Clear talent: Victor Okunowo
(Picture: Adrian Lourie)Every chef has their own idea about what makes a restaurant tick, but there’s one that’s stuck with me particularly. “Let me tell you something, yes?” Marco Pierre White said to me, as we stood smoking shoulder-by-shoulder. “In restaurants, atmosphere is what’s generated by the people. The environment is what you create. The most important thing” — here the artful tapping of ash, the sudden turn of the head — “is the lighting.”
I mention this not because I want you to (mistakenly) assume Marco and I are mates — although, of course, I do want you to think that — but because it had never made much sense until I walked into Isibani, a new west African spot in Knightsbridge, which has the same sort of illumination as the frankly bleak offices in which this article was cobbled together. The light in Isibani is as grey as sick skin. The banquettes, a shade of blue normally reserved exclusively for crayons, don’t help. It is a disorienting, disconcerting introduction. Knightsbridge may be many things — flashy, full of hookers — but the sheen of luxury tends to be laid on a little thicker than this. And usually there is no shortage of dimmer switches.
Still, my pal Marco hasn’t always been right about everything. It’s said his technique for getting shot of customers he’d taken against would be to do the ‘whoosh’ — the theatre of removing all the cutlery, plates and glassware in a bid to encourage nuisance diners to shove off. Isibani might need to get an electrician in and a new upholsterer but its speciality is in the welcome; over supper and then lunch, the maître d’, a waiter and even the chef checked in to make sure everything was all right. Eleven times all in. I counted. But it counted, too; this is a restaurant that wants to fly right.
That chef, handsome Victor Okunowo, is a talent. It’s a career of obligatory mentions — time at the Wolseley and Chiltern Firehouse, a good run on Masterchef: The Professionals — but this feels like it might be the name-maker. He’s cooking in a strange spot, behind the vapid glamour of the Bulgari Hotel and wedged in a cut-through alongside shops and restaurants that feel improbable in SW1, their speed appearing more Swindon. Perhaps it doesn’t matter; Okunowo has a way with things, when things are going his way. They didn’t on a first meal there; we were strong-armed into a “special” set menu, on account of chef having little other choice, given half his stock hadn’t been delivered. It made for uneven but not entirely unpromising eating. Steamed moi moi with quail eggs was given a jolt from the faint tomato spice of chakalaka, the relish, and sweet indulgence came from a buttermilk sauce. Truffle, lazy shorthand for luxury, should have been kept away. But it was a nudge to come back.
So I did. Lunch — two courses at £35 — felt surefooted, that hint of talent now a fully grown thing. Dishes draw from across Africa, with Nigeria seemingly exerting the biggest influence. Guinea fowl, rather than chicken, had a yassa makeover. I should say here that my knowledge of west African cooking is slender, but even I saw the deft sleight of hand that had transformed a typically robust dish into an elegant terrine with a beautifully charred top. It sat under a scattering of baby onion skin and briny hits of olive. Such elegance was laid aside for a hefty cod fillet under a landslide of okra, shrimps, samphire and sea fennel, showing the kitchen has muscle, too. There was the obligatory jollof rice, pricked with heat.
It was cooking to go slow with; lunch that shouldn’t have ended. Early on I wondered what madman would open a place like this here. Not because it isn’t good — it is — but because it feels like a place for locals, one of those slightly wonky spots that worms its way into affections. I’m not sure how many locals there still are in Knightsbridge. But if you’re one, go. Ask them to drop the Lionel Richie and dip the lights. And tell them Marco’s mate sent you.
