By "Filleting a fish and serving it like that is quite weird in other cultures," Tomos Parry muses. "I think being served it whole makes it feel more relaxed, like you're on holiday."
With hordes of customers gleefully ordering whole grilled turbot at his newly opened restaurant Brat, Parry has earned the right to comment on the benefits of serving a fish bones and all.
The young chef left Mayfair spot Kitty Fisher's, where he cooked for the likes of Brad Pitt and Bradley Cooper, to set up a Basque region inspired restaurant in a former strip club on Redchurch Street. Now it's the hottest restaurant in London - quite literally, as you pass the open grill to get to your seat - and has earned the sort of ecstatic reviews chefs dream of.
As well as being named for the old English slang for turbot, brat is also a Welsh word for apron. And while you might imagine an olive skinned Spaniard is responsible from bringing San Sebastian to Shoreditch, in another fitting bit of symmetry Parry himself hails from Anglesey.
Brat is inspired by his many trips to the pintxos bars of the Basque region where whole fish and chops of beef are cooked over charcoal and served unpretentiously.
Ascend the narrow stairs to Brat and pass the walls lined with glowing wine bottles and you find yourself right in the thick of the action. The wooden floor from the building's strip club days has remained and the bar which slices through the room has a long ling of diners watching the room from on high.
"Having the bar in the middle was a deliberate choice because we wanted it to feel like it was a fluid restaurant where everyone can move around the kitchen like a family run place," he says.
The interiors take inspiration from the underground cooking clubs which sprung up under Franco's government when men were discouraged from cooking, and on entering the room you really do feel like you're in a secret Spanish taverna.
The snacks and starters are pleasingly sized with a rich chopped egg salad with shaved Bottarga, while the beef tartare flecked with sesame seeds marries simple but endlessly pleasurable flavours.
The main dish descriptions are intriguingly sparse with 'Beef Chop' or 'Roast Duck' being the only insight you get, bucking the annoying foodie trend of listing every spice used and the cow's national insurance number to reassure you. "I don’t really use many words on the menu because I don’t like all that waffle," Parry admits.
Not that they arrive plain. The pièce de résistance turbot is grilled over charcoal for hours and sprayed with a light vinaigrette. While eating it you find yourself proudly holding up strips of glistening white meat that you never would of found if you hadn't shredded the fish from its bones. The sides are fantastic too, with a dish of potatoes crisped in golden butter more delicious than it has any right to be.
Brat is a refreshing antidote to the small plates revolution and though the larger attractions aren't cheap, they really can feed a whole table without anyone leaving slightly hungry. There's something both wonderfully simple but also totally decadent about tearing through a still-sizzling chop of lamb where the quality of the produce is enough alone.
"I like robust flavous," Parry says. "Serving a whole fish or cut of meat and sharing it communally means you can put a lot of care into it because it takes a long time to cook."
This unassuming and thoughtful approach is at the heart of everything Brat serves, and it reminds you food really doesn't need to be fussy for you to want to lick your plate clean.
Brat, First floor, 4 Redchurch St, E1 6JL
