Straker's, W10
or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Mussel Flatbread
I didn’t go into Straker’s with the highest of expectations. The west London location didn’t do much to enamour me, and the core pitch - TikTok influencer gets his own high-end digs - didn’t exactly speak to me either.
It was a strange twist of fate that I was gifted a voucher to go along just days before the restaurant broke onto my timeline this summer, when the eponymous Thomas Straker achieved foodie infamy for proudly sharing a photo of his kitchen staff: a glistening, beaming row of white men.
The criticism was as swift as it was inevitable, but might have all blown over had it not been for his initial response, publicly telling people to “calm down” while privately (allegedly) DMing the female-led supper club Mam Sham to call them “bitter and twisted”, “obsessed with yourself”, and, in the middle aged white man coup de grâce, “so woke you don’t even care” (whatever the hell that even means).
Straker did eventually apologise, claiming to be “absolutely committed to ensuring diversity in my restaurants” (and, in fairness, there was a woman among the kitchen staff on my visit). Tellingly though, that apology came in his Instagram Stories rather than a permanent post, perhaps in the hope we’d all move swiftly on.
Just this week he gave his first interview since the scandal, and doesn’t come out of it well, giving every indication of a man for whom the media training just won’t stick.
He throws out the usual PR lines about how “we can always be better,” and reels off a list of “meetings with professionals over diversity and inclusivity,” but repeatedly slips into glimpses of his unvarnished self: an odd line about how “if you go into the Moroccan butcher, it’s Moroccans behind the counter;” a demand that everyone else should apologise for the “extremely offensive, incredibly offensive” claim that his collection of white men all look the same.
He can’t even resist the chance to play the victim of the whole sorry scenario: “In the world of, like, ‘everyone’s so worried about everyone’s mental health,’ where was the worry for me when I’m just being lambasted by the press?”
Won’t someone think of the poor, privately educated restaurateur with a couple million TikTok followers and a cheeky soft spot for hiring white guys?
All of which is prelude to say that when I finally managed to book a table for two at a sensible time - no mean feat, with the restaurant’s popularity seemingly undimmed by the controversy - it was probably with more trepidation than enthusiasm, pushed along by a sense that I should just get it over with, consoling myself with thoughts of the screed I might get to write afterwards.
So imagine how annoyed I was when it actually turned out to be bloody good.
Straker’s is far from perfect. It’s still in Notting Hill, for one thing. It’s also extravagantly expensive - we burnt through £230 despite sticking to the cheap end of the wine list and sharing a dessert - and a couple of dishes were definite duds.
But there were more hits than misses, warm service, and two plates that were just plain excellent.
The first of those was perhaps predictable. The mussel, chilli, and garlic flatbread is Straker’s trademark dish, and the reason a good quarter of the cramped kitchen is taken over by a cavernous stone pizza oven.
Pillowy, bubbly dough that could make many of London’s Neapolitan pizzerie jealous arrives blackened, sheltering a pool of gently spiced butter and plump molluscs. The mussels almost melt into the fat, leaving the chewy crust the only hint of resistance to your bite, not to mention your only hope of avoiding rivulets of grease running down your chin.
I’d come back for the flatbread alone. I’d order three of them. I’d even consider braving the miserable Battersea Power Station redevelopment for more, where Straker has also opened the creatively named Flat Bread, serving this and a handful of other options with different toppings.
Thomas Straker is nothing if not ambitious, you see. A few years into internet fame he’s now launched two restaurants, a cookbook, and even his own butter brand, while the ominously empty @strakerknives__ Instagram account suggests he’s not done yet.
The butter company at least makes sense - dairy fat is a big deal for Straker. New brand All Things Butter shares its name with one of the video series that made the chef famous in the first place, and it’s no coincidence that liquid pools of it engulf his most famous dish.
The restaurant menu’s other stalwart is fresh-fried doughnuts. They were absent on our visit, but made up for by a substitute that paid tribute to his favourite fat: a fried wedge of bread and butter pudding. His restaurant is far from the first to deep fry a slice of this British comfort food classic, but this was comfortably the best attempt at it I’ve ever eaten.
