hedone

the story behind hedone is a rare one, if not completely unique. swedish-born mikael jonsson pursued his “borderline obsession” for ingredients of the highest quality by training as a chef in his early years. but his severe allergies to a variety of food put on hold any dreams of opening his ownrestaurantand instead, he forged a career as a lawyer.

during this time, jonsson authored a food blog, gastroville.com (now closed), demonstrating great understanding and in-depth analysis of food, whilst also advising chefs and restaurateurs where to find the best ingredients. at the age of 44, he discovered a paleolithic diet which did not aggravate his allergies, and was finally able to make the transition from food critic and blogger to restaurateur. it was the first time the self-taught chef had worked in a commercial kitchen and after just one year, it received a coveted michelin star.

jonsson’s brazen confidence to dare even hope for success as an amateur chef in a city that was just starting to then (hedone opened in 2011) - and is, still now - reeling from a culinary big bang, is enough to draw the curious alone. add to this almost instant recognition and his unfiltered passion for ingredients (but minus the somewhat awkward chiswick location), and you’re left with an offering that is difficult to ignore.

the menus at hedone are as fluid as the red the young sommelier poured into our glasses; based on the finest ingredients the kitchen is able to land, they can change from lunch to dinner, and even during service. because of this, there is no insight into what you might eat there on the website. the intention is to waste little and serve the very best - you see the menu for that service once you’re seated. i’ve always been drawn to arestaurantwith the confidence to say ‘get settled, let us pour you some wine, and trust us to feed you well’.

presentation was sophisticated yet playful with contrasts of colour that hinted towards a fun kitchen; the baby-pink of the beetroot and rhubarb against a wide matt-black bowl rim, the azure background to the limpid green apple sauce on a parfait, the grey-blue macaron with vibrant green filling.

a delicate (in both form and flavour) crimson beetroot cornetto with foam-of-root piped on top of a little smoked eel was a down-in-one affair. delivered in a wooden box and supported by wild rice which filled it, we were tersely advised by the maitre’d - as i was taking a photo - that it needed to be eaten quickly. i understand the irritance of us bloody bloggers taking pictures of everything at the detriment of a dish that is going cold / melting / coagulating in the meantime, but please don’t dictate to me when to eat. i’m paying for this meal and i’ll enjoy it how i want (as long as it’s not hanging from a chandelier).

that small niggle aside, the rest of the dining experience was a series of small thrills. special mention to the gentleman with the glasses and silvering hair who i think was head waiter - he had a twinkle in his eye and a wonderful grin and made us laugh a good few times.

a savoury custard umami flan certainly had hints of japan about it, with a clear bread consommé and crunchy nuggets of bread crumb, the pairing of smooth and savoury on the tongue was very complimentary.

the yolk of a duck egg, slow-poached in a sous vide, was served at the precise moment before setting takes place; a sublime physical state of buttery viscosity. the whites whipped up into a ‘cream of’, firm almost crunchy peas, and a flourish of red pepper reduction. two cuts from a roasted guinea-fowl had tough exteriors, but pleasantly so, lubricated by a thick sauce (not a jus), with chard leaf separate from stem, and the newest of jersey royals - an entirely unfussed but well-executed plate.

and there was the bread, of which i’ve heard much about. mikael honed his bread-making skills whilst training at alex croquet boulangerie in wattignies, france - a school whose teacher is described as a ‘genius’ by michelin. mikael makes the batches each morning, some of which make their way to antidote. using the almost scientific techniques learnt from croquet, the result is a glorious chewy and full-flavoured crust to work the jaw, an open crumb, with smooth reflective qualities around the curves of the air gaps. it’s really very good, and served with unpasteurised butter and a little salt, is a dictionary definition of what simple pleasures should be.

both desserts were our favourite courses. the hazelnut and caramel parfait with kimono silk-thin wafers, tiny cubes of sharp apple with globules of its sauce was as well put together in its presentation as in its flavour combination. all things pink made up the second offering - rose, beetroot and rhubarb to form a floating island of sorbet atop a pearly and soft meringue base. really well balanced, although the rose was undetectable. probably a good thing as i’m not a great fan of floral smelling food.

