Viajante, great food in unlikely places

A dark corner of the east end of London is a strange place to find one of London's most interesting  restaurants. Claiming to serve a (very) modern take on Portuguese cuisine Viajante, fittingly for us after our recent excursions, meaning "the traveller", is based in the old Tower Hamlets town hall. The frontage is very impressive and the dining room is quite grand although the chairs do look like they may be ex council stock. The main menu choices you have are whether you want 6 or 9 courses (we obviously went for the more is better plan) however you have no real indication of what the courses are. Once that is sorted the only thing that remains is to decide if you want a matching wine (much better value than buying it by the bottle) then you should sit back relax and enjoy a crazy culinary adventure.

The dining room gives you  a great view of (when we went) 3 chefs preparing all of the dishes in an open kitchen (no room for tantrums). You feel like you are very much part of the action as each chef introduces their own courses as the meal progresses. As you would expect all the dishes look immaculate. Before you get started, regardless of your choice on the number of courses there are a myriad (well, ok, 4) of pre starters (not counted in the number of courses)  which are served to you by the waiters.

The nod to its Portuguese heritage comes from the choice of meats, which are mainly seafood based with occasional touches of Iberico ham and pork. There are several interesting cuts (including cod tripe, which was surprisingly tasty) along with some fish I'd never even considered eating such as pike. The menu we had wended its way through scallops (pictured right), stuffed mushrooms and ended with a couple of pork courses (loin followed by suckling pick) and I really enjoyed all of them,

The matching wines are also really well chosen, we got some excellent pours (which is always nice to see on a night out) and there were several really interesting bottles. I think the pick of them (certainly for my fiancee) was this buttery and slightly Psychedelic (see the label on the left) Chardonnay from Santa Barbara, California.

I understand that a surprise menu may not be everyone's idea of a great night out, but the modern cookery techniques, a highlight being the "Milk" dessert, which is prepared in 3 ways to give a blancmange like part, a creamy sauce and a wafer it certainly looks and tastes a lot more interesting than it sounds). I admit that it may not be the cheapest night out you can imagine (with 6 courses costing 70 pounds and 9 courses costing 85) when you add in the wine each person ends up spending 150 GBP which does seem a touch on the expensive side, although when you compare it to similar tasting menus I would argue it is pretty much par for the course on Michelin starred restaurants in London.