New restaurant from the Shed team to be named Rabbit
The group behind Notting Hill "nose-to-tail" restaurant the Shed is set to open a new site named Rabbit in London's Chelsea this autumn.
The 48-cover site from brothers Oliver, Richard and Gregory Gladwin is aiming to create a celebration of "wild food" and a rural way of life, with an emphasis on sustainability and using the whole of the animal in cooking.
It will be named Rabbit in honour of the animal, which is widely available in nature, sustainable, and able to be consumed in its entirety. As with the Shed, the produce for the restaurant will come from the family farm and vineyard, Nutbourne, in West Sussex.
Each brother brings distinct skills to the business: Gregory is the farmer who helps provide the restaurant with livestock and source seasonal produce; restaurant manager Richard (pictured right) has spent the last ten years working in London and New York restaurants; while chef Oliver (pictured left) trained at Oxo Tower, Launceston Place, Just St James, and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's River Cottage at Park Farm.
The menu will change daily and include small and large plates for sharing, using wild seeds and herbs, some of which go back to medieval cooking traditions.
Dishes will also be divided into slow-cooking and fast-cooking "mouthfuls", such as veal twig with pineapple weed, violet pickled quail's egg with celery salt; beef cheek bonbons with mustard; and mushroom marmite with confit egg yolk.
The restaurant's namesake will also feature, including rabbit stone bake, spatchcock rabbit and rabbit ragu. Other plates will include wild wood pigeon saltimbocca and Nutbourne pork with sweetcorn, meadowsweet, red pepper and pickled summer girolles. Pudding examples include medlar frangipane tart with rose geranium sorbet, and crunch honeycomb with chocolate, mascarpone and tarragon sugar.
The site will also offer cocktails with British-produced spirits, with fruit made with steeping and fermenting techniques to withdraw all the flavour, from ingredients such as rosehips, wet almonds, cherries, quince, crab apples, dandelion flowers, beetroot, wild garlic and cabbage.
Commenting on the new opening, the Gladwin brothers said: "We are delighted to bring Rabbit to London and really hope it takes everyone who visits on a journey into the wilds they'll never forget."
The group has yet to appoint a general manager but is currently recruiting via our website here.
The Shed first opened in 2012, in a bid to bring some of the Sussex countryside to the UK capital.
