Amethyst review: a tasting menu that circumnavigates the world

In fact, his touch is immediately apparent in the next stop on our global odyssey – a dish that can only be described as an amalgam, which brings together the diced scallops with cured duck, caviar and muscat grape. An unashamedly unexpected coupling, and one that also looks like something that you might find at the bottom of the ocean. But the result is entirely triumphant.

Another whimsical compound dish follows, which pitches a scoop of foie gras, spooned like ice cream, up against a beautiful wedge of bright scarlet salmon, topped with pieces of yuzu that have been shaped into delicate snowflakes. This is Amethyst’s signature dish, and it is clear that a lot of love and attention has been poured into it.

Amethyst’s signature dish foie gras and salmon

Lateef Photography

Lick-the-plate-clean stuff

Bread wouldn’t usually rate a mention in a whistle-stop review aiming to pick out the highlights of an expansive tasting menu, but the next course definitely makes that list. Scotto serves up a delicious fresh Egyptian mahlab bread, and places it as an adjunct to a puddle of colours; ochre, mauve and jet black – a combination of squash, pickled walnuts and smoked fig leaf oil. It is lick-the-plate-clean stuff, and fortunately, that is what the bread is for – to swirl around the dish, which my dining partner and I do so fastidiously that I’m not sure the plate would have looked like it needed to be washed when it was returned to the kitchen.

For all his mastery of the world he discovered through his own travels, the next dish speaks unambiguously of Scotto’s origins: cavatelli (a rolled pasta shell) in sun-dried tomatoes and sweet paprika. It is one of those quintessential Italian dishes, composed of simple ingredients that have been respected utterly and prepared painstakingly so as to convey their essence. It is tomato pasta, really, but from another planet of excellence.

Other ingenious creations follow: black cod served in a bowl that is dark as its contents. A superlative pigeon breast with beetroot, plum and damson. And then to end, two fruit-centric desserts: pear paired with liquorice, and then one final heave to take us over the finish line, a ripe fig that liquefies into a pool of white chocolate. 

Carlo Scotto

Collision of cuisines 

It all adds up, quite frankly, to the redemption of fusion cuisine itself. And also helps to highlight what we already know: that there should be no hard and fast rules in cooking really. Rather with careful consideration, not to mention great precision, almost any collision of cuisines can work. 

And perhaps what Scotto is telling us, without ever saying it out loud, is that none of us are as distinct as we might sometimes think. An admirable and timely sentiment at a moment when so many forces seem determined to push us all apart.

Amethyst, 6 Sackville Street, London, W1S 3DD; amethystdining.com

Article source: https://www.theweek.co.uk/arts-life/food-drink/958441/amethyst-restaurant-review-london-carlo-scotto