Monday Bulletin: Danny Trejo’s tacos and D&D’s Birmingham debut

Catch up on the latest industry news stories of the week from the CODE Bulletin

Ochre

The National Gallery’s new restaurant, Ochre, quietly opened this month. It would appear only Tatler has visited so far. Ochre is the work of founders Charlotte and Sam Miller, the duo behind Muriel’s Kitchen and who have ‘transformed’ the space into ‘a stylish, modern restaurant’ within the William Wilkins building overlooking Trafalgar Square. In charge of the kitchen is executive chef Alex Drayton, formerly of Texture and 28-50. His menu promises to ‘showcase the very best seasonal British ingredients, blending international flavours with modern European cooking’. Expect pork with Westcombe cheddar croquettes; Scottish scallops with turnips, chorizo and cime di rapa; and sweet potato samosas. Mains might include monkfish with hispi cabbage and rack of lamb with baby gem. There will also be ‘bespoke’ British cheese trolleys ‘charmingly wheeled around by Boden-clad staff’, according to an announcement. Charlotte and Sam said: ‘We very much look forward to our elevated restaurant concept becoming a place that gallery visitors will enjoy, as well as a destination restaurant in its own right in London.’

Updown

Duck Duck Goose chef-founder Oli Brown and partner Ruth Leigh – daughter of the esteemed Rowley – are opening a country restaurant with rooms this July, just outside the coastal town of Deal in Kent. Oli and Ruth have spent the past few years remodelling a 17th Century Grade II listed farmhouse in preparation to launch Updown and over the past 12 months have hosted supper clubs with the likes of Café Deco’s Anna Tobias, and Noble Rot’s Alex Jackson. More.

Orelle

D&D London has announced a new restaurant, café, bar and terrace in Birmingham’s tallest office building. Orelle, the group’s Birmingham debut, will open on the 24th floor of 103 Colmore Row in October, and will serve a ‘modern French menu’ with ‘360-degree panoramic views across the city’. CEO Des Gunewardena said Orelle ‘has been many years in the making’ and promised ‘something special’. No menu or chef has been announced yet but Des added: ‘We are very aware of Birmingham’s high quality and varied food scene’. 

Dinner at Danclair’s

Tonight (27 June), CODE is taking over Danclair’s in Brixton for a members’ dinner. Owned and operated by the inimitable Brian Danclair, who will be cooking on the night, our CODE members can expect a transportive dinner of fantastic Caribbean flavours, including the Fish Wings & Tings famous cod fritters, tamarind king prawns, and chimichurri steak. Oh and there will be plenty of Duppy Share rum. Last round of tickets here.

The Suffolk

L’Escargot Sur-Mer, which launched as the Suffolk offshoot of the famous Soho institution L’Escargot in the summer of 2020, will reopen in August as The Suffolk. Founder George Pell said the restaurant, in the seaside town of Aldeburgh, will have its ‘own identity’: rather than mirroring Soho, The Suffolk will instead pay tribute to its home county and its produce, as well as those who farm, grow, catch, and butcher it.

Wine expert Zeren Wilson on chillable reds

Reds, they wanna have fun. Cyndi Lauper might not have been singing about the joys of sipping a chilled red when the working day is done, but the lyrics are jangling around my head as I think about pulling one from the fridge. In countries where the locals don’t view a two-day heatwave as front page news, they blithely pull cold bottles from the fridge without hesitation, and not just wine we classically term as ‘chillable’. Read on.

James Cochran

Great British Menu winner James Cochran has managed to get his famous scotch bonnet chilli jam into Sainsbury’s. An announcement quite savvily mentioned the coming Sriracha shortage and offered the hot sauce as an alternative. It is most likely perfectly suited to being mixed with mayonnaise and served on top of loaded fries. More seriously, Cochran, of Islington restaurant 12:51, has teamed up with the condiment brand Sauce Shop to take his esteemed chilli jam mainstream. ‘The recipe has been with me for a long time, obviously influenced by my love of Caribbean cuisine’, Cochran said. ‘People came to the restaurant and would go crazy for it, so we knew we had to bottle it up.’ It was made available in stores nationwide only yesterday.

Danny Trejo

The Hollywood actor Danny Trejo is readying himself to open a flagship branch of ‘Trejo’s Tacos’ in central London. The From Dusk ‘Til Dawn star opened his first taco restaurant in LA in 2016 and has since launched three more along the West Coast. Trejo is crowdfunding in a bid to raise £1m for his debut site in the UK and is offering up to 21 per cent equity in the business. A restaurant will be followed by a number of ‘ghost kitchens’, as well as other sites across the UK, reports say. Celebrity food businesses haven’t always gone to plan when crossing the Atlantic. Just ask Mark Wahlberg. But if the Trejo’s Tacos Anthony Bourdain approved of while filming his LA episode of Parts Unknown arrive here, the brand will probably do okay. 

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