I can’t remember the last time I got served bread at a restaurant that was anything as simple as just “bread and butter”. Consider the toasted brioche-like Hokkaido milk bread at Osteria Angelina in Shoreditch, served with burnt honey and miso butter and rhubarb jam spiked with yuzu kosho. Or the acorn bread at Honeysuckle in Philadelphia, paired with a whipped brie butter and fragrant Haitian grapefruit and clove preserve. Or the day-old seaweed sourdough at Perilla on Newington Green, soaked in a moules marinière cooking liquor of white wine, shallots, garlic and cream, topped with chopped mussels and finished with steak tartare.
Hokkaido milk bread at Osteria Angelina in Spitalfields, London © Jodi Hinds
Acorn bread at Honeysuckle in Philadelphia © Haamza Edwards
The role of bread to satiate guests and mop up sauces has not changed, but the bread basket has graduated from supporting act to main event. “Bread is the handshake of a restaurant and the first promise you make to a guest,” says Nathaniel Mortley of 2210 by NattyCanCook in south London. His Caribbean-style roti is brushed with garlic, thyme and Scotch bonnet-infused brown butter and finished with pimento, lime zest and salt. “It’s about honouring Caribbean foodways,” he says, and signalling the “soulful, precise, rooted” culinary experience that guests are about to have.
