Whole Beast, SW9

The beast of Brixton

I don’t really know how to categorise the food at Whole Beast, where gildas sit alongside pickled eggs, pork collar can be paired with kedgeree, and Taytos crisps play a starring role. “Eclectic” doesn’t quite cover it.

Whole Beast describes itself as “nose to tail live fire,” but that’s not even half the story. It masks a level of invention, insanity, and inspiration that goes far beyond that St. John-meets-Smokestak description — even if, just like Dove, Whole Beast’s most famous dish is among its least interesting.

After a string of residencies and pop-ups in venues around the city, Whole Beast now has a permanent home in Brixton, where it’s open four days a week. The setup is admittedly sparse, with plain pine tables, a few miscellaneous prints on the wall, and bright off-white lighting that doesn’t do the ambience any favours. This was within a week or two of opening, so hopefully there are plans to spruce things up, because right now the room is the only thing holding things back.

I suppose I should start with the burger, which is among my favourites and almost certainly the best straight smashburger in the city. A mix of wagyu and aged rib-cap is smashed to a thin crisp, maximising the Maillard, but the beef is good enough that it never stops tasting of itself, as meaty as any quarter pounder but crispier by far. An American slice and Martin’s potato roll prove an understanding of the essentials, with pickles, diced onion, and a house-made burger sauce to complete it. This is a burger made by someone who has thought deeply about what makes them work, and conveniently seems to agree entirely with me on that question.

It is not, however, an especially creative burger, and this is where it diverges from much of the rest of the menu. It’s a far cry from the pearl barley kedgeree, flecked with smoked eel and cooked to the oozy texture of a risotto, the effect amplified by a jammy cured egg yolk sitting at its centre. Elsewhere, leftover sourdough is turned into pasta, coated in a creamy morass of burnt leek and pungent Swiss cheese. Or you might prefer a shrimp tostada, the crustaceans enlivened not by a Mexican marinade but a none-more-British cocktail sauce.

That local influence pops up throughout, though none more so than in the borderline outrageous Taytos bravas: Ireland’s favourite crisps, bag ripped asunder, and dressed with curls of coppa, smoked garlic, and a burnt pepper sauce. It’s something you’d dream up in a student kitchen, but prepared with the confidence (and good coppa) to justify dishing it out in a restaurant. I have to convince my tablemates to let me order this sort of nonsense; by the end we all agree it was one of the dishes of the night.

But there’s also a strong sense of Americana alongside the local touches. It’s there in that cheeseburger, in the tacos and tostadas, in a starter of saltine crackers with pimento cheese and scratching — much better than it sounds, though admittedly that isn’t saying much. The single dessert is a nod to the other side of the Atlantic too, a version of the infamous Milk Bar crack pie, which is essentially a pastry casing filled with gooey, syrupy custard, and thus a pretty marvellous thing to eat. Milk Bar has long since dropped the controversial name; while you can criticise Whole Beast for causing offense, you should criticise them for being cringe. The pie is fucking delicious either way.

Lest I tar Whole Beast with a “kooky” brush, not everything is trying quite so hard. The pork collar in tonnato is simple, slow-cooked until silky smooth and dressed with a crumble of anchovy and caper-laden breadcrumbs. A smoked pork shoulder taco is delicious, but only novel for the sheer quantity of meat piled onto the dinky tortilla, while the greatest innovation in the thick slabs of Texas toast is the choice to fry them off in beef dripping.

These are all simply quietly excellent executions of fairly classic dishes, made eclectic mostly by sitting on a menu together: Italian tonnato alongside Mexican tacos, Texan toast as an alternative to a British pickled egg. Whole Beast loves them all equally, far-flung foods, both high-brow and low, unified only by the fact that they’re here, now, in this brightly lit backroom in Brixton.