Grilled Meat Chef Turns to Pizza and Vermouth at Third Site

Neil Rankin — who, since November 2016, opened two branches of his restaurant Temper — will complete a hat trick of restaurants when he and his business partner Sam Lee open in Covent Garden this spring.

Where the original restaurant focused on tacos and the City follow up, curry, Temper Covent Garden’s menu will be inspired by Italy: Cured meat pizzas, cooked in a wood-fired oven, ragu, vermouth and wine.

The menu will always feature two types of pizza, and a selection of ragus, made with either game, goat or pork, which will be served with fresh bread or gnocchi. The announcement also promises an “exciting and diverse” vermouth menu.

The restaurant, featuring Temper’s trademark open kitchen and grill, will also open for breakfast — a first for the brand. The morning menu will include freshly-baked croissants, as well as home cured bacon and sausages. Yesterday Rankin was crowdsourcing recipe ideas.

Rankin says his meat suppliers have been sending meat to London-based charcuterie brand, Cobble Lane Cured in preparation for the opening of the new site. He says this “curing model is essential to Temper’s ongoing mission to eliminate factory farming from its production line, as most of the best cuts for curing are also the hardest to cook. The result is a 100 per cent traceable, sustainable and delicious product.”