Secret Ingredient

The night after Wild Honey, I found myself out to dinner again, though this time to somewhere very different. The Secret Ingredient is what may have been the first of London's Supperclubs, of which the most notorious are probably Miss Marmite Lover's and the Pale Blue Door.

The Secret Ingredient is run by Horton Jupiter, who cooks, and his girlfriend, who serves up on the night. The deal is this - for twenty seven sterling over paypal in advance, you get seven or so courses of vegetarian Japanese food in the homely comforts of Horton's ex council place in Stoke Newington. Wine is BYO though he'll sometimes throw in the odd glass.

I was really excited about this. One of my new year missions is to host more, and I wanted to see if I could up my game. I'm not typically great at vegetarian cooking, so I figured it would be food I couldn't make at home - my standard restaurant requirement. The hype (about 20 min in on the link) around the Supperclubs is massive, and seeing Horton featured in the same breath as Nuno Mendes put me into a bit of a tizzy since I heart Nuno. I also thought it'd be a bit of an adventure - I'd never been to Stoke Newington (though this turned out to be somewhat anti climatic since it was a taxi to table experience); I was optimistic about the crowd that I'd drummed up (a former professional ice skater, AMGL, Golden Ed from HK, Fred again). I'd invited all the vegetarians I knew but none proved up to the adventure. SURPRISE!!

So.. what was it like... well. Location was very much as had been expected. For me. I did have a call from AMGL who thought I'd dispatched her to the Projects (Funny enough, from those links I can kinda see what she means). Everyone seemed to find it alright, which was a relief.

The food then. We started off with...

... a raw onion starter. No joke. I actually didn't mind it so much, despite my general dislike for anything raw onion. This was probably because it came with mushed up preserved plum (I think) and vinegar. I have never had anything even similar in Japan, or heard of anything similar.

Then there was some asparagus with a honey dressing.

I'm not sure how Japanese this actually is. It was perfectly fine though. I couldn't get a picture of the main, which was a broth of daikon, shitake mushroom, charlotte potatoes and fried tofu. It tasted reasonably authentic, though I've never seen charlotte potatoes in Japanese food before. The next course was okonomiyaki... sort of. There was preserved ginger in it, which I've never had in okonomiyaki before.


I went to speak to Horton while these were being made and it transpired that he's never been to Japan. To me, this made the entire scenario totally different. Apart from being exceptionally gutsy, it did make his efforts seem much more credible. How did he know if something tasted right or if it was hideously wrong, but in line with the imaginary idea of what it would taste like? I was several glasses of wine in by this time, and starting to give myself a headache. The next course was broccoli with tofu, which was nice.


At this point most of the diners had left. It was about eleven and there were four courses to go. The first of the last four courses was rice and miso. Ed and I table hopped for this one and ended up speaking to someone who had just come back from working at a ryokan. I decided not to share that with Horton since the pressure may have been too much. Especially since the rice didn't come out right.


Still, it was inspiring. It inspired me to make Japanese at my dinner party the Sunday after. I served
- croquette
- sashimi

- black cod and miso; butterfish teriyaki

- okonomiyaki with aubergine miso and garlic mushrooms

- beef sukiyaki


yay!