Roganic

We did the 10 course tasting menu on a quiet Thursday night in Marleybone. Well, it started out quiet and then all the sudden every table was filled. And now I know why. We started with some amuse bouche of squid ink crisps with aoili and flower petals. Already off to an outstanding start. The first dish was a mushroom mouse with mushroom brulee with some marinated oyster mushrooms and some kind of delicious cheese on the top. Honestly I have no idea what that was but it was sooooooo good. The mushroom flavor was rich but the texture light.
The raw ox was also excellent with the inhouse made coal oil outshining everything else. It had strength of flavor similar to truffle oil, but with the essence of coal throughout. I really wish they would bottle that up and sell it.
The prawn was also an amazing dish. The prawn was the juiciest and most succulent I had ever tasted. Cooked to perfection so that it was tender, not rubbery in any way. Little tiny muscles full of flavor made a great accent to the dish.
It’s been nearly a week since I was there so I can hardly remember all the details, but overall I was blown away by every single dish. Every single one was made with amazing ingredients and amazing ingenuity. The décor was simple because that really isn’t their focus. Their focus is great food and a wonderful dinner experience and they definitely achieved that.

Sitting in a tiny shop converted for a brief period of time into pop up restaurant with dreams of the most avant guard food (there is a dish flavoured with coal oil … What on earth is that!) I can’t help but worry that statistically I must get served 12 courses of empty plates and be expected to amputate a couple of limbs for the priviledge at some point … Luckily Roganic is not that place … There will be some dishes one really should send back untouched. But there will also be dishes that will have one texting, emailing, face booking and Unilocaling about … And I can think of no higher praise … And I recommend beyond my vocabulary the dish with the coal oil …
Service was charming without actually being polished … And thus a perfect reflection of the venue …
And the clientele was random in the extreme …
I say go eat there with your friends argue with your friends about what should never have been made … Give feed back to the staff …
This is the sort of place you want to eat at if you love pop ups and the dreams of the future that may never be

If you’re a food fanatic, Roganic is a must try. I’m already planning my return visit once they change the menus…
I have to say the food is unlike any restaurant I’ve tried before. It’s experimental cooking at its finest with unique use of foraged and seasonal ingredients. I never heard of ramson before last night, and one of the post-​desserts was some berry juice that tasted like almonds (can’t remember the name of it) — I felt like such a novice! For the record, this alien berry juice-​almond tasting milkshake was DELICIOUS.
We went for the 6 course menu, largely because I wasn’t that hungry. Canapes arrived promptly — onion biscuit with stinging nettle purée, and also pig/​eel and millet porridge croquettes. The flavour combinations were innovative and surprisngly worked well together. Bread and butter arrived afterwards with a selection of onion, pumpernickel and ale. My favourite was the onion bread because it was so fragrant — you didn’t even need to put any butter on it! After happily stuffing myself with two rolls, our first course arrived.
Burnt mushroom cream with cheese drops and ramson. Ahhh, this was indescribably good. It reminded me of a rich cream of mushroom soup, but 100x better. There was this sugar-​bruléed thing on top… I don’t even know what it was, but when you crushed it up, the crunch and sweetness really brought the dish together. (I wasn’t quite sure what I was eating half the time because of all the foreign ingredients/​techniques!)
The spring broth with carrot dumplings was nice, but probably my least favourite out of all the dishes. The carrot dumplings were basically a purée and presumably using molecular gastronomy techniques turned into little spheres. Very sweet taste of carrot; very cool technique in general. The consommé was also very rich in flavour! Don’t get me wrong — least favourite relative to everything else, but still a solid dish.
The next three dishes — Cornish lobster, five-​spiced monkfish, and Herdwick lamb flank/​sweetbreads — blew me away. Everything was perfectly cooked and seasoned, and with the addition of ingredients like «velvet caps» and «coastal greens» (whatever they are) it really brought a new flavour dimension to the dish. The monkfish was meaty, and the hazelnut potato purée was seriously addictive.
Dessert was rhubarb with crispy cake — I really should’ve taken notes because my descriptions do not do the dishes justice. As I mentioned before, we also got the «berry juice» milkshake with a lemon curd beignet on the side, and then bourbon ice-​lollipops. My favourite hands-​down was the milkshake and beignet… I could’ve had a couple more glasses of the milkshake!
Service was so warm and friendly, and I even recognised Sandia Chang (front of the house) who took care of us throughout dinner. Even though she’s officially left Roganic to open her own restaurant (Bubbledogs), it says a lot (about the place) that she’s stayed longer to help out.
So glad I finally tried Roganic — definitely a favourite in my books!