a single additional cheese course we wished to share between two (£14.50) was helpfully split across plates - five unpasteurised, gloriously funky and generous offerings of wonderful claquebitou, tomme brulée, chablis, farmhouse camembert, and fourme d'ambert with extra slices of raisin bread at our request. a bonbon mound filled with liquid mango and a sesame macaron with a tangy lime and green tea filling rounded the meal off.

the double-fronted interiors give the impression of entering somewhere quite special, exclusive even. the threshold is marked by a heavy curtain once through the door, and windows are frosted to obscure the view out or in. if the intention is for clientèle to forget they’re on chiswick high street, it’s quite effective. once you’ve left, you’re on your own - back through that heavy material and onto an overwhelmingly ordinary high-street, a contrast from what was just experienced.

i do feel we missed out not sitting at the bar of the open kitchen. if it wasn’t for the impish head waiter, the place could have felt a little cold compared to other michelin restaurants. had i been able to converse with mikael himself, i expect i would have been directly privy to his - what is on paper - unquestionable passion. it also feels like the sort of place that needs more than one visit to draw an informed conclusion, with the expectation that each meal will be so different to the one before. the three-course lunch deal is a steal at £35 - i plan to return for it and do just that.

liked lots: bread, umami flan, interiors, head waiter, lunch-menu value, desserts
liked less: out-of-the-way location; being told what to do when i'm eating
good for: seasonal eating of the very best produce; surprise menus; counter-seating to observe the kitchen

my rating: 4/5

if someone asked you where your favouriterestaurantof 2015 is, would you be able to come up with a quick answer? how would you judge it? for me, there are 2 tests. the first is where i would most like to spend my hard earned cash for a reliably great meal. the second is where i’ve taken most friends to eat this year. in my case, both answers are quick and easy – hedone in chiswick

there are some (such as chef, james close of the raby hunt) who believe that hedone is the finestrestaurantin the country right now. judging it from the lunch we had last weekend, it would be hard to disagree. interestingly it's arestaurantvery popular with the native spanish people that i follow on twitter. the obsession that chef mikael jonsson apparently has in sourcing the very best products is something that very much appeals to them. us too. we've never eaten better bread, or scallops. the scallop and truffle dish is seriously good. all the food is utterly sublime here, but i must also mention front of house. we've been to places in london where the service is efficient yet cold, not so here. aurelie, foh manager and nicolas the sommelier were also such a huge part in one of the most enjoyable lunches we've ever had anywhere. hedone is an exceptional restaurant.

i have to admit that one week later , i`m still thinking about this meal every day and it will be the firstrestauranti eat in the very next time i visit london , i`m very impressed. chef mikael is right up my street…he`s ultra passionate about what he does.his love of cuisine has surpassed all levels of ocd and this guy lives and breathes his craft. it was an absolute pleasure to sit down and enjoy our own little trip into the world of mikael jonsson and feel just a little bit of the magic that`s going on inside this guys head. mikael

to make great food, start with great ingredients. this may seem self-evident, yet it is something which seems to elude many high-end london restaurants, and why i head off to the continent if i want to eat really top of the range food. hedone is interesting in that its chef and owner, michael jonsson, is an ingredients expert rather than a chef by background. after training as a chef many years ago in sweden he switched career and became a lawyer, but always with a passionate interest in food. the gastroville blog that he writes is influential, and he has advised some michelin starred restaurants in europe on ingredient sourcing. 

now he has switched to the other side of the counter and is behind the stoves of his first restaurant, in modest premises at the unfashionable end of the chiswick high road that were previously a lebanese nightclub. michael spent over a year travelling the uk searching out artisan suppliers, from producers of flour to unpasteurised butter to shellfish, and supplements the best british ingredients he can find with produce from europe where necessary. the menu, which has no a la carte option, changes on a weekly basis, and often is adjusted daily in the light of what ingredients are best that day, a similar approach to that taken by astrance in paris. a ten course tasting menu is currently available at £70, four courses at £50. a three course lunch is £35 on thursday through saturdays. for the ultimate experience the carte blanche tasting menu at £95 uses the very finest produce that the kitchen can obtain. given the high quality of the ingredients here this is actually good value - this price would not buy you a starter in some top paris restaurants, where similar and in a few cases identical ingredients are being used.

