Whole Beast at the Montpelier , 43 Choumert Road, London SE15 4AR (020 7635 9483). All dishes £3-£16, desserts £4-£6, wine from £25 Some menus read like the setlist for a Take That gig: a few ballads to kick things off, in the shape of cheery salads and dips, building towards some serious live fire grill, dancefloor fillers. Others are a bit more Elbow: a warm, comforting and life-affirming journey through the vagaries of love and loss; some French classics, say, or a few soothing pasta dishes followed by a perfectly made crème brûlée.
Behold, the great Guy Garvey cracking through the lightly bitter carapace of life’s burnt sugar to get to the soft-set cream beneath. And then there’s the menu by Whole Beast, in permanent residency at the Montpelier, a boozer in Peckham. That’s a Slipknot gig.
It’s packed full of cranial-shaking, jaw-rattling bangers from start to finish. I accept I’ve never been anywhere near a Slipknot gig. With this hair? And these feet? But the overwrought imagery stands.
These are my analogies. If you don’t like them, I have others. Whole Beast, a roving cooking project by Sam Bryant and his Polish-born partner, Alicja, describes itself as a “nose-to-tail, live fire concept”.
Both grew up in rural areas and say they have “an eye on the past more than the future, using more primitive culinary techniques”. They also declare themselves to be “pyromaniac sommeliers, matching different woods to different animals”. It’s a lo.
