Where to Drink Wine in London Now, Autumn 2022: Cadet, Orasay, The Mulwray and More

Citizen Kane, The Secret History, Pretty Hate Machine – and now, Cadet. It takes skill, chutzpah and no little luck to come out of the gate, take a seat at the top table, and act like you’ve been there all along, but this gorgeous Newington Green bar/small plates situation is deservedly basking in the sort of adulation not seen since the early days of Hector’s or maybe even P Franco.

A nod to the Clapton OG is merited: it’s where Tom Beattie learned the laconic Aussie charm (from a certain P Bracey, perhaps?) that makes Cadet feel like home as soon as you come through the door; it’s also the closest analogue in terms of chefs having to work with very little and producing minor miracles regardless. Jamie Smart sends out clean, seasonal, beautiful small plates from a tiny alcove at the end of the bar; downstairs, George Jephson works subterranean magic on primordially satisfying pâtés and terrines.

The final piece in the puzzle is Francis Roberts (ex-Westerns Laundry and Bright), Beattie’s partner in the wine business that borrows their surnames. Together, they have put together a genuinely unique list – not as globally far-reaching as the current fashion might dictate but undeniably eclectic all the same. This is the place to come for a treatise on French winemaking outside the classic duopoly of Bordeaux and Burgundy: pét nats from the Jura, Grenache Blanc from the Languedoc, and lightly macerated Alsatian Rieslings all feature, as does a murderer’s row of light reds. A cadet, of course, is usually someone junior, a trainee at the start of their career. In this case, that couldn’t be less apposite: this really is what peak performance looks like.

Christophe Lindelaub, ‘Tu Bois Quoi Là’ Vert, Riesling, 2021, £29 out / £49 in

Look – it’s a year-old pét nat made from Riesling in the Alsace. You want buttery, biscuity top notes, and a velveteen finish? Look elsewhere, boomer: this is laser-focused, precision-engineered, 90s rave klaxon acid, a scalpel-like aperitif or potentially very interesting companion to the meatier terrine situation on offer that day. It is so impossibly moreish I arrived steadfastly intending not to drink and left having seen off the best part of a bottle. I’m not sure endorsements come more wholehearted than that.

Jules & Toby Bainbridge, ‘Crush’, Grolleau, 2021, £21 out, £41 in

Not, perhaps, the most unique or eclectic wine on the list, but a firm favourite for good reason: this is more than just drinkable (ugh: “smashable”) fruit juice, with a real sense of texture and bite that allows it to flourish at both room temperature and aggressively chilled. Now autumn is rolling in, you may go more for the former than the latter – and the Cadet team may also start adding in some more robust wintry wines. But for the time being this is a genuine bargain, a textbook example of that bizarre but kind of useful winemerchant’s term “crunchy”, and the enjoy-the-day philosophy of this season’s edition of wine hit list distilled into 750mls of pure, fleeting, don’t-you-dare-age-this-in-a-cellar pleasure.

“THE BLACK BOOK IS AVAILABLE UPON REQUEST” is an undeniably baroque, pretty damn metal way of saying you have a second wine list, the sort of phrase they might utter in the (quite good, going off the trailer?) 2022 Hellraiser reboot.

But it’s in keeping with the spirit of Jackson Boxer’s Notting Hill hideaway, which has a habit of being just a little bit more extra than the bouji surroundings might lead you to expect. Yes, there are the very on-the-nose signifiers that you are in A Modern British Restaurant in London: pickles and ferments, a fancy oyster preparation, whipped cod’s roe, torched mackerel. But there are also occasional zags that toy with the luxe expectations of the locals: caviar with sour cream and potato chips, a scallop with Vin Jaune, an utterly bonkers signature of smoked eel noodles with an egg yolk.

