There is a school of thought in British restaurant criticism that holds that the phrase modern British cuisine is inherently suspicious, a piece of rebranding designed to elevate the ordinary by…
Alan Nafzger takes dinner at Southampton Street and finds a kitchen that argues for British cuisine on its own terms
By Alan Nafzger
Frog by Adam Handling: Modern British Cooking at Its Most Intellectually Serious
There is a school of thought in British restaurant criticism that holds that the phrase modern British cuisine is inherently suspicious, a piece of rebranding designed to elevate the ordinary by surrounding it with a certain kind of aesthetic and vocabulary. I have held this view myself, at various points, and there are restaurants that confirm it. Frog by Adam Handling on Southampton Street is not among them. This is a restaurant that makes a genuine argument for what British cooking can be when it is approached with seriousness and skill, and the argument is convincing.
Adam Handling has built his reputation across several London operations, and Frog is his Covent Garden flagship: a tasting menu restaurant that takes seasonal British produce and applies a level of technical precision that would not be out of place in any of the European capitals where this kind of cooking has a longer tradition. The seasonal menu changes regularly enough that any specific dish description risks inaccuracy by publication, but the approach is consistent: find the best available British ingredient, understand it thoroughly, apply technique in service of the ingredient rather than in service of technique for its own sake.
The Approach
The snacks that begin the meal set the register accurately. Each one is a miniature demonstration of what the kitchen can do: a single element cooked to its correct expression and presented with enough elegance to signal that the meal ahead has been thought about carefully. They are not trying to impress through complexity. They are trying to impress through rightness, which is the harder target.
The fish course, whatever form it takes on a given evening, consistently demonstrates the kitchen’s understanding of cooking fish properly, which is to say: knowing when it is done and stopping then rather than continuing for the additional period that makes the fish safe but makes it dry. The sauces that accompany the fish courses are made from real stock with real acidity balanced in and real butter finished through. These are the things that distinguish a restaurant that is spending money on ingredients and time on execution from one that is spending money on the room and buying in the kit.
The meat courses are the point where Handling’s approach becomes fully clear. British meat, when sourced correctly, is extraordinary. The beef from the farms that Handling uses has the depth of flavour that comes from proper rearing and proper hanging, and the kitchen treats it with the respect that this investment deserves. The cooking is precise. The resting is adequate. The carving, when it happens at the table, is done with the confidence of someone who has done it enough times to know exactly where to cut.
The Service and the Room
The room at Frog is warm and considered, not extravagant but not austere. The service is the kind that enhances rather than interrupts: present when needed, absent when not, knowledgeable about the food and the provenance of the ingredients without being performative about it. The sommelier knows the wine list and makes recommendations that are appropriate rather than merely profitable.
This is not an inexpensive meal. It is an expensive meal that is worth the expense, which is the only category of expensive meal that justifies itself. Visit Frog by Adam Handling when you want to be reminded that British cooking at its best is one of the serious culinary traditions of the world, whatever the international conventional wisdom says. The London Prat has the editorial context. Bohiney Magazine has the wider frame.