January 2022 - Food

Where To Eat This Month: Sea Garden & Grill

Got a seafood-hater in your life? Take them to Sea Garden. Not just because, in spite of the name, it goes beyond dispensing the fruits of the sea. But because the seafood is excellent, and is all served in small portions, which means you (they) can order plenty and push past your (their) comfort zone. Death to comfort, I say.

The style is ‘pimped classics’. Like a small plate of oversized fish goujons, where the dark golden batter (made with brown ale, cooked in beef dripping) was a crisp overcoat for succulent hake over a creamy, caper-studded, Pernod-laced tartar sauce. Before being prettily strewn with strands of firm samphire and frilly chervil. So good. Or a bowl of fat, juicy, stonkingly fresh mussels with a garlicky cider cream sauce, freckled with stubby lardons.

The star of the night – and I’ll say this as someone who’s picky about pud – was a dessert of raw, organic, honey panna cotta. It had shards and blobs: a piece of honeycomb here, a sliver of charred orange there. Small beads of orange jelly. And a shot of homemade yuzu orange liquor alongside. Maybe I’m just a sucker for a shot.

All of this would be impressive in central London, in a more traditional setting. The fact that it’s being delivered out of a tiny kitchen in the corner of Tooting’s lovably scruffy Broadway Market is all the more impressive. Staff – including ebullient co-owner Jimmy Luttman, who used to be a fitter of antique fireplaces – are laid back and hugely friendly.