The thing about immensely talented chefs is that they cannot help themselves. I am not talking, in this instance, about any accusations of off-duty misbehaviour that might give this newspaper’s lawyers cause for concern. No, what I’m referring to is those chefs that tend to bring a wild-eyed meticulousness to bear on even the most outwardly banal of culinary projects. At its worst, it is a phenomenon that gives us fiddly “deconstructions” that are technically impressive but lack the brutish, simple genius of the original.
But at its best, I think this tendency may also be directly responsible for somewhere like Story Cellar. Ostensibly a Paris-inspired rotisserie chicken spin-off of Tom Sellers’s two Michelin-starred Restaurant Story, this Covent Garden spot is, perhaps, better understood as a fanatically detail-oriented team stacking a careful Jenga tower of elements onto a deceptively basic concept. Is it still just a chicken place if you also do fresh pasta, wood-fired scallops in a strident XO sauce, and end it all with a bread and butter pudding that may genuinely be one of London’s best desserts?
Story Cellar does all this and more while shimmering with fine-honed craft and purpose. It is a rarer bird than it seems. And I find that, days after visiting, I am still trying to fully compute each nook and cranny of its stylish, subtly affecting excellence.
I was joined by a stranger: a man called Owen Knight who had won a review ride-a-long. The fact that, rather than a loud chewer or a murderous sworn enemy playing a long game, he turned out to be a knowledgeable former Junior MasterChef finalist felt like an enormous fluke. So, once I had met him in the prominent little Neal’s Yard space — a swirl of marble counters, oxblood stools and, strangely, an unexplained corner shrine to the basketball player Dennis Rodman — we began with glasses of Covela Avesso vinho verde (the ‘Cellar’ of that punning title is a walk-in, basement wine vault of rare vintage bottles) and grilled root salad. This was a pile-up of vigorously charred tubers, alliums and puffed rice set in a whorled pattern of steadily mind-blowing smoked onion puree. A special of barbecued lamb skewer, sputtering, gnarled fists of tender meat in a restrained chimichurri, edged us towards the Mediterranean and perhaps even Patagonia. The XO drenching those scallops had, as Owen astutely observed, the heat and richness of a sort of East Asian-spiced beurre blanc.
You can sense that growing Jenga tower of cuisines and influences, can’t you? Thankfully, the skill and shrewd judgement of Sellers and his team (as well as head chef Stephen Naylor, the entire Restaurant Story staff has been brought over while their other place is closed for refurbishment) ensures that it never topples over. And, of course, the eclecticism of the other elements is anchored by the chest-beating La Marseillaise rendition of Frenchness that is the signature dish. Our shared half of roast chicken arrived as a dark-glazed mass: disassembled poultry parts with a luscious, deep savour, glassy crisp gnawable extremities and the sort of nuanced, profoundly flavoursome jus that induces a body shudder.
And then, just after we had picked at the last of the perfect warm frites and gathered ourselves, they brought out the bread and butter pudding: a hefty, triangular-cut rush of custard and citrus and a sugar-encrusted scrim of caramelised dough that, again, is just about the most abominably pleasurable thing I’ve experienced at a dining table in months. The word is that it was only intended to be on the menu as a special before diners pleaded with Sellers to make it a permanent fixture. I am very glad he caved in. And I am also very glad that the team behind Story Cellar hasn’t quite been able to resist turning this ostensible chicken restaurant into something far, far more remarkable.