the dining room has exposed brick walls and an open kitchen, with a few seats at a bar looking into the kitchen in addition to the main dining area, and has carefully thought-out lighting illuminating the tables well. there is a downstairs with a private dining room, and this houses the wine cellar. the wine list had around 200 choices, with a lot of french wines but also selections from elsewhere, at fair mark-ups by london standards. example wines include crawford river riesling young vines 2009 at £39 for wine that will set you back £27 in the shops, the lovely ata rangi pinot noir 2008 at £70 for a wine that retails at £34, up to javillier corton-charlemagne 2007 at £179 for a wine that costs around £70 in the shops.   

i have now eaten 54 meals at hedone, and have not recorded every dish of every meal, though there is now an extensive photo gallery. what distinguishes hedone is the relentless focus on the highest quality ingredients. an example of this is the beef, supplied by darragh o’shea, probably the best butcher in london at the moment. the chef spends time at the butcher selecting just a few of the choicest cuts of beef with a high degree of marbling and has them individually aged to order. the beef that is served in therestauranthas been aged from between 55 and 80 days, and has the kind of texture that you encounter in japan.

another example is the bread, where the chef spent training time with perhaps the finest baker in france, alex croquet, in order to perfect his technique. now produced in specialist bread ovens, the sourdough, white and other loaves produced have now reached the stage where they are as good as you will find anywhere. mr croquet himself acknowledged that the bread is of a similar standard to his own. this is bread that any three star michelinrestaurantwould be pleased to serve. there are many further examples of the degree of effort made here: the puff pastry is made from scratch and not bought, and one particularly good sauce that i tried took the kitchen three days to make, incorporating four separate stages. i could go on, but suffice it to say that this is serious cooking using serious ingredients. the style is deceptively simple with few garnishes, the idea being to let the ingredients speak for themselves. 

it is now over two years since hedone opened. the meal i had today reflected continuity in the sense that the chef’s obsession with top-class ingredients continues unabated, and also development in that the dishes have become more polished since the opening. this is partly because, since gaining its michelin star, therestauranthas been able to attract more experienced staff.

ingredient quality could be seen in the stunning sea bass at the meal today, whose flavour was quite remarkable, flawlessly cooked; as good a piece of sea bass as i have eaten. another example was the peas served with the pigeon. the peas came from italy and were of exceptional quality, carefully selected pod by pod to be the very sweetest, up there with the best that can be found in the lovely markets of the mediterranean. no kitchen in london today pays quite such attention to ingredient quality as hedone.

the technical skill can be seen in the ever-improving bread and the lovely chocolate dessert: chocolate ganache topped with a chocolate disk topped with raspberry powder, with passion fruit and also vanilla ice cream. the sweetness of the chocolate and vanilla had the acidity of the passion fruit and the raspberry as balance, the textures of each element exactly as they should be: a really accomplished dessert. the cooking continues to develop here, and over the dozens of meals that i have eaten here it has been fascinating to watch the progression, the dishes getting steadily better and better.

----- 03 may, 2013 -----

the 2011 opening of hedone was a significant event for the london food scene. the chef/owner, mikael jonsson, was a respected food blogger and ingredients expert, who then turned chef. he brought his vast knowledge of high quality ingredients to hedone, serving produce of a quality rarely, if ever, seen in london. for example he uses london's top butcher (o'sheas), selects from the top 1% of beef that they have, then ages each piece of meat specifically based on its condition. scallops served as sashimi can be seen still moving on the counter of the open kitchen. the bread he makes is of a standard rarely seen in 3 star michelin restaurants.

even at the beginning it was clear this was going to be a special restaurant, but since it gained its first michelin star the quality bar has raised even higher. in april 2013 it was one of only seven uk restaurants listed in the san pellegrino "top 100", a remarkable coup for such a new restaurant.

not good. i ate here last night and i'll be honest. it was not good.

after we arrived and were seated the waiter explained that their menu worked a bit differently and we could choose to have four, five or seven courses. we thought we'd take the middle option of five. he then asked us to choose two starters and two main courses.

on perusing the menu and wine list i noted that it was an extremely pricey establishment. chiswick has a michelin starred restaurant, la trompette and hedone was considerably pricier than its esteemed neighbour.

