Perilla, London: ‘Lively, convivial and expertly casual’

Harry Styles is playing another show at Wembley Arena and England are about to embark on their first match of the World Cup. London is having one of its sweaty, tops-off, febrile summer nights. The bus I get to Newington Green is a sweatbox crawling along the road as if on a trundling descent into hell. But my destination is an oasis of cool and calm. Perilla offers a modern take on classic European cooking, and positions itself, humbly, as a neighbourhood restaurant.

It arrived on this bright corner spot 10 years ago, when it was launched by head chef Ben Marks (Claridge’s, the Square) and business partner Matt Emmerson (Polpo). In 2024, they opened a second restaurant, Morchella, in Clerkenwell, but Perilla, the mothership, re-entered the National Restaurant Awards’ Top 100 recently, at number 43. Which is why, instead of eating slices of melon and slurping ice lollies in our underwear, my friend and I are having a generous, fine-dining-ish, set menu by candlelight. It is almost the longest day of the year and it will be light for hours, but it speaks volumes about Perilla’s charms that this seems adorable and atmospheric, rather than profligate. We had booked an early dinner so that we could get back and watch the football, and at first it looks as if we might be the only ones eating. But the airy, plant-strewn dining room soon fills up with groups of mates, families and couples, and you start to wonder if it is not suffering from a case of false modesty after all. It feels like a neighbourhood joint, albeit one where your neighbourhood regularly pops up on property-porn site the Modern House. It is lively, convivial and expertly casual.

For £66, the set menu offers snacks, bread, a starter, a main and a dessert. Lately, elsewhere, I have seen main courses that are approaching that figure, so this seems like a relatively good-value option. We have cocktails: a Maria spritz for me, a sort of Bloody Mary with tequila and celery bitters, which tastes like a savoury wine, and not in a bad way. My friend has a sweet mint julep, bringing the sunny weather inside with her.

All of the plates here are to share, as is the law in London, but the set menu is the only way to sample Perilla’s famous snacks. There has been a noticeable rise in restaurants offering “snacks” before the main event, as if we are all toddlers getting grumbly in our pushchairs, who need placating in case we kick off. The snack strips away any lingering pretentiousness from the frilly old hors d’oeuvre, simply by giving it a more laid-back name. A snack is friendly. An amuse-bouche? French.

I am here for the snack’s moment in the spotlight, especially when the snacks are like this. With a nod to low-waste efficiency, yesterday’s bread arrives, repurposed and reimagined. Here are two fat fingers of faintly stale sourdough revived with a good soaking of moules marinières and a topping of finely chopped mussels. I feel irritated I can’t swoop in and eat both without seeming rude to my friend. Snack two is lightly battered cod cheeks with a sweet ’n’ spicy chipshop curry sauce, pickles and a tartar spiked with gooseberries and topped with crispy capers. I love gooseberries, which are in season and criminally underused, and they cut through the creaminess of the mayonnaise with tart beauty. Snack three is not included in the set menu, but we order the stuffed cabbage anyway. It is a dome of leaves, packed with spring greens and spices, topped with tomato and chilli, on a bed of whey sauce. It tastes like an elevated version of the lahmacun I used to get from a kebab shop, wobbling home after a big night out, a few streets away from here.

All of this is merely a trailer, and the movie is yet to start, so it is mildly discombobulating when today’s bread arrives, as if the snacks were a lovely daydream. We reset. The wine list is, obviously, low-intervention. My friend has a glass of the Austrian grüner veltliner hauswein. As someone who values intervention, lots of it, it is too funky for me. We have minestrone in a wide metal bowl, which is a little Pets at Home, but the soup itself is Perilla in a nutshell – extravagantly, precisely, deceptively not-simple – and the salty tomato broth cut through with small cubes of vegetables, hard cheese and crisp croutons, decorated prettily with purple and green basil.

The chalk-stream trout, on more whey – this time, a whey beurre blanc – is both rich and miraculously light, like a TV strongman hoisting a barbell made of foam. The accompanying slices of heritage cucumber are refreshing, the kiwi pleasingly eccentric, but perfectly crisp for an evening like this. For dessert, I have a strawberry and lemon verbena millefeuille, a haze of fruit and cream, though the verbena is so delicate as to be barely perceptible. My friend goes off-menu to try a Perilla staple dessert, the chocolate, hazelnut and walnut pavê, a ruler-shaped slab of chocolatey joy, topped with dates and with a slick of split-colour slick on the side comprising vanilla cream and charcoal-coloured vanilla oil. Shades of Kinder Bueno, she says, happily.

Perilla may call itself a neighbourhood restaurant, but that sort of modesty would have the Louvre declaring itself a local gallery, or the Royal Shakespeare Company deciding that it is a community theatre. Perilla is excellent. Lucky old neighbourhood.

Perilla, 1-3 Green Lanes, Newington Green, London N16 9BS (perilladining.co.uk). Sharing plates £6-32, desserts £8-12, set menu £66, wines from £36