And The Black Book makes a pretty compelling argument for its existence, even if no Cenobites were actually involved in its development. Occasionally, requesting a supplementary document like this can be a source of extreme embarrassment, as it quickly becomes clear that the baller list has been written exclusively with Bezos-level plutocrats in mind. Fortunately, that’s not the case here: Pierre Frick’s outstanding Riesling can be yours for 70 quid and change; cult faves like Claus Preisinger and Tillingham adorn the appealingly-monikered “Glou Glou Red” section, and there’s sub-£100 representation from Austria, Spain and the Loire to go with the slightly more conventional big-ticket selections from Bordeaux and Burgundy.

As the Orasay FOH probably don’t say: “The book – you opened it. We came. Now you must come with us, taste our pleasures.”

Bénédicte & Stéphane Tissot, Chardonnay, 2019, £125

Yep. Yep. Yep. Jura chardonnay is not actually cheap but bang-for-buck it remains the surest store of value in modern French wine: you wish you could get white Burgundy this good at this price. All the elegance and grace you could want with a little signature savoury note thrown in, almost like someone dipped a pipette of vin jaune into the wrong barrique. Drink this with the smoked eel noodles and experience the kind of ecstasy that Pinhead would really get off on.

Enderle & Moll,’Spätburgunder’, Pinot Noir, 2019, £66

For those able to resist The Book and its whispered temptations, this selection from the plain vanilla list is an absolute steal. What I sought and did not really find in that very special bottle of Burgundy earlier this year was pinot noir’s heady, addictive perfume: that rush of strawberries and crushed violets and rosewater that drives people insane (and to spend insane sums of money in pursuit of it). I’m not going to pretend this gives you all of that, or that it could beat DRC in a blind tasting. But the scores might not be as far apart as you think.

Nuno Mendes is one of the most important and influential chefs working in London today: a man who has nurtured the talent behind some of the city’s biggest names and enjoyed no little personal success too. But when it has come to the food of his homeland, Portugal, things have never quite clicked: Viajante was probably too wacky and cerebral for a city slow to adapt to molecular gastronomy (and wasn’t really all that Portuguese anyway); Taberna do Mercado was as Portuguese as petiscos but left punters cold.

Lisboeta represents the culmination of that mission in triumphant, Statement Restaurant style. The space is, to borrow an adjective from Olivia Cooke, stunnin’: a leisurely sprawl across two well-appointed floors in the heart of Fitzrovia, with a bustling bar space downstairs and a more airy, contemplative dining room above. The food is bright and modern feeling but proud of its heritage: there is no shying away from the Portuguese predilection for garlic, fried stuff and pig fat. The Instagram hypebeast dish is the arroz de marisco: a big earthenware pot bubbling with rice in a tomato-laced seafood broth, with a fan of raw red prawns draped on top. It’s a showstopper to look at, for sure, but better still are those petiscos: a little toast topped with blood sausage and chopped razor clams, say; or a heartstopping vindaloo empada in flaky pastry, which arrives with a little bonus sliver of ham melting on top.

These are strikingly contemporary dishes in a city in which Iberian food more generally has never been quite done justice (there are a few exceptions, but not as many as you might think). The truly ground-breaking endeavour here, though, takes place in the cellar, where surely London’s largest and best collection of Portuguese wines has been assembled. Indeed, with the exception of a few bottles of Grand Marque champagne for the basics, the entire list is Portuguese, and contains some fascinating curiosities, like Herdabe do Cebolal’s Emerso Tinto, which is aged underwater off the Atlantic coast near Setúbal, or a series of unique collaborations with Portuguese winemaking royalty like Niepoort. A long time ago now, I wrote a piece suggesting that the natural wine boom might lead to a grimly homogenising effect on lists across London and even the world; that now appears to have come to pass. In so many ways, Lisboeta is a place full of special things. But in this context, its proudly idiosyncratic list might be the most special thing of all.

Soalheiro, Nature Pur Terroir, Alvarinho, 2020, £72

Vinho verde is perhaps the most recognised of all Portuguese wine styles, but it is also probably the easiest to traduce. Yes, the style tends to be light, spritzy and aromatic, but it can offer a lot more than those qualities, too. This unfiltered, naturally hazy example from Minho has all the usual hallmarks but offers a far wider array of citrussy, floral notes; it’s hard to imagine a better partner for the instant-classic razor clams and blood sausage combo.

