Dining Out 070: Levan
Lunch in Peckham.
Bonjour and hello. I have said “bonjour” here at the start of the post to make smooth and seamless reference to the fact that this week I am going to be talking about French food, specifically the food served at the Peckham restaurant Levan, and even more specifically, the set menu they put on with the Parisian wine bar Déviant last Sunday. I know. Sometimes even I am struck by my own literary flair, adeptness and fluency.
I am very pleased to finally be writing about Levan: it is local to me, I like it very much in general, and I can frequently be found in their neighbouring bar, Bar Levan. This is largely because my dear sweet housemate Hannah is the manager, and I adore to go there for what I call a Bother - what is involved here is that I Bother her at work - which she absolutely loves.
Bar Levan is an extremely sexy little establishment - indeed, there are few places better to make eyes at someone over a candle and a plate of posh ham - but what I like even more about both this place and its big sister next door is that they are always giving something a little bit different a go. At Bar Levan, this means Friday DJs and offbeat wine tastings and a rotating cast of chefs from Levan’s kitchen being given free rein on the actually quite extensive bar menu. And at the restaurant itself, it means steak or moules frites for £20 on a Sunday, and even more excitingly, their French Connection series, where for one Sunday every month, a team from a restaurant or bar somewhere in France will come and flex their muscles in the Levan kitchen.
Last Sunday was the turn of Déviant. This, by all of the accounts I can find, is a much-respected wine bar in Paris where you can eat weird snacks and drink from an extensive list of natural wines. For their turn at Levan, they worked with the restaurant to put together a £59 set menu consisting of a cocktail, four starters, a main course, and two desserts, which I would describe as pretty good value (all of the events in the French Connection series, I should add, are £59 a head.)
In terms of the specifics of that menu, I was immediately interested because of the sheer cheekiness on display: it was French cooking, unmistakably, but the Déviant head chef Jeff Schilde and his team were also having a laugh with it. I know that stuff is changing and there is more eyebrow raising than ever about The Hallowed Traditions from food writers, but I do still think that on both cookery and criticism landscapes, French cuisine remains something that is taken deeply seriously. And as someone who is bad at taking almost anything seriously, I naturally jar against that idea.
To digress for a second, I like French food plenty, of course. I have eaten my fair share of escargot and enjoyed it. I think that what they are doing over there with bread is superb. My love of Bret’s crisps has been heavily documented. #ThankYouFrance for fries. I am not ignorant to the nation’s contributions.
But. And there is a bit of a but. Despite these fondnesses, I will say that I have rarely felt particularly impressed by or moved by properly French cooking in the way that you are “supposed” to be*. I don’t revere it and never have (I was, after all, raised on Chicago Town pizza and giant bowls of pasta cooked by a nonna), and if I am completely honest, when I see photos of things like that pig snout cassoulet at Camille - I don’t have an image to hand but look it up - my overwhelming reaction is that new sleep paralysis demon just dropped**. I’m aware that there is probably a shadowy Illuminati of real food critics that is about to have me eliminated for saying that, but it is how I feel.
Happily, then, what entertained me so much about the Déviant menu at Levan was that its idea of French food didn’t have much holier-than-thou-ness - there were references to classics, but these were more nudges and winks than deep, worshipful bows. Snails and garlic came not on a specialist plate with its own utensil, but just encased in a cute little pie instead; barbecued strawberry came to the table adorned with a cocktail umbrella, and floating in a splash of Lillet, like an inflatable in a pool on holiday. It was winking and it had a point of view, and for that reason, it was also memorable.
To start came oyster broth served ostentatiously (compliment) in a shell, then that aforementioned pie - a little underdone pastry-wise, but bursting with fat snails filling-wise - plus asparagus with wild garlic and kiwi, and finally a little skewer of rich but tender duck hearts with pepper sauce (much needed, I will say) for shits and gigs. As you’ll note, all of the requisite Obligatory Frenchness was on display, only a bit more playfully then I’m used to.
The main consisted of steak haché with chicken jus, and barbecued green beans bundled with a strip of pork belly, all of which had a fried egg draped across it in manner of me on my all inclusive in six weeks’ time. Again, it felt like just the right “classic but not being a prick about it” balance for my taste. I love steak haché and this one had a nice amount of pinkness left through the middle, the chicken jus added a bit of summery lightness (as did the BBQ-esque char on the beans), and more vegetables on plates should be tied to each other with tender grilled bacon, I think.
