‘Mountain offers a range of options to gladden my carnivorous heart’

Photographs by Sophia Evans

When seated, I order an Old Friend, an elegant Old Fashioned-esque cocktail made from English whisky and reclaimed citrus husks, with notes of orange and raspberry. I sip it in full view of the kitchen, which opens out on to the restaurant floor. We are seated so close to it that I can just about place my left foot within its borders, all green tiles and exposed brickwork.

If the ambience is exquisite, so too is the menu. Its solitary black mark from our first visit had been given for one of Ciara’s choices. As a vegetarian, her main selections had seemed a little afterthought-shaped, so when I heard that Mountain’s meat-free repertoire was getting a facelift, I thought it worth a revisit. That is, until our server informed us that said change applies only to lunch bookings. And so, while I order from a litany of options to gladden my carnivorous heart, Ciara is left to opt for the same improvised main as before, an elaboration upon two of the side dishes.

It seems an odd lapse of thoughtfulness for a restaurant as carefully curated as Mountain, the brainchild of Tomos Parry, Anglesey-born head honcho of Brat in Hackney, which also has a Michelin star. Brat and Mountain share an ethos: wood-fire cooking, British produce and culinary nods to Wales and the Basque country, plus (in Mountain’s case) the Balearic Islands. It also has an in-house bakery, which comes into play in my first starter, the grilled sobrassada.

The trick, the waiter says, is to squeeze the sausage out of its casing and mop up the resulting crimson mush with the bread provided, a beret-sized flatbread, hot and inflated from its preparation three feet away, butter still catching in its heated greebles like water in rockpools. The combination is delicious, the cured pork spicy, warm and smoked, although – word to the wise – its oily residue can stain. I am wearing white this evening, so Ciara watches this procedure as if awaiting a jump scare. She considers me a messy eater. I could always tuck a napkin into my shirt collar, she’s fond of reminding me, but doing that has always made me feel like a ludicrous 18th-century birthday boy, so I shall continue to dice with death. I live on the edge, and if she can’t handle the heat, she should get out of the eerily silent, orb-lit, green-tiled kitchen.

I emerge from that danger zone unspoiled, and she exhales and begins her starter of grilled young leeks, piattone beans and hazelnuts. This, she says, is excellent, but I don’t get a bite before it’s gone.

Stainings are impossible with my next dish of raw scallop and cured monkfish. Prepared, ceviche-style, in a shallow plate of brine, a peppering of pickles and citrus globs provide the only specks of colour among its pallid tones, it’s fresh and zesty, its transparent, gelid ellipses triumphantly soft and sharp. Ciara’s cucumber, green strawberry and mountain mint, meanwhile, is so excellent she actually offers me some. Served in a lighter than light sauce cut with a scattering of nuts and a few judiciously apportioned blobs of honey, its combination of crunch and cream, sweetness and tang, is a marvel.

She orders the summer girolles and Spenwood omelette but loses her nerve when it arrives. She’s vegetarian, not vegan, but separately dislikes eggs. This unapologetically viscous omelette is a step too far, which is good news for me, since it’s a treat: thin as an envelope and delicate as seafoam, its barely-there consistency accented by harder darts of sheep’s cheese, topped with a luxurious film of surface yolk.

My short rib main is a showstopper, served in two constituent parts: first, a pair of rib bone sections, on which you can chew and suck with the conquering glee of a post-pillage Viking; and with them, two oblong columns of rib meat, sliced into an arrangement I can only describe as “40 little sim cards made from beef”. These melt in the mouth, juicy and perfectly seasoned. They may be the tastiest rectangles I have ever eaten.

Ciara’s hearty, moreish two-side main is a roasted spring vegetables and wood-fired rice dish of a quality that could easily be listed on the actual menu, sparing vegetarian diners the vestigial sense that they’re a hindrance to be worked around, like shoppers having to raise their hands for help using the self-service tills.

What can you say about Mountain’s potatoes? Like many Irish people, I hesitate to praise potatoes too loudly in English company. One avoids unforced errors wherever possible, and the obituaries for my credibility write themselves: “We sent one affable Hibernian to survey a restaurant with an 800-bottle wine list, and he gave us a 1,000-word essay about spuds.” Here, however, I must run that risk, because theirs are so strikingly good: fire-smoked and bathed in butter, sweet and soft beneath their crunchy skins, their flesh perfectly waxed and salty. To eat one is to immediately know, deep in your bog-brained heart, that you will soon be wiping the plate clean with whatever decorum, and cleanliness of garments, you can salvage.

Our evening ends with an excellent shared torrija with mascarpone, paired with a Dauphiné Rondillon dessert wine, richly sweet and the colour of spun gold. I can relate that colour quite confidently, many days later, because I almost immediately trickled it down my previously unblemished shirt, to a censorious cry of alarm from my appalled, and self-satisfied, wife. She blames me, but she must blame herself. She knew I was a wild man when she married me.

Mountain 16-18 Beak Street, London W1F 9RD (mountainbeakstreet.com). Starters from £9.50, small plates from £15.50, desserts from £8.50, wine (carafe) from £20