Khoollect Visits – PLOT Tooting Broadway

Inside the unassuming archway of Tooting’s Broadway market, nestled between its slightly dodgy leather shops, street art and hairdressers you’ll find Plot. A rather beautifully furnished unit-come-hole-in-the-wall with marble counter-tops we’d happily take home and a beer & wine list we’d drink from every day – if it wasn’t slightly irresponsible.

Talk of Tooting’s food scene has been murmuring away for a few years now. With the opening of The Chicken Shop, Soho House’s southern offering, the brilliant Tota and at least one craft beer shop (you have to have one nowadays), the area has seen a lot more attention focusing on its already deserving local restaurants. But with Plot there’s a distinctly different feel to everything else in the area.

Owners Mark Kimber and Harry Smith, alongside Head Chef Giles, have designed a menu based on small, seasonal plates of properly sourced, quality UK ingredients originating from the highlands to the city.

They’ve picked their producers well, as the brilliant restaurant manager went on to explain. From Trealy farm to honey from Wandsworth , its the restaurant’s relationships with these farms, butchers and producers that really goes the extra mile and it shows on the plate.

Concentrating its menu on around seven or eight dishes (yep, you read that correctly) it would be easy to confuse their simplicity with a lack of excitement but you’d be dead wrong – it lets the flavours do the talking.

The plates come out as they’re ready so we started off with a courgette pea pesto with lashings of parmesan. Next came the fried duck egg with garden peas and Trealy farm chorizo and the Shetland scallops with celeariac and apple, both cooked to perfection, the celeriac cream a particular delight. And despite the boiling hot temperatures, we were persuaded by the harissa goat ragu with roast aubergine and cucumber yoghurt, which even on a hot summer’s day was as satisfying as a ragu ever was.

Sometimes drinks can come as an afterthought in a restaurant but not here. The beers and ales are all sourced from local breweries, including Gipsy Hill, Brixton and Herne Hill. The wines from Nyetimber and Hush Heath, two excellent British producers in Kent and West Sussex.

In what was quite honestly a hot and hectic day, coming to PLOT really was a centring experience. Gorgeous food, washed down with well-selected ales was just what the doctor ordered, but I have to say what resonated just as much were the people of PLOT, giving us culinary wisdom and genuine conversation that peppered our beautiful experience. I cannot recommend PLOT enough.