With our ever-expanding boredom of the norm comes the challenge to public spaces to come up with something new. Opening as a business now demands more than mere high standards, we want our attention to be grabbed, held and thoroughly rejuvenated. New east end restaurant and bar Mason and Taylor sets to seduce us with an industrial chic, a menu of British bent tapas and what is an admittedly impressive list of beers and ales.
This venue was conceived by the minds behind Dalston’s Duke of Wellington. They state that rather than tapas, this is in fact a unique menu based on an ethos of sharing. However, with the collections of small portions, and the wine served in carafes, it is hard to ignore the debt to Spain. But this is no bad thing, and British flavors turn out to lend themselves well to the diversity of tapas-style serving.
The selection of beers is something to get excited about. Their menu boasts roughly fifty different choices, divided broadly on colour from pale, to amber, to black. There is also a great choice of fruit beers. The ‘exotic’ Mongozo Mango beer is amazing; a spicy malt beer blended with mangos. The Boon Kriek is also pretty damn good, probably something to do with having been matured in oak barrels for two years accompanied by two hundred grams of cherries per litre. There is also a section that calls itself ‘oddities’, including the blends ‘Ginger Marble’, ‘Kenal Coffee’ and ‘Timmerman’s Geuze’. The bar aims to have 12 craft beers and real ales on tap, as well as the plethora of bottles.
They have the usual spectrum of wines with the top end ecstatically smooth and rich, but the syrah house red fairly mediocre.
If you go, go for the beers. The food is good, but has more of a business meeting snack feel to it than dinner out with loved ones. It’s meticulously arranged, and the flavors are all substantial, but it just lacks that certain sparkle to get the pulse racing.
The glazed parsnip side is where the pleasures of mastication peak with the parsnips thin, sweet and peppery. The green beans that accompany them though are really just green beans, and in the trendy and moneyed east end, they cry out for a bit of something extra.
The scotch quails eggs with sauce gribiche are a little disappointing. Although they have been carefully soft boiled, these are no plover’s eggs and for the price, they might have been a little more unique. The flavor of the Smokie is great; the tiny bones are not so great. And the cured loin of venison, Cumberland sauce and redcurrants had more of a beef jerky or Biltong feel to it than the succulence of English game. However, the pickled ox tongue, blackberries, hazelnuts and rosemary oil has an authentic feel (it actually looks like an ox tongue) and it is surprisingly soft with a melting texture, delicious with the jelly.
Coming round to deserts, the Eton mess is quite overwhelmingly creamy and demands to be eaten fast. The chocolate pudding was sadly not the plate of chocolate for two advertised, but it was warm and gooey and it would be hard to complain about.
The British feel to the food at Mason and Taylor is authentic, down to bones and the suckers on the ox tongue. What stands out is that for the competitive area and the price, the experience is a little underwhelming. If you came across this restaurant in the suburbs, it would be a real achievement, but for dining out in the centre, there could be more to grab one’s attention. And the unisex toilets leave much to be desired.
