Casa Fofo regularly features on Michelin lists of London's most affordable restaurants. Yes, it's true that the set menu costs less than other restaurants, but here you can get a true Michelin experience with all those exquisite flavors, crazy combinations, mid-course appetizers, desserts before and after dessert, and good wines.
As I understand it, there is no stable menu for every day. Serving can largely depend on the products purchased or the chef’s desire to experiment. What I really love about this place is that everything here is designed to entertain you and your taste buds so that guests can find something new to enjoy. A lot of other places try to be careful and not do anything crazy, but this place is different - here you will be surprised.
Overall the space is quite small, there is an upper room with few seats and a view of the open kitchen, there is also a room downstairs and a terrace which is open during the warmer months. The restaurant is located in east London, in Hackney, in a residential area - not exactly a trendy area, but perhaps that helps keep costs down.
The first course consisted of small appetizers:
Cod mousse with citron and pickles on flaxseed toast
Sourdough bread with caramelized butter and yeast
Well, I don't know how to make caramel flavor without actual caramel, so if you know, let me know because it's a crazy addition to so many dishes.
The wine was beautiful biodynamic bubbles from France: "Folles Bulles". The pink-coral color is obtained by pressing whole grapes.
The second course was smoked monkfish with asparagus and daikon on top. Overall everything was good, but personally I don't like smoked fish. In my opinion, smoke in food is a pretty simple flavor and it's really hard to do anything unique or interesting with it, so it's hard for me to be impressed by smoky notes.
The wine was "Luca Bevilacqua Lello" - another natural wine without filtration or sulfates. What I also liked about our set was the wine pairing, which I found very informative. We had a list of organic, biodynamic, as natural as possible wines in one place, so the quality and variety pleased me
The next dish was vegetarian, but very tasty - cabbage with leek and fermented tofu sauce.
The pairing was "Corne", another young wine that uses whole bunches of grapes for the first three days before further processing.
After this, a rich maitake-mushroom broth was offered, which among broths tastes like ambrosia.
The next course was probably my favorite. It was cavatelli - a type of pasta - with monkfish liver mousse with cashews. Very delicate but rich taste. I wouldn’t refuse a portion right now if they offered me.
The wine pairing was "Tenuto Foresto" - a biodynamic orange wine, a young wine with bright notes.
The main course was lamb, but not ordinary lamb - it was cull yaw mutton. What does it mean? These are old sheep, past reproductive age, who continue their free life in the fields, eating grass. And when lamb is mature enough, it guarantees greater depth of flavor than aged beef. Don't worry about the toughness of the meat - in the hands of a professional chef it is perfectly soft. In addition to the meat, there was a piece of crispy lamb fat, sweet meat sauce and some greens.
We finished the meal with a glass of "Bronsa Cuerta" red wine, another wine partially fermented with grape skins. You can see that it is not as dark red or transparent. I am very glad that with this wine set I discovered something new for myself.
The cheese served was a warm and soft St Marcellin cheese with sourdough crackers and caramelized onion ice cream. The ice cream was very good, just a little caramel with a little added flavor (onion!), but the crackers were too oily for my taste. Overall - very good.
Pre- dessert was kombucha ice cream with a dash of pepper. I'm not a big fan of kombucha, so my companion happily ate my portion.
The dessert blew me away - it was a rhubarb parfait with crispy thin chocolate pancakes and layers of caramelized seaweed. In general, it was so new and good that I wanted to repeat it myself someday. But I also think there were some additional flavors, like a fifth scent that you can't smell but your brain knows it's there, maybe something with koji or something like that.
And paired with a good dessert wine - "Domaine Laguilhon Jurançon".
The tasting menu also traditionally includes post-desserts. Here we had sweet bites: chocolate ganache and crispy candies.
The overall impression of this place is very good. I really like what the team is doing: with all these fermentations, experiments, new flavors and forms. It was so good that I want to come back another season, maybe summer or fall, to try something completely new.
