Lupins, London SE1: This is a find restaurant review

The chocolate mousse is an outrageous creation, the sort of thing that should only be eaten behind closed doors

Spring onions dredged in cornmeal and fried until the green spears are pleasingly almost-scorched, the white bulbs a soft, sweet squidge, and their popcorny carapace a crunchy contrast: what genius is this? Utterly simple, completely seductive. Why haven’t we all been coating and deep-frying scallions for decades? Dunking these in chipotle mayo, I imagine festivals dedicated to the things, as the Catalans do with their calçots.

This dish is typical of the menu at a newly opened little outfit near London Bridge that promises “seasonal British produce with a splash of sunshine”: at its base something familiar, the finished item a frisson of delicious novelty. It was the editor of another newspaper who insisted I try Lupins, and while he’s not someone whose printed output I’m normally guided by, he sure as hell knows his restaurant, er, onions. This is a find.

Lupins’ two rooms – downstairs, open kitchen fringed with stools; slightly more sophisticated upstairs dining room – appear to be bathed in a soft glow: the colour scheme of palest pink with touches of chalky pistachio make me feel as if I’m eating inside a summery pavlova. The menu changes frequently; there are always lighter dishes, many starring vegetables: chicory with sea bass ceviche, maybe, or jersey royals with soft-boiled egg, asparagus and za’atar. But somehow we’re drawn to the more excessive ones: Cornish crab thermidor, oligarch-rich with cream and cheese, spiky with mustard, as over the top as anything at a Victorian banquet; toast oozing garlic butter tips it over to the point where all you can deliver by way of resistance is a weak whimper. Or a thick cut of snowy hake on risotto ripe with the pungent, fatty heat of ’nduja, plus shavings of gouda-like Coolea cheese melting on top and adding salt the dish probably doesn’t need. Which possibly explains why we’re up to our eyes in a chilled Château Carbon d’Artigues rosé, glugging it like pop. Even that bastion of clean-eating probity, the courgette, is lubricated with ricotta, jolted with chilli and fried into crisp little croquettes, virtue most emphatically and successfully sullied.

But meat isn’t overlooked: smoky rump of lamb with matching smoky slump of aubergine and charred longstem broccoli; rolls of pork belly piled on top of flatbread with sharp pickled vegetables and minted yoghurt. I like the way that, in defiance of the usual “tapas-sized, for sharing, sent out as they’re ready” cliche, dishes arrive in a seemly procession, rather than being blurted on to the table all at once.

Desserts follow the classics-with-a-good-zhuzhing formula: chocolate mousse as dense and rich as ganache, lewdly glossy, spiked with chunks of sweet-salty-chewy sesame nuggets, is an outrageous creation, the sort of thing that should only be eaten behind closed doors. Fine cheeses come from Neal’s Yard. Ingredients are largely organic, as is much of the winelist; happily, I don’t share some of my colleagues’ mistrust of the natural and biodynamic vino.

With its chipotle and polenta and sumac punctuating local, seasonal produce, the house style comes across as less true Brit and more West Coast US. Shades of a recent trip to San Francisco, with the city’s small-plates, veg-forward ethos, touches of exotica and no fear of the lascivious pleasures of salt and fat. (Although Lupins has a way to go before it hits the heights of Rich Table’s porcini doughnuts with melted raclette dip or the fried chicken madeleine with caviar. Or the “tendrils, greens and stems” with Meyer lemon and sea urchin from Mister Jiu’s. Or the lamb tartare with bronze fennel and potato fry bread at The Progress. I’m moved to tears by the idea I might never eat any of these again. And, yes, I know how much of an arse that makes me sound, but really, you had to be there.) Lupins is the work of Lucy Pedder and Natasha Cooke, who met at Chelsea’s Medlar. I think I experienced their cooking during their stint at The Cross Keys (also Chelsea), in which case they have already come a very long way indeed.

No apologies for heading back to vibrant Flat Iron Square following my recent review of Bar Douro. After what happened here recently, the businesses around Borough and London Bridge need all the support they can get. And in the case of these two at least, it’s an absolute pleasure.

Lupins 66 Union Street, London SE1, 020-3908 5888. Open lunch, all week, noon-3pm (10.30am Sat & Sun), dinner, Tues-Sat, 5-10.30pm. About £25 a head plus drinks and service

Food 7/10
Atmosphere 7/10
Value for money 8/10

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