In an early episode of Knowing Me Knowing You, Alan Partridge hosts (well, co-hosts) his fictional chat show from Paris, where ‘controversial chef’ Philippe Lambert describes the Paris restaurant scene as a “big fat pig, endlessly regurgitating and consuming that which it eats, without discrimination, without taste, without joy…” while Alan absently picks over a plate of hors d’ouvres, pulling faces and showing little interest in the food or his guest.
It’s easy to sympathise with Philippe’s assessment looking at today’s restaurant scene. Everyone’s a foodie now. It takes no knowledge or discernment, just a credit card and an Instragram account. Which is fine I guess, it keeps the wheels turning, but perhaps it was a similar opinion to Philipe’s that led Sky Kong Kong’s proprietor Hwi Shim to leave behind the intensity of London’s restaurant scene and open her informal eatery just off the grungy Bear Pit roundabout in Bristol.
Sky Kong Kong is a cute little place, one that barely feels like a restaurant at all. Half the dining area is given over to what looks like an art school, while a long communal table fills the remaining space, leaving little room for the lone server to operate. Behind a bamboo roll blind, you can just make out chef Hwi beavering away in her tiny kitchen, happily working alone and keeping herself to herself. There are no menus, no drinks list (no drinks at all actually, it’s BYO) and no real indication that you’re in a restaurant, save for the shelves laden with jars of various kimchi.
But when the food arrives, it’s a bit of a revelation. Sky Kong Kong offers a daily-changing set meal with no choices. For a very reasonable £12.50, you get a starter and main to share, with dessert at a £2.50 supplement. The visually arresting tuna tartare balanced oily rich fish with the exotic tang of passion fruit on a pleasingly neutral canvass of rice tteok (a smooth Korean rice cake, a bit like fresh coconut in texture). The beetroot cake was an intriguing take on the earthy/sweet vegetable and held its own in the fish-fruit bout. The noodles were delicate and refreshing, but too cold and slight in portion to make an impression. And the three sauces mostly just adhered themselves to the plate.
The three-part main was basically an exercise in how to construct a truly great salad. The principle plate featured large pieces of marinated beef rib (cut from a decent sized joint that had been glazed in something soya-based and then roasted), all sweetly soft, juicy and heightened by the deep umami of the marinade. It sat among a complex salad that revealed something different with each turn. There were leaves, fruits (grapefruit, Korean pear, goji), mozzarella, more beetroot, more roasted tomatoes; there was a dressing, and underneath, a sauce. It was an absorbing, if seemingly cavalier, assembly.
On the side was a whole mackerel fillet, expertly seared to retain all of its deep fatty goodness under a seasoned golden crust. And then the most Korean element: a tray of garnishes, from dried anchovies and garlic stems to kimchi, pickled mushrooms and perilla leaves. Our server explained each element, but offered no guidance. You simply let your tastebuds guide you and worked out your own combinations. It was all interchangeable. The zingy, refreshing fruits cut through the fish, while the mozzarella and garlic stems created moments of moaning, eyes-shut bliss with the beef. Chucking the anchovies into the dressing meant there was excitement and complexity right down to the last morsel, especially when the mackerel skin was dredged in too. It was, all-in-all, a thoroughly engaging presentation of food, one that was clearly Korean at heart, but drew inspiration from many other places.
Sky Kong Kong offers the relatively intrepid diner a varied, artistically presented and fairly challenging meal, one that frequently takes you by surprise and requires a bit of effort to get the best from. It was a shame, then, that the other diners on the evening we went seemed to have gone principally for the chat, with food on the side. Now I don’t want to come across a massive snob, but come on, if you’re just getting together with friends for a catch-up, what’s wrong with a chain restaurant? They offer reliability, consistency, a bit of elbow room and your own table. Sky Kong Kong is the polar opposite, you need to bring your interest and focus on the food. But as I sat wedged between a group of excitable thirty-somethings playing virtual top trumps with their travels and a pair of middle-aged divorcees tearing their exes to shreds, I began to loath the communal table. I guess we could have moved, but it would have looked so miserable, so I tried to put a brave face on things. That never works.
I don’t want this to turn into a rant, but here’s an idea: if you’re faced with a plate of food that challenges your expectations and offers some unfamiliar ingredients/combinations, why not listen to the person who’s taking the time to explain the to you? You’ll get so much more out of the food, and you might learn something. And if you do choose to just talk over her and ignore what she’s telling you, don’t then sit there asking ‘what’s this stuff?’ ‘is that pomegranate?’ or exclaiming ‘oh, I don’t really like fish’ and ‘beef with fruit?!’ as it might have a negative impact on your fellow diners’ enjoyment.
I just hope these people weren’t indicative of the usual diners at Sky Kong Kong, as maybe Hwi Shim will become as equally disillusioned with offering her unique style of cooking to Bristol as she did with the London restaurant scene. I will definitely return, but I’ll show up late and choose my seat carefully.
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