Aphros, Phaunus Palhete, Loureiro and Vinhão, 2019, £72

At exactly the same price point, the next entrant on the Portuguese wine syllabus. Palhete is an eclectic point on a continuum that spans French clairet (or claret) and Spanish clarete: terms used to describe either light red wines made from red grapes with relatively little extraction, or light red wines made from a blend of red and (not very many) white grapes. The resulting wine is lighter in colour and body than “true” red wines, and this one would probably carry you through most of the Lisboeta menu, arroz de marisco included. It is also one of the more beautifully hued wines I have ever seen, so you could just buy it to prettify the table, although one sip of the surprisingly complex, deeply singular wine that Vasco Croft, Tiago Sampaio and Miguel Viseu have produced would suggest that might be a waste.

It sounds like speculative fiction, one of those butterfly-effect-esque alternate histories that take as their inciting incident a seismic historic moment that pans out in different fashion: what if the fascists won WW2? What if Al Gore had won in 2000? What if Remain had won in 2016? And what if the slow bleeding out of Soho had been arrested in the 1980s, and it still boasted genuinely cool, interesting places to drink, and to drink wine in particular?

But The Mulwray is very much real, very much secreted above the din and bustle where Soho meets Chinatown. It’s very much somewhere you can sit back and listen to Tigermilk deep cuts while drinking fancy-ass Burgundy or top-bins natty juice in a room that feels like it belongs in Baz Lurhmann’s beautiful but damned Great Gatsby movie.

All tastes are covered in a wide-ranging list courtesy of industry maven Honey Spencer: the nervous can build up their confidence in the Firm Favourites section; the curious can explore The Path Less Trodden; the zero-filtration, biodynamic, bury-a-cow-horn-full-of-manure-under-the-full-moon crowd can find full expression among wines labelled “Wild + Free”. Food is your typical Nocellara del Belice olives, cheeses, cured meats and posh anchovies with a couple of more rogue selections: chicken liver parfait with brioche, and a robust pork and cumin sausage roll that comes with a date and hoisin ketchup. Book to avoid disappointment – but definitely do visit this tiny oasis in a part of town where avoiding disappointment sometimes feels like a victory in itself.

Charles Dufour, Champagnes Bulles De Comptoir #10 ‘Tchin Tchin’, 2019 / reserve perpétuelle, £110

The highest compliment I can bestow on a sparkling beverage is to compare it favourably to Kas Limón, the elite Spanish lemonade that makes the best shandy or clara in existence. I have a lot of time for austere, extra brut champagnes – zero-dosage Jacquesson and a hunk of good Parmesan is about as good as food/wine pairings get – but we were at The Mulwray celebrating my wife’s birthday recently, and she really does not go in for that style.

So, thank goodness for Charles Dufour, whose sprightly, spritzy cuvée was exactly the thing to get us appropriately buzzed for dinner. All the good stuff you’d expect from top-notch grower champagne, with just a tiny touch of Kas Limón in the finish, fresh, fruity and above all fun. What a great wine. What a great bar.

Is this the best pure-play wine bar in London? By that, I mean somewhere you come primarily to drink – where there is food (excellent cured meat and judiciously selected cheese; bread, olives, nuts etc) but where most people probably won’t order anything other than a few glasses or a bottle or two?

Newcomer is, I guess, not dissimilar to the modern caves we covered in the last edition of this roundup, but for whatever reason it feels different. It’s certainly got a somewhat less mainstream mission statement than some places: in aiming to bring their customers the best of “The New Old World” – Austria initially, but increasingly other areas of Northern and Western Europe – the Newcomer team have certainly carved out a niche. And for drinkers interested in expanding their horizons, Newcomer delivers on the brief in spades: on a recent visit the list ran the gamut from Austria to Hungary to the Czech Republic, with some France and Italy thrown in for good measure. And that’s just the by the glass selections: groaning shelves showcase hundreds of different bottles, all available to drink onsite for a very generous markup.