Miles away from the slab of stodge I was expecting (and, in all honesty, enthused for), the Straker’s pudding was lighter than a brick of bread, buttery custard, and chip oil has any right to be, floating on a puddle of soft pear and oozing ice cream from above. If I had to summon up a criticism, the whole thing was a bit wet - ease up on the pear syrup, guys - but I can’t imagine I’d be able to resist if I saw it on the menu again.
So those were the standouts, but there were other hits. A veal tartare - which our French waitress diplomatically insisted was nothing like the traditional version - proved impressively balanced, the delicate meat never overpowered by the punchy combination of radicchio, parmesan, and anchovy dressing that arrived alongside it.
Mallard was apparently shot by the great man himself along with that night’s grouse, or so we were genuinely assured, in a gentle reminder that his isn’t quite a rags to restaurant empire story - and a rousing reinforcement of all my worst prejudices against west London. Still, the breast arrived roasted to just the right side of rare, dressed simply on a bed of spelt. The gamey meat needed more of the all-too-infrequent slivers of brightening kumquat to cut through it, and the slight spreads of liver parfait on toast were entirely forgettable, but it was an appealing plate, albeit too expensive at £38.
We drank well too. A negroni sbagliato - with prosecco in it - didn’t lack any punch despite its missing gin. While it stings that the wine list starts from around £40 and climbs quickly, £43 earned us a beautifully effervescent orange wine that’s honestly among the best I’ve had, and well worth the price. Some cheaper options still wouldn’t go amiss though.
Not everything worked. Plaice and clams with haricot beans oddly arrived after the mallard and didn’t do much to justify the wait. Served with a bland bisque, the seafood was lost in the depths of a dominant but dull salsa verde.
Truly criminal though were the pumpkin and ricotta agnolotti. 22 English pounds got you seven pieces of undercooked pasta, filled with a gummy, tangy paste that was nothing more than a waste of a good pumpkin. Judging by the look of the even pricier plates of greying duck ragu gnocchi we saw leaving the kitchen, that night’s other pasta didn’t fare much better.
I don’t know that I could give a full-throated endorsement of Straker’s, though perhaps if I’d skipped the agnolotti I’d feel better about it.
For one, it definitively fails what I’ve begun to term the St. John test: can you order a few good courses, and wine, for £50 a head? We more than doubled that spend at Straker’s, and had to order a little frugally to even manage that (cocktails aside, I’ll admit).
But I’m also reminded of one of the last times I dropped £200 at dinner, strangely also off the back of a gifted voucher and at a place famous for flatbreads. That was Shoreditch’s beloved Brat, and at the risk of outing my own bad taste, I’d go back to Straker’s before splashing £150 on their grilled turbot again.
But should I? I’m as guilty as any of us when it comes to extracting the ethics from my eating when I can, and it feels more than a touch hypocritical to suggest that Straker’s outdated hiring habits and lack of self-awareness are grounds for a boycott when I’m already plotting the next exploitative McDonald’s breakfast I’ll be ordering via the anti-union Deliveroo. Thomas Straker not understanding what ‘woke’ means feels quaint by comparison.
Besides, maybe you can’t separate the art from the artist entirely - not least when they slap their name above the door in capital letters - but that doesn’t mean you can’t still appreciate it. The Mad Max movies still slap despite Mel Gibson being a certifiable prick, and even Elon Musk can’t take the two good Grimes albums away from us. Straker may suck, but his food is frustratingly good.
The problem, though, is that there are few things London has more of than expensive modern European restaurants, and there’s not much you’ll find on Straker’s menu that isn’t done just as well (or better, for less) at The Plimsoll, Quality Wines, Café Cecilia, 40 Maltby Street, and an endless list of excellent eateries that have fallen into some pretty predictable patterns.
I wouldn’t judge anyone for heading to Straker’s for dinner, but I might ask why they didn’t just go to one of those instead. The food’s just as good, and we can all claim plausible deniability about whatever skeletons they may have in the closet.