#Ad
We took the train to London specifically for the media dinner at Latine. One, it’s very nice to get an invite to events in London, specifically new ones in Mayfair, and two, and far more importantly, it promised a style that intrigued me greatly. A blend of classic French and Latin cooking; one known for its discipline, the other its exuberance. One obsesses over technique, the other over fire. One refines, the other amplifies. It’s an unlikely duo, like Einstein and Chaplin, Woody and Buzz, and Martha and Snoop.
Except it’s not such a huge swerve. There is French Guiana, literally France in South America, the cafe culture of Uruguay’s Montevideo, and pastries of Martinique, all of which are by-products of colonisation. More obviously there is Buenos Aires, a city that spent much of the late 19th and early 20th centuries trying to become the Paris of the Southern Hemisphere. The wealthy imported French architects, fashions and, inevitably, chefs. Argentine kitchens adopted French sauces, pâtisserie and brigade discipline, while refusing to compromise on the country’s obsession with beef and fire. It’s all there, in the history books, along with other stuff that should neither be erased nor celebrated.
Anyway, Latine. Would love to tell you about the rest of the building but we were whisked up the stairs to the beautiful hand-painted private dining room, all enchanted forest and dramatic chandeliers. I gather they have a champagne and crudo bar downstairs, which might be the most Mayfair thing I’ve typed since the champagne room at Row on 5, and are in the midst of adding a late night cocktail bar. The champagne was cold, the air conditioning was blowing full pelt, and I was sitting in between my wife and a friend, the excellent food writer Sam Wilson, so props to them for doing a bit of research. We crack on with some excellent cocktails, a glass of white, and start with some of that crudo, which were more ceviche acidity leaning in reality and all the better for it. I often think the best crudo doesn’t taste raw, it tastes alive and here we were with tuna sashimi that sparkles with lime, yuzu, and jalapeno, and a more subtle sea bream with coconut, avocado, and mint. Best is the hamachi, somewhere between fresh and light, with pineapple, chilli, and chewy little sweetcorn blinis.
We loved the punchy steak tartare, hand-cut and full of funk, on the potato terrine with truffle mayo, and likewise the duck croquettes with the barbecue-esque sauce of guava and chipotle. There were breads; one a deep fried Brazilian cheese bread stuffed, quite brilliantly, with camembert, and another, a corn bread of types with burrata draped over it like Rees-Mogg on a Wednesday in parliament. Sea bass achieved that impossible cook of crispy skin and flaky flesh, perked-up by a borderline genius beurre blanc cut with pulped yellow habanero.
Two meat dishes and two desserts to go. It was a long, heavy, intoxicating evening. Duck, perfectly timed, bright pink, fleshy and without chew, comes with a purée of red squash and a guava sauce that’s probably my dish of the night, then excellent beef fillet in a sauce that first appears over reduced, but is actually thickened with loads of Perigord truffle juice and dark chocolate. It is the Mexican mole crossed with a classic French truffle sauce and for the record I am stealing it. There’s a chocolate fondant cake that makes me remember why I don’t really like them, and a killer rhum baba that’s good enough to grace any dessert section.
I spoke to one of the owners briefly; a lovely guy with the ambition to create something unique within the playground that is Mayfair. And for that they’ve succeeded. The French have always excelled at polishing ideas until they become timeless; Latin America has always understood that flavour should arrive with a pulse. Somewhere between the two, Latine finds an identity that is neither borrowed nor invented. It feels less like a collaboration than a family reunion where distant cousins discover they’ve been telling the same stories in different languages all along.
Sign up to the newsletter here;
https://blog.us14.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=08c98db0e9d6eb9e5b54695a1&id=eda85ee6f4