presently another waiter appeared and asked us to choose three starters and one main course. as this was different to the instruction of the first waiter we sought a third opinion and it transpired that the second waiter was correct. there was a problem though, as my vegetarian friend noted - there was only one vegetarian dish on the menu.

when he pointed this out and asked if they did a vegetarian menu, utter panic set in. seemingly they have never had a vegetarian visit them before. after much head scratching from the waiter, the chef arrived at our table and said they could do it so we all ordered our food and waited.

and waited.

presently an amuse bouche turned up. it appeared to be a little pot of rancid gravy. it couldn't be though so i tried it. no, it really was a pot of rancid gravy. it was (at that stage of the evening), the worst thing i had ever put in my mouth. the vegetarian in our group got a little pot of mashed potato. a slightly odd choice by the chef but it looked a lot more appetising than what i'd been given. the smell of mine alone was reminiscent of the drains in hong kong at the height of the summer. i decided that one spoonful was enough.

after about 40 minutes the first course arrived. i had ordered oysters. they were dry and tasteless like they had been shucked that morning and left open all day. worse still they were smothered in a sort of sauce that seemed to have come out of the next door newsagent's slush puppy machine. truly grim.

the vegetarian was having asparagus, (the one vegetarian option that had been on the menu). this was the only dish of the night that wasn't ridiculously over-engineered and although the sauce that came with it was bland (not sure what it was meant to be, a mousseline perhaps), the asparagus itself was fresh, flavourful and cooked well.

another guest had a duck egg. to be honest it looked more like a tramp egg and from his reaction when he tried it, it tasted more like one too. the egg was overcooked to the point that the yolk was completely solid and it was covered in a sauce that i would guess was made by mixing ketchup and brown sauce and then reducing it with a couple of spoons of the aforementioned rancid gravy to ensure it could not be ordered by any vegetarian unlucky enough to wander into their restaurant.

the next round of starters arrived a further 30 minutes later and a second plate of asparagus was placed in front of the vegetarian. he pointed out he had just had one of those at which point the chef came out of the kitchen and started shouting across therestaurantat the waiter who had delivered it. the chef then produced a revised vegetarian plate which was a tablespoon of wilted spinach and and a teaspoon of carrot purée.

at this point i lost the ability to be cross and started to actually laugh at the place. the abysmal service, the utter crisis caused by the arrival of a vegetarian, food which would make a dog cry, a chef who shouts at his waiters across therestaurantand who thinks fine dining vegetarian style is a blob of wilted spinach - it was just too funny.

while this was unfolding next to me i received lobster with pomegranate (£5 supplement). the pomegranate sauce was essentially a much sweeter version of jam and it managed to simultaneously clash with and totally overpower the lobster. the latter effect would normally be unwelcome but in this case it was a bit of a godsend because the lobster tasted like it had been defrosted a fortnight earlier and stored in a warm, oxygenated place for accelerated putrification, it's fishy aftertaste accompanying me all the way home.

and home is where i went next. i didn't bother waiting for my main course or dessert. it had taken well over two hours to get to this point and there was no way i was going to wait another two to get more of the same.

so if you are ever in chiswick and want a posh meal out, go to le vacherin or la trompette, which are both great.

on the other hand if you are ever in chiswick and want an excellent comedy night out, go to hedone, grab a seat at the bar and watch a real life episode of fawlty towers acted out right before your eyes.

the beginning of october brought not only a distinct autumnal chill, but several highly anticipated dates in the ukrestaurantcalendar including this year's release of hallowed michelin stars, the nationalrestaurantawards, as well as several "best of" lists from respected publications such as timeout and ofm. many that fared well - the ledbury , pollen street social , roganic , dinner by heston - though deserved, weren't much of a surprise. far more interesting i thought were the ones to watch, like new kid on the block hedone , crowned nra's most promising opening of the year. brainchild of ex-blogger mikael jonsson, the chiswick neighbourhood eatery with a nordic sensibility (a nod to the chef patron's swedish roots) takes sourcing to another level. the focus is on the ingredients - stripping dishes down to emphasise the purity of their natural flavours. a light flaky amuse of cep tart, slightly bland on first bite, became wonderfully woodsy after a scant sprinkle of sea salt pilf