After reading Haley F’s review of Roganic I couldn’t wait to give it a try, so my new fine dining partner in crime Yee Gan O and I made a reservation and I boarded the train to the Big Smoke to sample the delights on offer at this 2 year pop up restaurant in Marylebone.
The restaurant is the new project of Simon Rogan, head chef and patron of L’enclume, the Michelin Star restaurant in the Lake District. At Roganic he has established a great team to run the show including the head chef Ben Spalding, and front of house duo Jonathon Cannon and Sandia Chang. Roganic has only been open for seven weeks but already it seems like a well oiled machine, running efficiently but without the stuffy airs and graces of other top Michelin rated restaurants.
The menu was a simple choice between 6 or 10 courses — clearly, we didn’t waste any time on this decision, the only way to go is for the maximum amount of tasting dishes! The wine list is extensive but I plumped for a South African Chenin Blanc which was one of the nicest white wines I have tasted in a long time.
After an amuse bouche, and a selection of bread with home-​churned butter we were brought the first dish of Heirloom tomatoes, poached lambs tongue and dill custard. To be completely honest, I wasn’t a huge fan of this dish — the lamb tongue had an unpleasant texture and I’m not a fan of dill. Not a great start!
I needn’t have feared though, the next nine courses were fantastic! They included such delights as Legbar egg, Kentish mackerel, shredded ox tongue, langoustine with loganberry oil, royal kidneys cooked in chicken fat (this seemed to have everyone in the restaurant confused as it was actually potato, no real kidneys in sight!), skate belly, rose veal, bilberries with yogurt and iced lemon thyme, and finally a white chocolate sorbet with rapeseed, plums and meadowsweet ice. We both commented on how tasty the meadowsweet was and Jonathon consequently gave us a shot of meadowsweet and brought out some of the dried plant for us to see and smell (and try to eat in my case!) — another example of the exceptional service.
We were offered an extra cheese course which I, of course, could not turn down, and there were two final surprise courses of a buttermilk and bay milkshake with flapjack, and mini victoria sponge cakes. After this staggering amount of food (14 courses plus bread) I did proclaim I could probably fit in another course, but on trying to move decided I was actually full to the brim.
The food was innovative, beautifully presented, and very tasty. However, it didn’t quite blow me away as much a my meal at the Alderley Edge. That said, it would definitely be in my top ten. What made this an exceptional dining experience was the service. Jonathon, Sandia and Jack were all extremely friendly and helpful, and were happy to chat about food and restaurants with us throughout the duration of the meal. They weren’t any where near full capacity on this occasion so we may have benefited from this, however I hope they manage to pull in enough customers over the next two years to keep the restaurant going and go from strength to strength, which I have every confidence they will do.

