East@west

Restaurateur Chris Bodker has always admired Aussie chef Christine Manfield. Her restaurant, Paramount, in Sydney, had consistently impressed the critics, and when she closed its doors in 2000 "to broaden her pursuits", the city mourned her departure. Well, now they're going to have to come all the way to London to sample Manfield's food, as Bodker has managed to persuade her ("and I don't quite know how," he says) to head up his 80-seat restaurant and bar, East@West, just up from the Ivy.

You can forget any kind of formality here - there are just two five-course set menus, one called Wicked, the other called Delicious, at £35 per head. But then Manfield likes to shake things up a bit.

Her food is inspired not by the classical French kitchen, but by the cuisines of Vietnam, China and Japan. So fusion, then? "I'm OK with fusion," she says. "That's how all cuisine has evolved, after all. But the word does get bastardised - and murdered by the press. You can say my food is embedded in south-east Asia and Japan - but with all the other influences and techniques that come in to play."

Manfield uses spices as her base. "I'm always picking up ideas - not necessarily culinary, but all sorts of things - from design to buildings," she says, and there is a certain architectural, painterly quality to her food.

The Wicked menu kicks off with hamachi and nori tempura, green tea noodles, ponzu cucumber, avocado and wasabi flying fish roe. This is followed with a grilled diver scallop salad, cape gooseberries, sweet tamarind and basil with salmon roe. Next up is black pepper chicken tea with watercress and enoki mushrooms, followed by "breast, legs and pink bits" - tea-smoked Barbary duck breast, duck sausage and foie gras. The last course is twice-cooked pork belly with baked sweet potato and a chilli orange sauce, and all dishes come with a suggested wine match (see page 46).

"You've got to have taste and texture in any dish - and contrast," Manfield says. But she doesn't do dairy. Or many carbs, come to that. "I like clean, elegant food. I don't like stodgy food. I can't live two days without chillies. When I travel to Europe I get withdrawal symptoms. After I've been there for a few days, give me some steamed rice and chilli jam," she laughs.

Service issue
Has the two-menu concept created any complications? "I've always offered only a couple of menus. We might get one customer a night who says, no, they can't eat something - and it's usually shellfish - but mainly it's a service issue. It's about making people feel comfortable. We wanted to define the parameters at this point. And I'm a kitchen Nazi, don't you know," she sniggers.

In fact, Manfield does offer a vegetarian menu - called Organic - though this isn't handed out with the other menus. "People have to ask for it," she says, declaring that only 1% of diners requests it anyway.

So how is she finding the supply situation? (I hadn't noticed any ginger blossoms down at the local cash and carry recently.) "I get ingredients flown in twice-weekly from Bangkok," explains Manfield, who shares the ordering with fellow London-based Aussie chef and mate, David Thompson, at Nahm. She also gets ingredients flown in weekly from Tokyo.

Manfield travels a fair bit in her spare time - Cambodia is next on her list. Plus she has published four best-selling cookery books - Stir, the latest, includes recipes that feature the range of 14 spice pastes Manfied is marketing. Her third book, Spice, has won a clutch of awards.

East@West also has a ground-floor lounge bar, where Manfield offers a more casual eating option incorporating trays in two sizes, complete with real chopsticks. n

East@West restaurant and bar, 13-15 West Street, London WC2H 9NE, Tel: 020 7010 8600

what's on the menu yellowfin tuna sashimi, toasted seaweed, shiso sprouts, ginger blossom

Coconut chilli native lobster egg net, bean sprouts, pomelo and mint salad, fried shallots

Hot-and-sour prawn broth, steamed prawn and water chestnut dumpling

Sweet grilled eel, steamed pork, chilli salt squid, black ink noodles

Soy-braised squab, shiitake mushrooms, spiced turmeric lemon grass sauce

Caramelised star anise cream and black rice pudding, palm sugar toffee apples

Spiced pear and ginger syrup cake, green ginger custard