Choco Matte offers Nikkei cuisine, which embraces the best of Japanese - Peruvian cuisine, a marriage that we are getting very familiar with these days in the London food scene. The building in Frith Street, in the heart of Soho, has gone through a severe and expensive refurbishment with a post-industrial grunge chic with exposed suction pipes and colorful asian graffitis on the walls, a very cool place to eat, drink celebrate and being seen.
This is a very well run smooth operation, we were invited to have drinks in the downstairs bar, with a good view of the comings and goings on Frith Street, I’m sure these tables are going to be impossible to get in the summer. The drink list shows the efforts that a mixologist has gone to, to create a very enticing selection of cocktails with tongue in cheek names, we chose ours from the anti-depressants category, we needed those combinations of pisco and sake with lime, to let us to forget the grey and windy day outside.
The sexy upstairs dinning room was packed with a glamorous crowd. French and European foodies that were having a ball enjoying the visually impressive food surrounded us; it did have a feeling of being on holidays.
We let Andre the waiter to choose the food for us and to keep the element of surprise during the evening. We started with a miso soup, as we were preparing our palate for the journey ahead.
We had bento box, ideal for someone like me who likes to try a bit of everything, the yellow tail sashimi with jalapenos, coriander, was a real show opener, it came along with a delicious and surprising yuzu truffle soy. Seabass ceviche was as good as the ones made by Gaston Acurio or even better, the gambas salvajes a generous serving of tiger prawns in tempura, served with a ponzu sauce (citrus-based) and huacatay (the Peruvian mint) had the complexity of flavors as the description.
We couldn’t miss anything from the grill too, the octopus, and purple potato, were slightly chewy, but the flavours and the taste of the antichucho sauce was delicious. The same goes for the chicken with aji amarilo mayo, but by the time we reached the sushi, my brain started lighting up the gluttony alarms, but we couldn’t finish without trying the passion fruit brulee with aji Amarillo and guava sorbet.
Before we left we were already planning our next visit. Overall we love the deco, the people, the atmosphere the whole general vibe of the place, I was not expecting anything less, from pedigree that the owners have. Once again this proves my theory that you need to be passionate about your food and not only Peruvians can bring their flavours to London.
Chotto Matte was winner of this year's Latin UK Awards for Peruvian Restaurant of the Year
11 - 13 Frith Street, London W1D 4RB, United Kingdom
+44 20 7042 7171