It also helps that this is one of the most atmospheric rooms in the autumn and winter in the entire city: as the giant front window overlooking Dalston Junction steams up, and the candelight bounces off all those bottles and onto an enjoyably ramshackle set of seating options, it’s impossible not to feel transported. Or perhaps that should be “cocooned”: cloistered off from the hustle and bustle of urban London, free to enjoy things in peace and in the company of people who are very serious about the pleasure you take. It’s been eight years since it opened, so it’s no longer really a Newcomer any more – but we should all be so glad it chose to stay.

Werlitsch, ‘Vom Opok’, Sauvignon Blanc, 2019, £31 retail

Every wine dork has a story: this was the bottle that got me into wine. Well, here’s mine: this was the bottle (different vintage, P Franco circa 2016) that got me into natural wine, that made me take it seriously as a category and bare my teeth and hiss at people who dismissed it as cloudy cider or agricultural piss. I was aware that wines could be minerally, but not crystalline like this; I was aware white wines could offer things that red wines could not, but not a complex, overlapping bouquet like this. You could throw almost every wine-related adjective at this modern classic and most of them would apply – if you have never tried it, you really, really must. There is no time like the present, after all.

A million years ago I wrote a piece arguing that cities, too, have their own terroir: not just in the traditional sense of hyperlocal microbes and environmental conditions (the sort of stuff that results in Parma ham) – but in the sense that every city is different, every city’s centuries of trade and immigration and evolving tradition have resulted in uniquely fertile microclimates in which site-specific restaurants could flourish.

Mangal 2 is kind of what I meant. A traditional Ocakbasi renovated physically and philosophically by brothers Sertaç and Ferhat Dirik in the halcyon days just before the pandemic hit, it is both global in outlook and local in its sourcing, respectful of its history but striving, too, to innovate at every turn. It is Modern British in the truest, most inclusive sense of that term: reflecting a multicultural, culinary literate Britain rather than one still gazing wistfully back towards the good (bad) old days of fry ups and meat and two veg.

And the concise but killer wine list might just be the icing on the cake. After all, it would be a shame if the fireworks in the kitchen were met with something bog-standard and predictable on the page – fortunately, this is very much not the case. Instead, Ferhat manages to achieve in the cellar what Sertaç does in the kitchen, looking back to tradition and forward to the future to create something utterly sui generis.

Given the glorious animal fats and curlicues of smoke from the grill that bring so many dishes here to life, most of the wines here have acidity and texture to spare: Oriol Perez de Tudela’s salted-lemon-sherbet El Padrós Macabeo; Franz Weninger’s “Rozsa Petsovits” Syrah rosé, as fruit-forward and tangy as a glass of sour cherry juice; Domaine de Majas’ roguish Cortado – it all comes together with the pleasing snugness of the Predator handshake meme. Hedonists struggling to lock in an elusive reservation should head downstairs to the speakeasy-like underground bar: the menu’s the same, the agonising battle to get a table (at times, at least) is not.

Domaine de Majas, ‘Cortado’, Garnacha, 2020, £44

I spent a lot of the pandemic getting really, really good at Bloodborne, FROM Software’s 2015 gothic-horror masterpiece that sets you loose in a creepy Victorian city with a variety of gnarly edged weapons and hordes of hideous undead monstrosities on which to deploy them. Months on, I can still remember every square inch of the map backwards, but what I remember even more clearly is the feeling of playing Bloodborne: the shredded-nerve intensity, the sprays of arterial gore, the nasty, primal thrill of the thing. That’s this wine, basically: it’s not especially elegant; it will not win prizes for the silkiness of its tannins or the length of its finish. But on the right night, with the right hunk of charred protein, it’s like being back on the streets of Yharnam: plenty direct, a little bit brutish, and utterly visceral in its delights.