Dining Out 010: Dinner for One Hundred at Chet's
Lunch in Shepherd's Bush.
I know everyone is different, but for me there really is no comfort food like pizza.
Some people seek the greasy bosom of a chippy tea when they’re sad or tired or they just can’t be arsed to root through the cupboards; some people want a steaming bowl of dumplings and soup. For me, though, when I am feeling depleted, there is nothing like the thrill of having a personal disc of bread, cheese and tomato placed down in front of me, whether that’s at a restaurant, or at home via a takeaway (and honestly, please, just put yourself there for a second, in the almost divine moment just before you open the box, when you are holding it on your lap and you can feel its heat and smell the dough and the mozzarella, and tell me it is not a sensory overload among the best on earth).
I love the simplicity, and the way it’s not simple at all, but actually very complex, when it comes to really getting it right. I love the way it always hits, whether you are hungover or heartbroken. I even love the heavy, sleepy, satisfied feeling you get in your stomach when you have housed the whole thing in about five minutes. I just love pizza.
So last week, when I felt like I’d been shot out of a canon from New York to London, jetlagged as a motherfucker, with a metric shit-ton of washing to vanquish post-trip, I opened Instagram to find that the patron saint of DMs had smiled on me. There waiting for me was a message from the good people at Dinner for One Hundred, inviting me to an event they were doing at, and in collaboration with, Chet’s, a Thai-Americana restaurant located at The Hoxton’s Shepherd’s Bush location. Dinner for One Hundred – a pizza business across three spots, including Bar D4100, a full-service bar-restaurant in Nunhead – meant pizza, and pizza meant salvation, or at least a few hours when I didn’t have to think about doing laundry. It was an automatic “yes” from me.
The event was to be one of a couple that Chet’s are running over the course of the (so-called) early summer. The concept of the “Chet’s and Friends Kerbside Pizza Parties,” to give them their Christian name, is basically that pizza chefs from across London are given the task of coming up with a couple of “pies” [person who has recently been to America voice] inspired by the flavours on the Chet’s menu. The chefs then cook and serve said pizzas on The Hoxton’s kerbside terrace, which is very cute indeed. This coming weekend, on Saturday 8th June, it’ll be the turn of the pizzaioli from Vincenzo’s in Bushey, which, inevitably, will also be very good.
Now don’t get me wrong. I would be the first to say that restaurant collab culture in London often has the whiff of the faintly ridiculous about it. Someone is always “collabing” with someone else, X chef always cooking Y menu at Z wine bar or whatever (spoiler alert: it’s always anchovies, rhubarb, and chicken liver parfait on “toasts” though of course never just “toast”). It can just all feel a bit on the all-boysies-together Service Works side of London’s restaurant world, if you know what I mean.
Ultimately, though, I’ve been thinking about it more over the last week, and I have concluded that the urge to “collab” does seem to come from the collaborative, communal instinct that drives people to put food and restaurants at the centre of their lives in the first place. That is, by anyone’s estimation, a beautiful and noble thing, so even I can’t take the piss too much.
And while sometimes when big brands get involved (Norman’s X Burberry…), it can feel a bit meaningless, I think that if the restaurants or individuals “collabing” have strong identities of their own, and are pooling their resources to make something new and necessarily rooted in the common cause of feeding people and making them happy, then “collab” culture is a nice thing, if sometimes a bit overly trendy or hard to keep up with.
In the case of the Dinner for One Hundred and Chet’s collab, these are two kitchens with a huge amount to say for themselves, so I was pretty interested to see what their brainchild would end up looking like. Chet’s I previously knew by reputation only, but to be real, any place bringing something as culturally specific as “LA-influenced Thai” to London, and inflecting diner classics (a personal weakness of mine) with the fresh, heady flavours of Thai food, would only ever be something I’d fuck with heavily. And as far as Dinner for One Hundred are concerned: they simply make pizza that is more than worth going to west London for.
The appointed day of the collab – Saturday 1st June – came, and I rounded up my friend Hannah (at this point it would be fair to assume that I actually don’t eat if I’m not in the presence of a woman called Hannah), to catch two Overgrounds with me, in order to eat some highly restorative dough and cheese. When we arrived, we were greeted with a tablescape that would not have brought a blush to the cheek of an Instagram influencer with a British Asparagus paid partnership, whose favourite colour is “gingham”.
