If you didn’t get round to visiting Papi in any of its previous incarnations, in the guise of the Hot 4 U pop-up, well, I can’t really blame you. After all, life was making it jolly difficult to eat out at the time, and you were very possibly staring forlornly at an NHS Covid app and wondering if that ping meant another nine full days of baked bean Brevilles, or you had just given up on “the outdoors” altogether.
But it was at that exact point that Hot 4 U was trying to make things happen in east London with a series of temporary engagements in pubs such as the Prince Arthur and the Haggerston in E8, by serving up iced buns with Marmite butter, beef tartare with mulberry umeboshi, and ox tongue with seaweed and tzatziki. Then again, maybe you wouldn’t have gone to Hot 4 U regardless of the pandemic, because it just sounded a bit bloody much. And it really did: they did foie gras-wrapped Mini Magnums, chicken bicep with shichimi and an ever-changing wine list featuring the likes of Fleur Godart’s Male Tears 2020, part of the Cuvées Militantes series of wines taking a stance against sexism, racism and homophobia.
In fact, for anyone older than 28, a quick shufti at Matthew Scott’s menu and Charlie Carr’s wine selection will probably provoke an “old man yells at cloud” reaction. Hot 4 U’s menu wording was chaotic, while the vibe was dreamy and a little revolutionary. It was as if these people had never heard of a nice, straightforward dinner, or an early night. There was also an esprit de Fergus Henderson about Hot 4 U, with its non-squeamishness and honesty about ingredients; even he, however, stopped far short of serving garum Pom-Bears or whisky bone-marrow luges. The dessert offering didn’t escape, either, with vodka watermelon and various nostalgic, custard-based dishes topped with hundreds and thousands. Cheese-and-pineapple porcupine has never featured on a Henderson menu, and, frankly, the St John experience has always been poorer for the omission.
If you have read this far about Scott and Carr, and are now screaming “oh, grow up”, well, the good news is that they have – a bit – because Papi is a proper restaurant in London Fields, and its menu seems a little calmer, possibly because they don’t want to scare away passers-by, or possibly because they’ve tired themselves out with culinary obstreperousness. Or maybe it’s because Scott is such an accomplished cook that he’s past hiding his talent behind perceived wackiness.
Papi’s small plates selection on the day we visited was certainly more sedate than those for which Hot 4 U became infamous, and it was all executed with great finesse. A monster of a steak tartare came bejewelled with capers and topped with an egg yolk, with some obscenely good, hot, very crunchy fries on the side. A wonderful slab of deftly cooked pollock was drenched in a sweet, buttery sauce, two delightfully hulking great doorsteps of soothing white milk loaf came with about 200g of cultured, sea salted butter that, in its soft, pacifying smoothness, was more than a little infantilising, and a plate of raw bream crudo turned up with wild garlic and a meaningful offering of caviar.
If you go expecting chaotic cooking, loud music and an abundance of offal, you’ll be disappointed. Instead, Papi is genteel, serving a glorious salad of fancy tomatoes tangled among a wodge of oozing, breadcrumbed, deep-fried cheese, and a generous plate of Cecina De León, sliced rather thickly and served with juicy melon. There is a precision and earnestness to the cooking that is light years from the hip positioning and hype that surrounds this new venture, and nothing leaves the kitchen without cogitation – plates arrive as and when, mostly one at a time and often with ponderous gaps in between. So much so, in fact, that, as the place started filling up, including several larger tables, I began worrying whether these people would get any food at all, seeing as serving just the two of us from the very short menu had taken several hours.
Still, it’s inarguable that this is cooking worth waiting for. Perhaps the trick is to settle in for the long haul, order a dozen cherry vinegar oysters, some of that lovely bread and a bottle of Meinklang Prosa sparkling rosé to set you up, then leave them to bring you lovely plates of spaghetti with clams and ’nduja and some freshly podded peas with goat’s curd whenever the mood takes them.
There was one solitary dessert: poached rhubarb with crème anglaise, which was dotted with those jubilant, multicoloured sprinkles that were the highlights of every 1980s children’s birthday party. It seemed a small gesture to Papi’s zany reputation, albeit a subdued one in the context of a delicious meal from a young chef with a fascinating future. What a relief: enfants terribles are all very interesting, but I rarely want them to cook my dinner.
Papi 1F Mentmore Terrace, London E8, 07961 911500. Open lunch Fri-Sun, noon-3.30 (4pm Sun), dinner Weds-Thurs, 5-10pm, Fri-Sat 6-10.30pm. About £45 a head, plus drinks & service
