very good but all of its supporting acts outshone it. No element was bad but it just fell short of its immaculate predecessors. 

On to dessert and the menu immediately kicked into overdrive again. The first dessert course was billed as warm salted chocolate mousse, apple sorbet, William pear, cobnuts & atsina. It came to the table with all elements in place apart from the chocolate mousse that was then piped onto the dish at the table. The chocolate mousse was like a really lush, salty Galaxy bar, the cobnuts, apple and all other elements blended superbly and complimented each other really well. The cobnut wafer perched on the edge of the bowl was ethereal perfection. 

Next dessert was fantastic too. Listed simply as Bilberries on the menu, it was presented with dried caramel, natural yoghurt & iced lemon thyme. The bilberry caramel wafer was a great start before digging into the elements below The frozen yoghurt and bilberries were wonderful together.  But the element that lifted this dessert was the lemon thyme granita. Sudden bursts of lemon flavour while working through the dessert made that particular spoonful perfect. 

The meal now moved into wind-down mode. A Douglas fir milkshake and white chocolate biscuit and mini-sponge cake with Rosehip puree rounded out the meal. The milkshake was fine but I would have preferred more flavour. The sponge cake was a charming way to close out the meal. 

Overall Verdict 
The food was spectacular, cooked with real imagination. It’s difficult to pick out stand-out dishes because everything was so good. Any criticisms are minor and should not deflect from the overall take that this is a fantastic restaurant. If you like food, you need to find a way to visit Roganic.

Would I revisit Roganic?  
In a heartbeat. And I did. I was in London two weeks and had one late dinner reservation. I decided to cancel the reservation because I’d hate to run the risk of not liking the food at that restaurant due to tiredness. I was able to get an early evening reservation at Roganic so I took it (see later write up). Not a real spoiler – it was just as good on the second visit.

Overall Rating - 5/5