All the way down The Hoxton’s front terrace – which, admittedly, on this overcast day, didn’t really get to show off as much as I’m sure it’s able to at the height of summer – was a long table decked out with long, tapered candles, bunches of blossom in wine glasses, special commemorative serviettes, green and red tablecloths, and Chet’s very capital-c Cool-looking branded plates. At the end was a Gozney pizza oven (a brand whose social media marketing is so aggressive that I truly must ask: are you even a permissible London food brand or influencer if you do not make your pizzas in this type of oven? Should you even be allowed out the house if you are not Gozney-pilled???) and the prep station, which was close to where we sat down.
Hannah and I showed up at about 3PM, and when everyone for our loosely-defined sitting had also got there, Jake Bucknall, who is one of the co-founders of Dinner for One Hundred, explained a bit about the two pizzas we’d be choosing from. In the free-wheeling, Fear and Loathing, experimental vein of “Thai-Americana”, the meaty option featured tamarind lamb, red onions, pickled chillis and a yoghurt sauce (taking cues from ingredient combinations on the Chet’s menu). The veggie pick was a version of one of Dinner for One Hundred’s signature dishes – the MacGyver, which may well be one of my top five pizzas ever, given its combination of chorizo, whipped feta, fennel seeds and hot honey, aka the four horsemen of the “FUCKING HELL THAT IS DELICIOUS” apocalypse – with the meat switched out for artichokes.
I went for the lamb, while Hannah, as a pescatarian, opted for the artichoke, and – as it was 3PM on a Saturday and we were on our holidays in exotic Shepherd’s Bush! – we both also ordered a cocktail called a “Thaimi Vice,” a marvellous creation involving Mehkong, Bacardi 8, strawberry, coconut, lemongrass, pineapple, citrus, mint, and, for sophistication’s sake, one of those big-ass ice cubes. This, as well as the meticulously appointed table, was the part of the meal that felt especially true to Chet’s and its hotel setting, and it was a lovely touch of luxury.
When the food came, however, it was all Dinner for One Hundred, whose spirit had made it entirely intact over to Costa del SheBu. By their own admission, their Nunhead restaurant, Bar D4100, exists entirely in service of bringing people together and showing them a good time It’s always noisy, always a laugh, and you can get a £5 spritz or pint, immediately making it a better value night out than like, 75% of other places in London. There’s live jazz on Sundays and occasional Singles Nights and sometimes you can win a free lunch on their Instagram – and I think that the community-centric, giving foundation of their whole endeavour (which I wrote a bit more about in the Guardian not long ago) is entirely reflected in the food. This is, to be honest, why the whole offering is so good.
It’s this generosity of spirit that I experienced on the Chet’s terrace as I tucked into my pizza. It was big and soft and brimming with toppings – zingy jalapeños, tart onions, and the star, that tender lamb, sweet with the tamarind, and lavished over the dough in strips coming away from themselves in a way that I can only describe as: “like Cheesestrings” (huge compliment).
Pizza chef Jake describes his style as “Neopolitan-ish”, and warns that his pizzas are not crispy. On the contrary – the Dinner for One Hundred dough is soft and eminently rippable – and therefore shareable – and their toppings are hearty and balls-to-the-wall. If you’re a coward, there’s probably too much of their rich, deep, brick-red tomato sauce on the pizza, but if you’ve got your head screwed on, it’s exactly the right amount. You absolutely, non-negotiably, eat it with your hands, and you definitely swap a slice with your mate.
Dinner for One Hundred make food that is fun, and that gives you something to talk about. As a lockdown project, it began with the intention of giving their neighbours something to actually fucking do together, and the pizza – busy but harmonious, adventurous but approachable – reflects that too, whether it’s being made in Nunhead, Shepherd’s Bush or literally anywhere. I loved that my pizza showed off some of the creativity on the Chet’s menu too, because frankly, tamarind lamb isn’t something that I, (say it with me) as an Italian girl, would ever opt for ordinarily. But it was an inspired, best-of-both-worlds topping, that softened me to collab culture, and made me feel better at a time when I needed it. To be real, when I order a pizza, it’s that warmth I’m after. Dinner for One Hundred at Chet’s really provided it.
This visit was arranged by Dinner for One Hundred but you know I always keep it a buck so the thoughts are my own as usual.
Dining Out is written by Lauren O’Neill and illustrated by Lucy Letherland. Weekly reviews are free to read every Thursday, but if you’d like to see more, you can subscribe for £5 a month or £50 a year, to get extra content every second Sunday. Click below to see paid and free subscription options, and thanks very much for reading.
See you on Sunday for the first paid post, a New York City food round-up, and next Thursday for a new review!