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Please note, Gazelle has now closed. Time Out Food editors, March 2019.
If you’re the sort of person who collects fancy meals the way other people collect comic books, you’ll love Gazelle. The food is undoubtedly fabulous. It’s meticulous, Michelin-baiting stuff (that doesn’t currently have a star but is sure to get one). Dishes, all served as small plates, are preposterously pretty but deliver on delicate, thoughtfully composed flavours too. There were noodles fashioned from king oyster mushrooms, strung with wild garlic and studded with pine nuts. Ribbons of squid with sandalwood oil, wrinkly girolles and long strips of cured pork jowl that shimmered like snakeskin. Petals of sweet, springy razor clam in a tamarind sauce, dotted with hop oil and shoots of fresh pineapple sage. You get the picture.
And yet, and yet. Service is painfully deferential. The room is a tad naff – all fuchsia and gold, with lights that look like they’ve come from a department store. And being hidden up on the first floor means zero passing trade: on my visit there was just one other table occupied, the crooning electronica (itself an odd choice) too low to fill the awkwardly quiet space. Gazelle: a place for food-worshipping rather than fun.