Officially, Roganic is a pop up restaurant because the lease on their premises expires after that time. But what a pop up restaurant!
A big thanks to Haley F for putting this restaurant onto the radars of Gemma G, my Unilocal fine dining partner (everyone should get one!) and myself. By sheer coincidence, I dined at Michelin starred L’Enclume in the Lake District a month ago and on chatting to Simon Rogan, the chef patron, he mentioned his new venture down in London called Roganic
A witty conbination of his name and philosophy, Roganic carries on the tradition of L’Enclume in making the provenance of their ingredients a top priority — they have their own farm and a lot of the unusual ingredients like meadowsweet are foraged. Apparently, Simon is making the train companies a lot of money with his many trips to and from London, laden with ingredients!
The staff at Roganic are all new but with impeccable pedigree from other Michelin establishments. Having had a chance to sample a meal so recently at L’Enclume, I’m pleased to report that they’re carrying on the fine philosophy and tradition in the food preparation and presentation
The restaurant only offers a 6 and a 10 course tasting menu — haha, like they needed to show us the menu! Gemma skilfully paired the food up with Kanu (apparently named after a bird, not the footballer) white wine. Although officially teetotal, I had a teeny weeny amount to try with the food. Very drinkable for alcohol, I thought!
A myriad of dishes with interesting ingredients, some of them unique, combined in imaginative ways, stunningly presented with colourful arrays of microherbs passed our happy palates, which were kept busy working out some unusal flavour combinations. My personal favourites were Grilled langoustine with loganberry oil, Seawater cured Kentish mackerel with broccoli (purée and dessicated) with warm elderflower honey, Royal kidneys (actually potato!) cooked in chicken fat, goat’s curd and clam juice and White chocolate sorbet with rapeseed, plum and meadowsweet granite
Together with an amuse bouche, some extra dessert surprises and an extra cheese course, we topped out at 14 courses and I had also eaten more bread than I normally do with tasting menus — the churned butter was too good to waste (yes, we did ask for a second helping of butter!). I was therefore perturbed to hear Gemma say that she could eat another course at the end of the meal! That was however before she tried to move and then quickly proclaimed that she was indeed full!
The aforementioned meadowsweet epitomised why this place is special. When we enquired from Jonathan Cannon, the maitre d’ about meadowsweet, he reappeared with the dried herb and dispensed 2 meadowsweet shots from a foam gun for us to try. That didn’t stop Gemma attempting to eat some of the dried herb!
The passion of the team who looked after us for the restaurant and food in general really shone through. Sandia Chang, assisting Jonathan with front of house, was even observant enough to spot that I had some fresh black summer truffle with me. We really enjoyed chatting to her, Jonathan, Jack and other waiters about all manner of food subjects through the evening
It’s not a cheap meal but we certainly got our money’s worth in the food, the ambiance, the convivial atmosphere and a most enjoyable evening’s dining. Simon, your restaurant is in safe hands!

I was in London from Houston/​New York (it’s a long story) this week, and stopped in at Roganic for lunch on Tuesday. I have to echo everyone here — it was a delightful meal, well worth the time. Rogan arrived just as we were starting our meal, cheerfully dragging in some luggage, and there were photographers obviously taking photos for some kind of review. All the other diners seemed to be industry professionals, just from the bit of eavesdropping I was able to do.
We only had time and money for the five course option, but I think it gives a perfect introduction into Rogan’s cooking. The potato dish, which I understand to be a classic, is just a wonderful achievement. The onion ash combined remarkably with the delicate creaminess of the new potatoes Rogan uses. We were also especially taken by the mackerel dish, and in general thought that the sauces and creams enhanced the dishes rather than masked anything as is so often the case. Honestly, the restaurant reminds me of a more successful «Corton» in New York. Exacting, technical, beautiful food, but with a little more joy. I suppose I might say that the brill with chicken salt was more fascinating than delicious, and the red wine I ordered was a little warm, but that doesn’t really detract for me from what was one of the better meals I’ve had in a while. And, like others have said, Sandia Chang and the rest of the front of house were a delight. I bet the 10 course menu, which I saw several others enjoying, was fantastic.

This tiny (read 25 seats), completely unassuming little spot, just off Marylebone High Street, is a food nerds dream. From the outside you have no clue what you’re getting into: frosted glass and only the name above the door, you walk in and are greeted by their charming manager, who dazzles you with his smile as he ushers you to your table. Well spaced and minimalistic, this long and narrow restaurant somehow feels light and airy, with slight touches of art and grace, leaving the main focus to be on the food without leaving you feeling like you’re eating in a blank room.
The sommelier is amazing. Such a sweetheart and a total wine geek (in the best way), he could talk for hours and would be so passioned that you would sit, rapt with attention.
And then the food itself. The Chef, Simon Rogan, already has a Michelin Star under his belt with L’Enclume, in the Lake District. And this doesn’t feel that far behind. For Lunch, we were given the option of a 5 course, or a 10 course. Guess which one we got. Logically, we ordered the 10 course. Each dish was a piece of art, a sensory experience that combined texture, flavor, temperature, color, and expectation, with each dish as lovely as the last.
I will say one thing, if you get the 10 course, don’t plan on going anywhere for a while. Granted we took our time, but seriously. We got there at 1:45 and left at 6pm, with me look at my watch and thinking ”I have dinner reservations at 7:30. How the hell am I going to pull this off.”
The staff was knowledgeable and kind, with the love for their craft shining out of their eyes and dripping from every gesture when they would bring out the dishes and explain what we were about to experience.
Would I go again?
Yes please.
Roganic has a 2 year lease, and I plan on going several times before it diesapears. and if you are wise, so will you.