Séamas O’Reilly: SlowBurn is ‘a restaurant that begs to be savoured’

This was only half correct, since the restaurant’s food is indeed excellent, but the factory in which it finds itself is not, in any sense, old. Blackhorse Lane Atelier jeans studio is, in fact, fully operational during the working week, shutting down, one presumes, mere minutes before service in the restaurant begins at 6pm on Friday, running until 11pm on Sunday night. Diners take their seats alongside great spools of fabric, industrial tumble dryers and sewing machines. Some workstations are even repurposed as tables and the staff wear denim aprons that you can purchase. (I am sorely tempted.)

Despite having been before, I kick off this visit with a faux pas. There are so many garments stored or displayed in various stages of assembly that I mistakenly hang my coat on a hook that is most certainly not for diners. A waiter – not quite aghast, but mortified on my behalf – politely indicates the rack directly behind it, and I sheepishly remove my coat and place it on its proper hook. It’s a mistake I would describe as mild, but my wife, Ciara – a cruel and loveless creature – laughs so hard and for so long, that I am confident it will warm her in her bed for the rest of her spiteful little life.

Were she writing this review, the entire text would comprise an oral history of me offering my coat up for disassembly in a working garment factory without ever once mentioning the food. Which would be a pity, since I can say now, without any risk of overstatement, that this was the finest meal I’ve ever eaten in the company of a Tonello G1 70 L1 Ecofree sample-dyeing machine.

Head chef Chavdar Todorov oversees a veg-first philosophy, with meat an optional extra across his menu. Since Ciara is a vegetarian who eats like a normal person – and I an omnivore who eats in the manner of someone who’s just been told food will shortly be made illegal – this is a heavenly arrangement, allowing us to share as much as possible with each other, while I take on a couple of meat dishes in gluttonous addition.

This time, my nod to flesh begins with one of our starters, the beef featherblade salad. It’s gorgeous, and lighter than I presumed, with thin nuggets of beef topped by shredded slaw, the lawn-clipping freshness of mint ripping through its zesty fibres, accented by peanut shrapnel.

We share the gyoza tacos. These, too, are exquisite, their black-bean filling dark and rich, oozing seductively from their hardened dumpling-pastry shells. They’re so delicious, in fact, that the decision to offer them in divorce-baiting units of three causes mild friction. I pull rank as I’m writing this review and it would make more sense for me to have the last one. Also, she is still laughing about the coat thing, and there must be consequences.

Judged against the tacos, the cauliflower fritters are not quite as exciting; pleasingly crunchy but with seasoning that lands just two ticks north of bland. Thankfully, things are back on track with the asparagus and cheddar, a miraculous balance of salt, citrus and crunch that we ration throughout the rest of the evening. The cavatelli with broad beans is even better, with the gummy little pellets of semolina pasta sitting in a soupy moat of hearty and nourishing green, which Ciara does not appreciate me comparing to mushy peas.

The true showstoppers, however, come next. First, the mini jersey royals with Romanesco cabbage, romaine lettuce and dandelion leaves, in a portion so generous I am moved to consider the wisdom of ordering so many plates of food for the two of us. The halved potatoes are beautifully stiff and inviting, all but demanding to be skewered with the lettuce and cabbage in a sequence of improvised fork kebabs. The menu specifies roast onion pearls, but we don’t find any in our dish, though it’s possible we didn’t pause long enough while devouring this massive bowl to recognise them.

My final meat dish is next. When every gastropub in the UK pivoted to pulled pork some years ago, I was fond of wondering what the consistency of pushed pork might feel like. My pressed lamb shoulder suggests an answer; Mars-bar-sized, deliciously rich and compacted without feeling stodgy, it’s 12gb of data on a 4gb thumb drive, lifted from critical savouriness by a crisp dart of wild garlic, and a sprinkling of sweet shallots dotted across gravy like so many scattered cigarette filters.

Then comes the true star of the evening; the hispi cabbage in beer and miso. It’s so good we’re reduced to stunned silence, poring over the menu description so that we might more accurately scry its flavours. We riddle over its tomato, caramel and urfa base, which is somehow earthy, sweet, light and rich all at once. Googling “urfa” delivers us information about the Champions League, so we abandon education and resort to parcelling the cabbage’s meaty leaves into ever-smaller subdivisions, before mopping up the sauce with whatever cabbage fronds, asparagus spears and jersey royals we have left.

We end the evening with an uncommonly good Basque cheesecake. It’s everything I want from a dessert, as large as a wi-fi router, light while still decadent, and as powerful and spongy as a boxing glove.

An excellent bottle of La La Land pinot noir, and the post-cheesecake port we took after our meal, was primarily to extend our evening, since we were in no rush to leave. SlowBurn, as its name suggests, is a restaurant that begs to be savoured as long as possible. Just watch where you put your coat.

SlowBurn London, 114b Blackhorse Lane, London E17 6AA (slowburn.london). Starters from £8, small plates from £14, large plates from £21, wine from £8

Photographs by Sophia Evans