Ideal for a succint expression of Peruvian soul and spirit in the middle of Hackney…
Sitting on the main stretch of Broadway Market, amidst the falafel stalls and that opticians that also appears to sell jellied eels, Chakana opened its doors last October and has found its feet fast.
Serving up photogenic plates of precision engineered Peruvian food and drinks from Europe’s most extensive range of pisco – a Peruvian grape brandy which blesses the country’s most cherished of cocktails – it shouldn’t come as any huge surprise that Chakana has hit already its stride in the capital. The kitchen is headed up by chef Robert Ortiz, who previously earned Lima London its Michelin star, the first Peruvian restaurant in Europe to be bestowed with the honour.
There is also an acclaimed sister restaurant, Chakana Birmingham, which has been recognised by the Michelin Guide and featured in OpenTable’s most recent Top 100 UK Restaurants list. Yep, there’s some serious pedigree on the stoves and the cocktail shakers here.
The restaurant features one long, tastefully decorated dining room that culminates in a large bar. It’s a space that would feel intimate in the evening, but on a Saturday lunch time, when we visited, was imbued with the first light and lift of spring and the buzz of the market, with shopkeepers and shoppers dropping in for a chat and a cocktail, and passing babies cheerily waving at the mascot alpaca in the restaurant’s window. The doors remained resolutely open to the market, creating a kind of harmonious, homogeneous relationship with the street that felt like it was lifting everyone’s mood.
A long, tastefully decorated dining room calls for a long, tastefully composed lunch, and Chakana have just stepped things up a notch with their first tasting menu offering, recently released and keenly priced at just £75. Largely seafood led, there’s a psychedelic quality to several of the dishes, both in the kaleidoscope of colours on the plate and in the vivid flavours on the palate, but first, a drink.
It would be rude not to open with that most famous of Peruvian drinks, the Pisco Sour, to settle the stomach after a thousand toothpick tasters from Broadway Market’s food stalls as we walked to the restaurant. Chakana’s version is exemplary, and a promise of good things to come.
Back down to earth, things begin a little more prosaically on the food front, with a rugby ball shaped croquette (oval, not, you know, the actual size of a rugby ball) of yuca root and fresh cheese, its emulsion a delicate blanket, and a fineish dice of shallot and chilli bringing just a little piquancy. It’s a gentle start.
The other amuse bouche is equally reserved, but totally delicious in composition. It’s a nigiri-inspired bite; tuna sitting atop diced potato and quinoa instead of sushi rice, the raw fish’s surface splayed open like a blossoming flower and dotted with petals. Its soy and ponzo dressing is mellow and light, pooling on the plate and demanding you run your finger over it to seek out its nuances. The two bites enjoyed side-by-side feel like a fine expression of the inherent contrasts in Peruvian cuisine and climate, the flavours familiar if not a little muted.
It’s all a bit like when Springsteen opened Glastonbury solo with an acoustic cover before ripping into a full band Badlands (niche reference, we know). The head-on collision in question is the next dish, Chakana’s signature, Rainbow Mountain-reminiscent ceviche, which awakens and enlivens, and helps the previous two bites make total sense; the familiarity of the starch and sushi priming you for an onslaught of the thoroughly expressive flavours to follow.
That ceviche sees thick, pronounced dices of seabream bedded down deep in its bowl with house tiger milk, sweet potato puree and several varieties of corn, one kernel the size of a broad bean and heady in its milky sweetness. It pairs poetically with that signature tiger milk; tom yam adjacent in its profile and singing with just-squeezed lime, coriander and chilli. Having done its work curing the fish just so – not too wooly, certainly not raw – an additional, small jug of the bright, invigorating elixir arrives, if you fancy bathing your bowl in it. You will be drinking from that jug.
Head still spinning from that, a hand dived Orkney scallop and dragon fruit tiradito hits the table swiftly, a one-two punch by design, and serving as a nod to the fusion with Japanese cuisine that Chakana clearly showcases so well.
Tiradito traditionally sees raw fish sliced Usu-zukuri style before being dressed in an emulsion of citrus and distinctly floral ají amarillo chillies. So it is here, with the scallops’ natural sweetness playing off the perfume of that comically lucid strawberry-red sauce.
Though Peru isn’t known for its wine (something that’s, fortunately, slowly changing), we enjoyed a clean, crisp glass of El Copero de Casalla from the Casalla Valley here. Made from the pisco grape, its minerality and controlled acidity worked well with the ceviche dishes, particularly.
That said, and with a sense of citrus-fatigue creeping in, the tasting menu transitions into courses that embrace the mouth-coating, flavour-carrying qualities of a lovely bit of fat, bridging the gap between cold and hot, piquant and warming with aplomb.
That subtle handover is exemplified in the star dish of the whole procession; a serving of crab – both picked white and brown meat – that’s been mixed with a little cream, parmesan, and the earthy anchor of both cumin and hazelnut. Though more robust than its predecessor, this one’s still pretty as a picture, the bound crabmeat arriving dressed in a spidercrab shell, resting on shimmering paraffin-blue abalone shells. Just a few teaspoon scoops required, it hums with the comfort of warming spices and brown crab.
That sense of grounding – a reflection of the huge variety of agriculture and altitude in Peru itself – continues with a warm red mullet ceviche and several iterations of beetroot. It’s the only miss of the day, a little too muted and easygoing, with the eruciform run of charred corn that rests on the fish coming on a touch chalky. Considering beetroot is, too, high on the ol’ geosmin-front, this one was earthiness in overdrive. But perhaps that’s the point. Regardless, visually, the composition of the dish is one of the most beautiful you’ll ever see – you eat with your eyes first, and all that, and one was staring right back at us. We duly finished it.
Not to worry, as the final savoury course is a knockout, comforting but flavour-forward, it feels like an elegant end to the narrative. Prose or poetry, things culminate with a tight slab of suckling pig, all crisp, burnished skin and giving meat beneath. A rich, glossy jus featuring a grating of Peruvian cacao finishes us off, in the best possible way of course. Two discs of warm purple cornbread, sweetly glazed with a crisp exterior and topped with crispy onions, are served alongside. Drag them through every last drop of that sauce.
Finally, a single sweet; a silky-smooth, pleasingly bitter chocolate mousse packed with the intensity of 72% Peruvian cacao is just what the doctor ordered to close. Texturally, so much work has gone into this guy, with a crumb, a just-set sticky salted caramel and chocolate shards all bringing contrast and counterpoint. It’s an artfully-composed, incredibly delicious expression of soulful Peruvian culinary culture that fills you up but doesn’t fuck you over, which is exactly what you want from a multi-course meal like this.
Service is superb. Confident and knowledgeable, there’s an obvious pride in everything Chakana are doing. With a tasting menu that requires some explanation, that can sometimes have you feeling like you’ve got a third member of the party dining with you, but not so here. The waitstaff are across the room without ever pulling up a chair at your table, and the atmosphere is relaxed.
Indeed, Chakana feels like a coherent, thoughtfully framed kind of place that still leaves room for plenty of fun and frivolity. It’s a restaurant we’ll be coming back to.
Address
Website: chakana-restaurant.co.uk
Address: 41 Broadway Market, London E8 4PH