Feast Canteen review: The belle of the mall

Adrian Lourie
David Sexton28 February 2018

The chains are stuffed — and not in a good way. For the past half-dozen years, often fuelled by private-equity takeovers, they’ve been expanding into our high streets, chasing the growth in casual dining. In 2016 a YouGov survey confirmed that eating out is now Britain’s favourite leisure activity.

What could go wrong? Over-saturation, lack of originality, failure to maintain quality, cost-cutting to maximise returns — and recent rises in food and staff costs, rents and rates, while consumers have ever less to spend. That’ll do it.  

Jamie’s Italian, Byron and Prezzo are among the chains scrambling to close branches and “re-structure”. A sobering report on this phenomenon in The Guardian last week was remarkable for the number of comments it attracted — 2,472. Nearly all were complaints of bad meals and poor value. 

The pattern is familiar: the creation of a new restaurant, with initial growth more or less maintaining quality, followed by investors backing expansion, leading to the restaurants becoming travesties of themselves, soulless experiences, within just a few years.

How to break this cycle? A group called Incipio, created in 2014, is attempting this by creating sites that temporarily host a variety of new independent restaurants in funky, under-utilised and presumably low-cost locations. It began with Pergola on the Roof at Television Centre in White City in 2016. It attracted 90,000 visitors in 21 weeks.

In its prospectus for landlords looking to work with it, Incipio boldly promises near-miracles to anxious developers. “We can go into pretty much any area and create hype. We elevate areas with our offer.” Righty-ho.

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Kings Mall in Hammersmith is a good test case. A concrete monstrosity opened in 1980, it lies directly within the blast radius of Westfield and has suffered from it. In 2015 it was bought for £153 million by Schroder UK Real Estate Fund, which has been pumping money into it. At the moment, however, the mall remains a work in progress, aka a building site.

Feast opened there on St Valentine’s Day. The new food court opens up a big space in the centre of the building. It has industrial finishes. There’s good lighting, music thumping and lots of seating — 350 places in all.

Lined up behind uniform coppery frontages are five self-service eateries, all on trend, almost a foodie fashion hound’s dream team. 

There’s burger kings Patty & Bun  — not so rare any more, with 10 sites, to slay those who live for burgers like the clinically insane Smokey Robinson (£9), so bulging with cheese, caramelised onions, bacon, ketchup and smokey mayo that I was nervous of raising it to my mouth, quite rightly since it exploded all over my face. 

There’s Salvation in Noodles, the creation of Colin Tu, with branches in Finsbury Park and Dalston, delivering highly flavoured phos, curries and noodle salads. A chicken pho (£7.50) and beef curry (£8) both had good quality meat, especially the beef bavette, chargrilled separately. There’s Made of Dough, the pizza-maker which started in a shipping container in Brixton and now has a restaurant in Bellenden Road in Peckham — excellent crispy Neapolitan-style bases plus prize toppings. A slice with chestnut mushrooms and parsley (£4) smelled of the truffle oil poured over it.

David Sexton's week in food

On Thursday, heading to France, fattoush at Comptoir Libanais, Gatwick. I fancied its Bekaa Valley house red more than one of the New World horrors flogged by Mr Brexit, 
Tim Martin, in his Wetherspoons. 

In France, solo for gardening, I take care to eat all I like that Catherine abhors: so a nice veal chop with rosemary from the garden for lunch.

Sunday lunch outside, no fleece needed: toasted cabécou, green salad, with local Cahors, Château Paillas 2012, ¤19.90 for six bottles at the local Carrefour — under £3 each.

Back home that evening, we had Black Truffle Tortelloni, made by La Tua Pasta, via Harringay’s Local Store — yum, although having stuffed pasta for a main dish still feels odd.

Having enjoyed the winter tomato salad starter at the Garden Museum Cafe last week but startled by its £8 price, on Monday I made my own, using the great heritage tomatoes (pictured) sold at Dostlar on Green Lanes — only to find that even here they’re £6.99 a kilo. That’s me told.

There’s Breddos, which started as a taco shack in Hackney and now has restaurants in Clerkenwell and Soho, delivering an overwhelming adaptation of roadside food to be found in Mexico and the US.

More chastly, there’s Sinchow, previously a pop-up, now a permanent site. Owners Harry and Addy have taken rice paper rolls off the starter menu and made them the main event, for ultra-healthy eating (rice paper is made just with rice flour and water). We liked both the chicken satay, the sauce somehow made without  nuts, and the duck hoisin — this sauce guaranteed gluten-free — both rolls full of minty herbs, pickled carrot, lettuce and spring onion. These cool refinements didn’t seem to be competing well with the total impact offerings from the other stands, however. 

For this is food designed to wow, hitting hard with chilli and spices, huge flavours for a generation who expect what they eat to be shouty entertainment and find anything that tastes simply of itself a bit pointless, if not baffling. 

For Monday lunch, accordingly, I tried chicken wings three ways. Breddo’s hot wings (£6) were recognisable wings, brined and fried, before being doused in a rich, sweet honey/butter/habanero pepper sauce, along with the cult Japanese Kewpie mayonnaise. Salvation in Noodles’ phu guoc wings (£6.50) had been marinated in fish sauce and doubtless sugar before being fried to crispily battered softness. Patty & Bun’s Winger Winger Chicken Dinner (£6.50) was smoked, confit chicken pieces covered with an sticky, sweet and tangy barbecue sauce.
 

All were impressive, all striking: splatter-gun eating. You have to eat this kind of food with your fingers. It’s what people graduate to from KFC

For now, Feast isn’t licensed (you’re not meant to bring your own). Incipio’s marketing director Victoria Mills told me sharply that only food bought there should be consumed on the premises — although on Monday schoolgirls were there with their sandwiches.  

So this is a way of getting fresh restaurants into big, corporate spaces. Incipio pays for the space and the kitchens, then takes a percentage of turnover, making it easy for restaurants to open but equally easy for them then to be rotated quickly. 

Will it work? On Monday I went on to check out its first such venture, Feast Bar & Kitchen, a vast creation hosting two restaurants in White City Place. At 3pm this 300-seater was, save for the chatty staff, deserted. 

Meanwhile, on nearby Wood Lane, Westfield is expanding again, a hoarding promising a slew of new restaurants. New chains, anyway.