When Viajante hit my to-eat list it was before it was awarded its Michelin star, and the reason I added it to my list was that it promised El Bulli / Fat Duck-esque type exploration of food without the El Bulli / Fat Duck-esque prices. It was supposed to be exciting, innovative, challenging. It’s a shame I didn’t get to visit before it was awarded its star this year, so I can never really know what impact the award has had in the restaurant.

Nevertheless, I thought it would be a nice restaurant to take Sandra to for her birthday.

Viajante is located in what used to be Bethnal Green’s Old Town Hall – a beautiful edifice, now also converted to a Hotel – and inside it is light and airy and actually a lot more casual than you would imagine. The kitchen is an open kitchen though those in the second room, like us, can only catch a glimpse because of the wall in between.

Rather cutely the wine list is incorporated into a “100 Great Wonders of the World” book to reinforce the “Traveler” theme of the restaurant (viajante is traveler in Portugese.) The personal touches of the restaurant came in little things like being given a bag hook … though rather oddly we were only given one … and bringing out free champers to celebrate Sandra’s birthday. 🙂

The first innovation that was evident in the restaurant was the bread. We were served hot potato bread served with two brown butters – one with crispy potato and black pudding and one with crispy chicken, iberica ham and potato powder. Neither were overwhelming in flavour but were sufficiently different to put them into a nice for a change category.

We were then served two amuse bouche: “Thai Explosion II” which consisted of crispy chicken skin on one side, coconut something on the other and chicken confit and quail egg and the second this Home Made Cheese with Peas and Spring Flowers. The first dish was great but the second dish was, despite how pretty it looked, was very plain tasting, except for the crust of salt! It was like tofu it had so little flavour.

Then it was on to our 6-Course tasting lunch. First course was Mackerel, cream sponge, preserved lemon and wood sorrel dressing. Not a fan of this sadly. The cream sponge rather oddly had the consistency and taste of the home-made cheese from our amuse bouche (namely flavourless and rather like tofu), and the mackerel was much too strong tasting for me, and I like fish! Both Sandra and I agree that the best part of this dish was the preserved lemon. It was the tiniest part of the dish but the best tasting!

The second dish continued on with the looking pretty but containing mild flavour concept. White, green and wild asparagus with milk skin. Very disappointingly bland! Though the clear jelly like “sauce” poured at the table around our dish did have a good asparagus flavour.

A photo break

And on to more food. This is a better close-up of the dish that is sitting in front of Sandra. Acorda de camarao (Confit egg yolk, Japanese prawn, fennel, and bread salsify.) This was very interesting and very rich. The egg yolk had been perfectly cooked and the prawns were fresh. Not sure I was feeling the bread salsify. I’ve had a bit too much of that this year.

The next dishes came as a pair – Bacalhau dos Mundos (Cod of the Worlds). The first thing to come to our table were two orange peels which was part of part one of the dish. Cod influenced by Japan, orange and tomato water, dill , seaweed, orange peel spritzed. Yeah, I couldn’t see the code either.

Part two was nicer – Cod from Portugal with crispy onion and potato and caramelised onion. This was really really lovely! The texture from the crispy onion did well to offset the silken texture of the cod.

Moving on to our meat dish (and our final savory dish) – lamb with coffee, macadamia and broad beans. I’m not a huge fan of lamb but this was actually my favourite dish at lunch. It was so full of flavour and contrasts. Everything that had come before it, with probably the exception of the second part of the cod dish and our amuse, was just too sub-par on the flavour levels.

Desserts were a delight. First a pannacotta ice cream with shiso granite and green apple cubes. I just didn’t like the bowl it came in – because it felt horrible to scoop from, it was like someone running their nails down a blackboard.

Reduced ilk ice cream, condensed milk, cucumber raw, smoked and pickled and black sesame made up our final dessert. I was rather surprised that, despite the different ingredients, that it was very similar to the first dessert. Thought it could have been taken into a totally different direction.

The petit four were interesting – there was a shot glass of cinnamon something, a jelly and then a mushroom (cep) truffle. What? A really odd flavour on the tongue!

So, food was quite below my expectations at Viajante. I was expecting to be stunned, to be surprised, to be excited but I wasn’t. Sure, I could see that there was an attempt to challenge our preconceptions of how food should be delivered and combined but from a flavour-perspective it just didn’t deliver. This was the greatest disappointment of the day. In all other aspects it was an enjoyable experience – the food looked good (though was quite minimalist), the restaurant had a nice relaxed atmosphere, food was pricey (£50 for the 6 courses) but filtered water was free and they didn’t overcharge on our soft drinks, and finally service was great throughout the meal, everyone made an effort to say happy birthday to Sandra and we were each given a menu upon leaving.

Perhaps we just visited on an off day for the kitchen. Reviews seem mixed as to whether food delivers on taste – would I come back again? The jury is still out on that one.