Vivacious: the bar at Boiler and Co
(Picture: Daniel Hambury/Stella Pictures Ltd)The after-work bar is not, traditionally speaking, a place that you would readily associate with culinary excellence. No one ever piled into an All Bar One to ask about the specials. And I always remember that one of the more grimly fascinating features of the beloved, swirly-carpeted local near my first magazine job were the pies that dripped off the plate like Dali clocks.
Which is a roundabout way of saying that, as I walked towards Boiler & Co — a new all-day bar and kitchen from Anguilla-born chef Kerth Gumbs, set in the base of a Bankside office complex amid Prets, Leons and Itsus — I did not hold much hope. Throw in the fact that the apparent main draw was a tasting menu riven with edible flowers and puffs of dry ice and, well, it was a reservation that lurked in my diary like jury duty.
I couldn’t have been more wrong. Boiler & Co offers some of the most astonishingly clean, complex and enrapturing flavours I’ve experienced in a long time, and Gumbs bends the tasting menu concept to his will, remoulding it as an informal, communal dinner party which celebrates and elevates lesser-known eastern Caribbean cuisine on its own terms. There is virtuosity then — I really do think Gumbs might be a genius — but, crucially, it never fully crowds out an enlivening island vibe. And, in this age of endless expense, it’s £65 price point feels especially fair.
Given that it is on my cycling route into town, Bankside is an area that I feel strangely invested in. In the past two years I have seen it oscillate between ghost town, screaming end-times bacchanal, and some twitchy, semi-locked-down state between the two. So to wheel up on a drizzly Friday night and see the surrounding area whirring back to life, to find music booming out of crammed, Ally McBeal-style ground-floor bars, felt almost emotional.
Once we were in its generic interior (a bisected room with accents of gold and brass) our palates were opened up in the manner of someone booting a door off its hinges. Little housemade prawn cracker taco shells came filled with the breathy, richly spiced heat of jerk beef tartare. Johnny cake (a signature dish that Gumbs served on The Great British Menu) looked like a pretty little diorama of a tropical island but positively exploded with flavour in the gob; a delirious tussle between dense, cakey dough, a warm wave of scotch bonnet mayo and either delicately sweet crab or a nuanced dollop of burnt aubergine.
Boiler & Co offers some of the most astonishingly clean, complex and enrapturing flavours I’ve experienced in a long time
Oxtail raviolo, meanwhile — an unbilled course set in a dehydrated mushroom crumb that possibly qualifies as a controlled substance — was dumbfoundingly good. “I’m not normally lost for words,” said my friend Julian, as we dabbed our fingers at the last remaining crumbs. “But that might be one of the best things I’ve eaten.”
I could go on and on, taking in the glimmering slice of aged duck with tamarind ketchup and a dinky, finely wrought accompanying duck leg patty, but I think you probably get the idea. Everything had the sumptuousness and laser-honed precision of top end fine dining. But also, as at Chet Sharma’s Bibi, there was that special sprinkling of magic that only comes from personal memory, cultural connection and a chef with heart and head perfectly in sync.
Yes, okay, some of the crockery — especially the fiddly, stackable glass bowls — is a bit fussy. And the decision to pair the food with weakened, taster-size cocktails only serves to remind you that the great thing about cocktails is their jolting strength. But, truly, this place’s effortless cool, its play and vivaciousness, is what makes it so appealing.
We ended with whisky-soaked gummy bears, a buttery, light sweet potato “conkie dumpling” cake and refreshing soursop and rhubarb ice lollies that planted us on a distant Anguillan beach. The world’s political weather is grimmer than ever. But, thanks to Kerth Gumbs, it is always sunny in Bankside.
