The tub of heads, skin, eyes, and ears is kept in the basement. The rest of the carcass hangs stiff and cold on a shiny metal hook, ready for slicing. Tongues, gizzards, and belly are in the freezer; once minced together, they graduate to the fridge. Upstairs, unsuspecting guests sit at Cadet’s long, elegant bar while soft music plays and wine is glugged into glasses and carafes, unaware of the gore below.
Making paté en croute is a messy business.
When diners cut into a slice of fragrant, thickly rich charcuterie, its subtleties rising from a whisper to a hubbub as it comes to temperature and a rum-steeped apricot winking out of the centre like a burning sun, they are cutting into George Jephson’s obsession. The charcutier, who makes architectural paté en croutes; verdant and wobbling jambon persille; and a mousse de canard that spreads like a face pack, is one third of Cadet — “Cad-ay”: the handsome wine bar that ebbs and flows above while the pigs, chickens, and ducks that go into his creations lay dormant below.
Open for a matter of weeks on Newington Green in north London, Cadet’s alliance of French charcuterie, cooking, and wine is not new. Chef Jamie Smart’s dishes, and Tom Beattie and Francis Roberts’s pours speak the language of not just the Parisian cave, but the mid-mountain hamlet of Chassignolles and its famous Auberge, which has become a kind of archangel for London chefs seeking to become fluent in this culinary vernacular of the French countryside, before translating it to the capital’s voice.
But it’s precisely this that means Cadet — and fellow new arrivals Veraison, in Camberwell; Hector’s, in De Beauvoir; as well as the reopened Provisions in Holloway and Furanxo in Dalston — do, actually, feel new. Not for opening a wine bar in London, not even a very French one: the dearly departed Terroirs and its siblings would take issue.
What feels different is how these wine bars and the people who work in them, all of whom have cut their teeth in leading, at times pioneering wine bars (P. Franco, Winemakers Club) and restaurants (St. John, Westerns Laundry, Bright, Flor) no longer feel the need to self-consciously differentiate from their inspirations, be they city or countryside.
As what were vanguards evolve into part of the furniture, and new openings like Cadet spring from them, it’s possible to witness the maturation of London’s wine scene in real time, as if cellared away like the bottles it lives and dies on.
There is no fear of accidentally pretending to be Paris nor the Auvergne, no attempting to be transportive in a way that pretends, for a few hours, its guests are not in the city they call home. There is no slippery slope into the shallow iconoclasm used as a cudgel by critics of natural wine; no need for lazy wedges to be driven between east London and the rest, nor P. Franco and St. John.
Maturing is realising that these places always had more in common than the years between them alluded. Cadet is a French wine bar on Newington Green. There is very good wine and charcuterie and simple food comprised of astutely sourced ingredients. London has room for this — wants this. People have room for this in their daily lives, rather than as an escape from reality or a special occasion. It is confident, it has no need for pyrotechnics, and it doesn’t need to claim to be more.
As the French may say, c’est bon.
Take a look around.
Co-founder Tom Beattie worked with Francis Roberts at the Noble Fine group, before the duo founded Beattie and Roberts, a wine importer. Here, he prepares for the evening, backed by the previous day’s menus.Beattie and Roberts (left) are joined by charcutier George Jephson and chef Jamie Smart, lately of P. Franco, Flor, and French country cooking institution sans pareil Auberge de Chassignolles.
Smart, Roberts, and Beattie before service on what will be a buzzy Friday night.
More from Cadet’s bar during service. For now, pass under this print (and coincidental signpost) designed by musician and artist Laura Marling ...
And follow Jephson down to his charcuterie lair.Construction begins with precisely cutting the pastry, rich with egg yolks in the pâté brisée style and fortified with French flour.
Working in what is a fairly stuffy prep area, Jephson — who worked in French butchers for several years to learn and hone the craft — is in a constant dance with temperature, time, and pliability of the pastry.
While the crust-in-waiting chills down after the first moulding, upstairs, chef Jamie Smart shapes pastry of his own. This for a honey custard tart to round off a meal, or just to sit alongside a glass.
Back with Jephson: egg yolks, for burnishing and gluing.
Glossy.
Now for the filling. Having Jephson’s production, which serves his wholesale business as well as Cadet, alongside Smart in the kitchen, lets the bar buy whole pigs to butcher down.
This particular croute is laden with pork farce, heady with herbs and pepper — Marsala, Cognac, mace, quatre epices, and salt, as well as confit duck gizzards.
First as butchery, then as farce.A sprinkling of pistachios and brined Madagascan peppercorns for texture and contrast, which is also provided by apricots. Over time, Jephson steeps the apricots in rum, adding a candied booziness to the centre of the charcuterie and providing him with an infused spirit to use in caneles.
Enveloping the precious cargo.
Lid added and parcel sealed, it’s time for one more coat of yolk, before the vital embellishments begin.
Venting correctly is vital: not just for steam to escape, but to prevent it condensing on the inside of the pastry, turning the interior into a soggy mess.But, it’s also an opportunity for some precision embellishment.The foil directs the steam’s exit.
Into the oven to bake.
Unmoulding the finished, cooled, and set article, which has had stock poured in to form a jelly.
The moment of truth...
Salut to you
Upstairs, Smart serves the croute with a lacto-fermented cucumber.
For now, it’s a menu fixture, but Cadet aims to offer takeaway slices for hungry people to devour across the road on the green in due course.
But there’s more than charcuterie at Cadet. Jamie Smart’s cooking is most directly informed by his time at Auberge de Chassignolles, which translates into unaffected, simple plates primed for wine. Fans of Planque, in Haggerston, will see some pleasing parallels.
Roberts chalks up the wines alongside. As at P. Franco under Beattie, there are often other bottles opened and lurking to be tried, adding a further sense of spontaneity to proceedings.
The wines come from Beattie and Roberts’s eponymous importer. Here, in mid-August, it is out of harvest season, but as the year develops, both Cadet and its supply line will be running at full throttle.At only a couple of weeks old, evenings are already buzzing.
The croute makes its reappearance in an evening guise, but there’s much more coming out of Jamie Smart’s kitchen.
Take, for example, a plate of coco beans with girolles. It begins with all hands on deck, or rather, on podding.
The girolles, soft and amber.
Gently and subtly sweated down in butter, they are soon ready to anoint the beans and their broth.
Smart plating up.
On its way to the tables.
A larder of vinegars, ferments, and pickles lets Smart put accents on whatever ingredients suppliers have to hand, a way of thinking about cooking and menu building that he primarily developed at Auberge de Chassignolles.
There might be a plate of pearlescent turbot, served with courgettes and lemon leaf.
There might be a blood orange red tomato soup, served chilled with the delicate florality of tagettes, a member of the marigold family.