Anthea Gerrie eats at Madison London a New Orlean’s style pop up.
New York’s Mad Men may be untransplantable from Madison Avenue, but Madison London the restaurant strives to please a new generation of hard-partying City and media types atop London’s glitzy One New Change building beside St. Paul’s.
Up on the roof, this American-inspired restaurant serves alfresco meals and drinks when the sun comes out, and marked Independence Day with a New Orleans-themed pop-up featuring southern favourites like fried chicken and oysters Rockefeller.
While I missed the Pernod which is an essential ingredient of Rockefeller, the bivalves themselves were huge, the sabayon in which they were bathed succulent, and the proper taste of spinach was there, not to mention a delicious hint of char which suggests they had been run into the Josper, as indeed they often see the inside of a wood-fired oven in New Orleans.
Shame there was so little taste of buttermilk in the batter coating the fried chicken, but the remoulade accompanying giant shrimp was authentic enough, and a dish of potted crayfish and crab with diced cucumber delicious.
As BA has just launched a direct route to New Orleans from London, inspiring this particular pop-up, themed with colourful, if seasonally incongruous, Mardi Gras masks, expect more of us to be craving the remoulade sauce and baked oysters which are staple dishes of the Big Easy. Not to mention beignets, the French doughnut variation usually eaten for breakfast; here, they represent dessert on the special menu which will be available throughout July.
Drinks were generous and packed a punch; loved the special cocktail, one of six devised for the pop-up, on a rye whiskey base with apple juice and Calvados which was mercifully not over-sweet. Live music enhanced the scene, and on July 10 there will be a repeat performance of jazz and blues, two musical genres which are the essence of New Orleans.
Madison London One New Change London EC4M 9AF
Tel: 020 3693 5160
