Opening Week at The Ninth, Fitzrovia.

Hey y’all. This is a hella lazy post because it’s 10pm and I’m drunk on three cocktails and I don’t *really* have time to blog at the moment because life is pretty crazy and all. But anyway, this restaurant is too good not to tell you about, and looking at the photos made me all hungry and shit again, so I sorta feel like I need to write about it RIGHT NOW.

 

The Ninth is awesome. C and I went last Friday before our trip to Poland, and we absolutely loved it! It’s located right on Charlotte Street (aka, foodie heaven in London), and is the very first restaurant from Jun Tanaka, who’s worked for the likes of Le Gavroche, Marco Pierre White, and The Square.

After a long career in television, Jun has finally launched his own restaurant after years of hard work. The Ninth got it’s name because it’s the ninth restaurant Jun has worked at. *all text from hear onwards was written totally sober and at 8am in the morning*

The restaurant itself is very trendy and had quite a New York warehouse vibe about it, with exposed brickwork and copper everywhere, and marble tables (yes, they clearly know what we bloggers like ;)). It was beautiful.

 

Even though everything is meant for sharing, we chose a coupla dishes each that we really wanted, then just tried a little bit of each others (I’m not very good at sharing food…). So we started with Oxtail Croquettes and Duck Scotch Egg from the ‘snacks’ menu. Both of these were divine and I’d recommend you order both – you won’t regret it.

 

 

We then moved on to the Sea bass carpaccio, salsa verde and pickled kohlrabi, and the Ossobuco tortellini and bone marrow. The sea bass was fantastic, but I would have preferred slightly less salsa on it.

 

After this we opted for spiced cod, mouclade of mussels and roast cauliflower and the succulent smoked duck breast with caramelized chicory and walnuts. On the side we chose some very autumnal thyme and honey roast winter vegetables.

 

 

And then we finished with the absolutely incredible Tarte Tatin and rosemary ice cream for two people. The rosemary ice-cream was a bit of a shock at first, but it really grows on you and complements the tarte tatin well. The photo below is of just my half of it – it was huge!

Honestly, the food here is incredible. I’d never eaten Jun’s food before, but the food exceeded all expectations and some. We left exclaiming how delicious everything was and how not one course was a disappointment (very rare when you have so many dishes). The only downside for me was that the staff were a little tooooo friendly, I’m one of these people who just likes to be left to eat in peace, but I’m guessing it’s just because the place is new and they’re interested in hearing feedback from customers, which is fair enough.