texture

Last night diner was amazing, fresh simple and tasty. 8/10. ordered Gravlax as a starter   Icelandic cod as a main, perfectly cooked nice presentation! I did not expect to get so fresh meal. Recommend to anyone who likes nordic simplicity and modern cooking.I will definitely go back there again!

Texture is cool and hype place, elegant bar, classy decor, intimate and inviter.Great cocktails and other drinks,

They have a nice private room where you can seat perhaps up to 20 people.

Really good food, some splendid accurate flavouring, very careful composition and immaculate presentation.

Some really unusual wines, and excellent with it. The more expensive wines are not supposed to be marked up pro rata so are better value. As a previous reviewer mentioned, staff very good and professional, and on my most recent visit charming and attentive

Lunch is very cost effective. I will go again, it was that good. Sadly the usual +12.5% service, now ubiquitous in London.

And I have been again, and it was if anything better than I remembered!

And again!

This place is scrumdiddlydumptious! Doesn't look like much from the outside, so over the last few years since it opened i have walked past and not really though much about it. Finally went in and boy am i glad. We thought we would have a little tipple prior to eating (it is a champagne bar AND restaurant after all) the bar area is quite small, but cute, with a weird mixture of people. And tables with an ice bucket in the middle - pure heaven - I have to have one in my house, who needs to keep visiting the fridge when you can have ice on tap in front of you, heck these should be compulsory post 2010 on all coffee tables in production. Anyway, back to the food, we were served bacon popcorn (worked well for all the salty popcorn lovers out there) and a selction of crisps, well sliced bread, parmesan and seaweed and dip.

I opted for beetroot and goats cheese for starters, followed by the chicken for main, and my was it yummy! served with an egg, bacon and a yummy lemongrass sauce, and after speaking to the maitre'd learnt that the food is cooked by sous-vide, a kind of vacuum packing to help intensify and keep flavours. Dessert I opted for strawberries complemented with a delicious 'soup' and granola and yoghurt, tasted like a very gorgeous breakfast.

The chef is iclandic and aims to create healthy food, by avoiding cream and butter in the food, but my it was still so tasty. The surroundings were ecclectic. Think big white room with twigs and sand and big candles, complemented with huge paintings of volcano erruptions. Loved everything here, down to the iclandic plates on the tables! Will most certainly be returning!

I went here to celebrate a promotion and decided to go for the tasting menu.

First off, the interior is very nice, I think some people could be a bit intimidated and feel they really need to dress up but in fact it is a quite relaxed, just don't show up in torn jeans and trainers and you'll be fine!

The starter was not very impressive, I can't say that I liked it that much, a beetroot dish, but from there on the menu got better with each dish. The beetroots were followed by a very nice soup and then the fowl served with sweet corn and popcorn. It sounds strange (it was actually supposed to be bacon popcorn but I couldn't really tell) but the texture combination was really interesting and very nice, especially the sauce. The best part of the tasting menu though was the dessert which was divine, I would go just to have this again.

In short, recommended for a special occasion and to try their quite original dishes but not somewhere I would go just to have a good meal out.

With the volcanic ash cloud causing disruption around the world it was apt that we should come to a restaurant with the first Icelandic recipient of a Michelin Star, Agnar Sverrisson. He teamed up with Sommelier Xavier Rousset in September 2007 to launch this place and they seem to have a good thing going.

I was invited to a canape and Champagne evening so we were only in the front bar, the atmosphere was quiet but pleasant and the ice buckets in the centre of the tables was an inspired idea.

Our Canape selection included Suckling Pig Spring Rolls with Hoi Sin Sauce and a selection of crisps, parmesan, codskin and crispy bread.
The food was tasty, I favoured the spring rolls and the salmon but it was all interesting and with a slightly unusual edge you might expect from a kitchen with an Icelandic influence.
It would be extremely interesting to go back and see what the main courses are like but I’m not sure I entirely feel I have a grasp of the place from this selection.
I also appreciate it is usually quite pricey but this was complimentary

Visited Texture last week along with 2 friends and we each tried the main tasting menu with accompanying wines.

The food was extremely good - as we'd expect from a restaurant recently awarded its first Michelin star.

Memorable dishes included Icelandic poached halibut with a light foam, celeriac and Jerusalem artichoke textures, beef rib eye chargrilled, ox cheek, horseradish, olive oil béarnaise, chargrilled Anjou Pigeon with sweetcorn, shallots and red wine reduction/essence and all sorts of little subtle surprises along the way, with delicate flavours and spices.

Chef, Agnar Sverrisson came and had a chat with us after the meal and the staff were all very friendly, professional and attentive. In fact, we stayed on and chatted for a long time and the staff were very kind in not asking us to leave!

We didn't meet the Sommelier Xavier Rousset, although I think he served me earlier on at the bar - an excellent bar BTW! But, we did enjoy his fine choice of wines each of which perfectly accompanied the meal.

One of the things I enjoyed most about dining at Texture is that I came away feeling content but not bloated. This may be in part to the chef's approach which is vacuum cooking combined with very light and healthy ingredients - not too much cream and sugar - this in no way takes away from the taste.

I highly recommend this restaurant.

Texture is certainly a little pretentious, but please don’t let that put you off! The trick with this restaurant, I feel, is to think of it as an experience or an adventure, rather than simply a place to eat food.

Although the atmosphere is a little imposing, the wating staff (of which there seem to be far too many), are actually very friendly and helpful, if a little humourless.

My 2 companions and i all chose the set menu, which I think was about £65 per head, and I would reccomend this to other diners too. Although 3 dishes are listed on the menu, Texture delivers a variety of interesting, slightly outlandish but always tasty food experiences between each course, which staff describe for you in some detail since it’s not possible to tell what you are eating or drinking by looking at it or tasting it.

I really enjoyed this aspect of my meal at Texture. It turned a meal into an adventure, and that was very pleasant.

But of course, most important is the food - and this was all very good indeed. It was all well cooked, and although it was all unusual, often in texture as well as taste, I found that this was part of the enjoyment of it. Foam does feature, but not heavily and where it appears, it feels appropriate.

The only slight drawback to Texture is that the wine ‘list’ is more like an encyclopedia - it really is several inches thick. And as the wine starts at around £30 per bottle and goes up to several hundred pounds, you want a wine list you can skim for an affordable but drinkable bottle, which isn’t possible with a wine list this long. That said, once we had chosen a (very nice) bottle of white for around £40, the sommelier did a very good job of making it last for exactly as long as the meal did.

I like Texture - and next time I need a special occasion to mark with a special (and relatively well off) friend, I shall return.

I’d reccommend anyone try Texture once….

I’ve only been to the bar and not the restaurant and the atmosphere and setting is a fair bit more upmarket then I’m use to. The entrance is understated and easy to miss (we walked past twice!). The bar area (which is separate from the restaurant) is simply but elegantly decorated but quite small (probably wouldn’t comfortably fit more than 25 people). The cocktails are very nice though, premium ingredients were used and this was reflected in the price. It’s called a champagne bar but the drinks list is not limited to just champagne. If you’ve got some cash to spend and you’re looking for somewhere chic, intimate and impressive (in a grown up way), Texture would be a good choice.