Ink, London E2 – restaurant review | Marina O’Loughlin

I first became aware of Ink when photographs of some extraordinary looking food found their way into my social media feeds. So extraordinary that I dismissed it with an airy, “It’ll never last.”

Yet here Ink still is, in a location so odd it requires serious orienteering. It’s at the base of an undulating cliff-face of new-build flats in Mile End, across a canal bridge, through the Millennium Park. It’s the least likely location for a restaurant of ambition since Nuno Mendes set up his Bacchus somewhere none of us had heard of called Hoxton.

I arrive at an empty, starkly white restaurant. There’s no decor, unless you count a couple of spindly, petrified trees. Neither chef (Martyn Meid, a slight, handsome, tattooed Lithuanian chap) nor waiter (let’s call him Lurch: he has the air of an off-duty bootcamp instructor) quite manages a cheery hello. When the pal finally finds the place, we remain alone for the duration of an evening punctuated only by throbbing house music and quite remarkable food.

Here’s one dish from the set five-course menu, keenly priced at £50 with two glasses of wine. Arranged in a painterly way on a white plate are shaved carrot, mi-cuit, peeled, deseeded tomato, mandolined radish, cauliflower florets in piccalilli spicing, beetroot, acerbic little whitecurrants (I think), and blobs of lime gel (I also think). New potatoes are hollowed out as if to embark on potato printing, surfaces darkened with char rather than pigment. The centrepiece is a rectangle of slow-cooked, pressed pork belly. Meid takes turns with Lurch to deliver the food. “The pork,” he intones, “is cooked for 16 hours in halibut juice.” Now, I’ve been doing this gig for a while, and very little surprises me. But that? That drops my jaw and boggles my eyes, the full Hanna Barbera. How do you juice a halibut? There’s no flavour of fish in the fine, treacly meat, and the whole thing is intriguing, thought-provoking, a conundrum to be parsed.

Meid takes his calling very seriously. Each dish is served reverentially; we worship at the altar of pea panna cotta, crowned with thin rye bread, a garland of foetal peas, pickled daikon and jewels of keta. This totally works, the peas’ fresh sweetness versus the slightly bitter nuttiness of the bread, the salmon caviar bursting like salty little bubbles. It’s a bewitching, upside-down, savoury cheesecake.

“Tapioc!” booms Lurch, “and all the cucumber, even the bits other people throw away.” The vegetable comes pickled, fermented, salted and raw, frozen, teased and tortured. The “tapioc” – a huge, non-fishy prawn cracker – hides a sliver of velvety herring and is dotted with purplish flowers I don’t recognise. What are these? Lurch indicates the canal: “From out there.” The pal has come across them when walking her dog (leading us to muse unhappily on dog wee): it’s willowherb, a wild plant with “hypnotic” qualities.

Can Meid cut it? As a chef, yes, he’s genuinely gifted. His food is more delicious than the surroundings may lead you to expect. Presentation is exquisite, as though his dishes have grown organically – the creep of ice crystals or slow unbudding of petals. But as a restaurateur? Hmmm. The peculiarities keep coming: we’re not offered a wine list; requests for a slice of lemon with a G&T are grudgingly met. The tonic might be a recherché Nordic tincture brewed in house, but it tastes like flat slimline.

At the end, we’re interrogated: “Which was your favourite dish? Which was your least favourite?” I get that this is Meid’s vision, but it’s a monomaniacal, tunnel kind of vision. Some clever entrepreneur should scoop him up and install him in a hi-tech kitchen where he can concentrate on the culinary whizz-bangery, while someone else attends to that tricky ol’ hospitality.

I ask the pal if she can remember dessert: it seems to have instantly slipped from my consciousness. (I can’t even blame the booze: the meal comes with just two glasses – Umbrele, a Romanian sauvignon blanc, and Nostros, a Chilean pinot noir). She’s at a loss: “The whole thing seems like a weird dream or Twilight Zone experience.” Perhaps it’s down to that willowherb.

Outside, we trudge past what appears to be a mummified woman straddling a balcony opposite. Curiouser and curiouser. I wonder, if I turn to look back, will Ink even still be there?

Ink Suttons Wharf South, 44 Palmers Road, London E2, 020-8983 6634. Open Tues-Fri 6-11pm, Sat & Sun noon-11pm (9pm Sun). Five-course tasting menu £50 with two glasses of wine; seven-course menu by arrangement.

Food 8/10
Atmosphere 1/10 (for the trees)
Value for money 7/10