As for dessert, any menu whereby you’re assigned two puddings automatically is alright by me. The barbecue was once again fired up for some boozy strawberries - personally I loved the smoky sweetness, amped up by juicy Lillet in the coupe, but can see it being divisive - before what was, for sure, my favourite dish of the day. You’ve had that thing where they put the chocolate ganache with the salt and the olive oil. But what about this other thing where they put the chocolate ganache with the salt, the olive oil, AND a handful of chopped black olives?
It absolutely shouldn’t work and it absolutely does. The chocolate erred enough on the right side of Bruce Bogtrotter cake richness that it was easy to eat a whole bowl, and the added saltiness and chewy texture of the olives made for a strange but perfect foil - the JB Smoove to the ganache’s Larry David. It was something I knew well with just a further step taken into the weird or novel - a real “fuck around and find out” of a plate of food - and it was very cool.
Sadly, this menu by Déviant at Levan was a one off, though the Levan team are endlessly in the know, so I expect that their next French Connection outing will be just as good, if not better - though I do have to say, I hope the impudence of this one carries over, because but it reflected all of the things I like best about Levan at large. They serve fancy food and drinks - let’s not mince our words, it’s true - but in a chilled out way, with an experimental streak, and this lunch felt like it balanced rigour with levity. I think that’s hard to get right, but this menu managed it and then some. I’ve been thinking a lot about “personal snail and garlic pie” and “ganache with olives” since last Sunday, and it will be a while ‘til I forget either.
* My exception to this would obviously be the food at The French House - while I do think of that as being a London institution more than a monument to French cuisine, I accept that both can be true and dream regularly of their aligot, which represents the best of each side of its Brit/French personality.
** No shade at all, happy to recognise this as a failing on my part, and for what it’s worth I’m sure the snout cassoulet is very tasty – I just find the look of it very arresting. Secondarily, however I do find it quite funny that this dish, heavily photographed as it has been, is sort of like a viral mozzarella stick or a dessert that looks good in a picture for Cool Guy Offal Heads. Phone Eats First culture comes for us all.
I am very grateful to Mark Gurney and all of the Levan/Bar Levan team for this invite and for the thoughtful, relaxed hospitality they show me every single time I darken their door, which is all the fucking time; I didn’t pay but I don’t chat shit as I hope you know.
OTHER THINGS OF NOTE THIS WEEK:
If you read Dining Out it’s highly likely that you are a fan of a) pasta and b) wine. If you also like to enjoy these two things in tandem, I would heartily encourage you to try out Il Gattopardo’s £20 Pasta and Vino counter deal, which runs from 12pm daily. I went this week and I thought it was pretty great: the idea is that you get a bowl of pasta, plus a glass of wine to pair with the dish, which comes from the same region as the pasta recipe. This week’s region was Sicily, so I had pasta alla nonna (tomato, aubergine, shitloads of olive oil) with salted ricotta, plus a cold, crisp glass of Cusumano’s 2024 Alta Mora (the main thing to know about this wine is that it’s also a little bit salty and mineral-y owing to the fact that the grapes are grown on the slopes of Mount Etna). Lovely combo, at an actually pretty decent price - particularly considering the plush surroundings and very attentive service.
If your mum likes going shopping on Oxford Street when you hang out with her, take her here for the Pasta and Vino at lunchtime, or just as everyone’s about to get a bit het up in the big M&S - whichever comes soonest. She’ll think you’re loaded, you will become Favourite Child, job’s a goodun. Thank you so much to Kitty and everyone at LM Communications for having me come through!!
Elsewhere I have done a frankly criminal amount of eating and drinking over the last seven days - I’m calling it medieval lord-maxxing - and I’ve noticed that you lot seem to like it when I do a “what I ate this week” post, SO if you’d like to hear more about fantastic khao soi in central London (ft. house-pressed coconut milk), fancy Mexican food, a wine bar where they’re currently doing sausage and mash, and my new fav desserts, you can sign up for paid posts to receive a little digest (a food pun, you see) on Tuesday. I’m going to be doing extras for paid subscribers every week (!) from now on, so if you would like to keep up with all my recommendations and/or my descent into heart disease in real time, you can sign up to subscribe for the price of one underwhelming Pret sandwich every month below. Love you loads.
Dining Out is written by Lauren O’Neill. Weekly articles are free to read every Sunday, and you can follow me on Instagram here, but if you’d like to see more, you can subscribe for £5 pcm or £50 annually to get extra content a few times a month.
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