divo

[chefmatt]

a bit of news. anyone who has been to divo will probably not have had the most memorable of meals. I am now involved with Chris Barber and Nigel Sutcliffe to revamp the place. don't come just yet it is not quite finalised and i am in the process of trying to find the right person to head up the kitchen but i will keep you posted.

[spanielking]

Mmmmmmmm, Ukranian haute cusine. Why are'nt there more of these places?....

[chefmatt]

hmmmm we are trying to change that! what do you think i know about ukrainian food?

[nikkib]

can you change the name too please "Divo" - weren't they on the X factor?

[chefmatt]

i know nothing of this x factor you speak of!! i am chef, don't watch telly!

[Gary Marshall]

from memory it was the waitresses uniforms and the ex-shameless tv show receptionist that were the most memorable parts of the divo experience?

[sunbeam]

Someone told me the whole thing was designed to appeal to the tastes of simple men who had suddenly become very rich in ways that perhaps weren't best discussed, and whose tastes were for the 'bling' end of demonstrable wealth.

Someone else suggested the place was a laundromat, if you know what I mean.

No one ever mentioned the food

S

[naebody]

what do you think i know about ukrainian food?

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Only what AA Gill has reported:

Apparently, Ukrainian food is Russian food but without the sense of generosity or bohemian sophistication. I started with a traditional plate of pig fat. Thick slabs of lard arranged by rather sweaty, nimble fingers to resemble small, dead pudenda. They came with tiny pubic triangles of fried black bread, as impenetrable as roof tiles. And raw garlic cloves cut in half. Whether these were all supposed to be garnish or ingredients, or just there to ward off the werewolves on the next table was not explained, and I didn’t feel like asking anyone. It was a dish of spectacular, multifaceted incompetence. Horrible on almost every level. I can’t imagine that there are a handful of people in all of London who would ever say: “Let’s go out. I want to buy a dish of labial white pig fat with garlic.”

... there's plenty more where that came from too.

Please stick with the name, if only so I can continue to say: "Are we not hungry? We are Divo!" every time I walk past.

[chefmatt]

oh no, that was the only dish i was going to keep on except we were going to leave the garlic cloves whole, i don't believe in fiddling with things too much.

i love lardo so i had pecilled in this dish:

Thinly sliced lardo melted onto hot crostini with parsley salad and olive oil

[algy]

Someone told me the whole thing was designed to appeal to the tastes of simple men who had suddenly become very rich in ways that perhaps weren't best discussed, and whose tastes were for the 'bling' end of demonstrable wealth.

Someone else suggested the place was a laundromat, if you know what I mean.

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I've always adored this restaurant - now I understand why.

[Jon Tseng]

Thinly sliced lardo melted onto hot crostini with parsley salad and olive oil

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haha. are you going to credit st john for that then? ;-)

ps yes strong garlic very important for good salo. and crunchable salt too.

Edited February 6, 2008 by Jon Tseng (log)

[chefmatt]

of course credit where credit is due.

[Hallie]

My question is, with so many terrible reviews does anyone eat there? Who is in the dining room? Ukrainians? The money must be leaking out of there like radiation from an ex-Soviet sub.

Hmmm. I'm with you on the 'laundrette' allusion.

To be honest, I quite like Russian food when it's done well. There's more to it than caviar and vodka.

What are your plans? Or if you tell me will you have put polonium in my tea?

[chefmatt]

instead of a list of michelin inspectors we have a list of ex-soviet spies to look out for!!

i think you can get polonium from wild harvest but it is very dear this year due to high demand!

nobody is in the dining room is the answer, and that's not naebody, but nobody.

we need to get away from the whole Ukrainian/russian image otherwise it will never be a success.

[Hallie]

we need to get away from the whole Ukrainian/russian image otherwise it will never be a success.

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Why not go for something big, grand and Imperial feeling - sort of the Wolseley meets Tolstoy. The grand cafes of central and eastern Europe still hold a romanticism for most people. I think that image of 'Russia' would go over very well. A Bulgarian friend of mine who was educated in Moscow tells me that there's been a recent trend in Russia to rediscover old recipes; things that Puskin writes about in his books (such as bread baked as a crust over a bowl of soup). That all sounds rather interesting.

The alternative is to embrace the kitschness of the Soviet era, make it all very trendy and celebrate the blini.

[battleofthebulge]

Maybe make it cheaper?

And lose the waitresses' "humiliating asymmetrical mini-dirndls"?

That's AA Gill's description of the uniform, which is kinder than Giles Coren's.

In fact the only people who seem to have eaten there are restaurant critics.

[naebody]

we need to get away from the whole Ukrainian/russian image otherwise it will never be a success.

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Oddly enough, Ukrainian money consider sushi to be the very pinnacle of sophistication. Perhaps there's some exciting fusion possibility you're missing. Sauerkraut teriyaki, perhaps. Or borshch miso.

By the way, am I right in thinking you're there as a hired gun for Leiths Food Solutions?

If you're on Leith's payroll, it's probably best if you just listen to whatever nonsense the owner says and try to reinterpret it into something within a short walk of edible. Let's be honest, there's only so much you can do with the place from behind the stove, and the Leiths bigwigs will be wise enough to get cash upfront without making any rash promises.

Meanwhile, if you're getting paid by the shop, it may be prudent to keep your eye out for other opportunities. Otherwise, there's a risk that your next assignment will involve forraging for insects in an windowless Odessa basement while handcuffed to a radiator.

Edited February 8, 2008 by naebody (log)

[hannnah]

Except for the unfortunately hilarious reviews of the place which you've got to overcome, you're not completely screwed when it comes to Ukrainian/Russian food - there's definitely room to come up with a decent menu. Absolute worst case, you can try to chase down some local grandmas and mug them for their varenyky recipes - it is possible to make non-stodgy ones, and they really are good when they're done well. I'd also look at a solyanka variant; they're tasty, easy to tweak, and much less offputting to people who aren't familiar with the cuisine than a borscht would be.

Hallie's "grand cafes" idea has merit as well, although it sounds like it'd be kind of difficult to turn the existing interior into high-ceilinged late-19th-century grandeur. But if you could find references to dishes in Pushkin or Taras Shevchenko which you could then work into your menu, that would work as a higher level nod to the original theme without being quite so, for lack of a better term, nouveau-oligarch about it all.