Does Smoke & Salt Offer London's Most Underrated Tasting Menu?
- James Massoud
- 18 hours ago
- 3 min read
Smoke & Salt has steadily built one of London’s most compelling tasting menus from its Tooting home. Seasonal, inventive and still priced at £80, it somehow remains under the radar.
So after trying the summer 'Culture' menu, The Knife asks whether this might just be the capital’s most underrated tasting experience.
Big flavour, little fuss
The flagship menu, Culture, currently sits at £80. In a city where tasting menus are increasingly pushing well beyond three figures, that immediately gives Smoke & Salt an edge. More importantly, though, the value doesn’t come at the expense of ambition.
On our recent visit for the summer edition of the Culture menu, the meal opened with pea and tomato gazpacho with langoustine oil, followed by pretzels with smoked butter and honey mustard. From there came a trio of snacks including a trimchi pancake, tempura courgette and a pea and black garlic tart.
That set the tone very nicely. There is plenty of technical cooking here, but very little unnecessary theatre. Fermentation, smoking and preservation aren’t presented as tricks, they simply sit naturally within the food.
Summer, distilled
Some of the strongest dishes came when Smoke & Salt took familiar ingredients and pushed them somewhere less expected. Smoked trout with basil and fermented berries was followed by tomatoes with cherries, an unbelievable bonfire vinaigrette and sunflower granola. Then came BBQ beans with leek, split peas, lovage, sorrel and za’atar – the sort of dish that sounds deceptively simple until it arrives.
And then there was the beef fat donut filled with beef ragout. Arguably the most memorable dish of the evening, it also summed up the restaurant rather well: technically considered, deeply savoury and, crucially, fun.
A main course of piri-piri sirloin with chipotle, sweetcorn and fermented chilli reinforced the broader point. Smoke & Salt isn’t especially interested in neat culinary labels. British produce meets ideas and flavours from elsewhere, but always in a way that feels coherent rather than contrived.
Dessert moved through sorbet into a fantastic coconut rum baba with pineapple and mint, ending the meal on the same uncomplicated note of pleasure with which it began.
Why isn’t everyone talking about it?
Part of Smoke & Salt’s appeal is its lack of stiffness. This feels far closer to a smart neighbourhood restaurant than a hushed fine dining temple, despite the level of work happening in the kitchen. The restaurant also now has its own bar, added in 2025, giving guests somewhere to start the evening with drinks, snacks and its moreish pretzel bread.
There’s a confidence in that informality. Smoke & Salt doesn’t need linen, choreography or excessive explanation to prove the food is serious. Perhaps its Tooting location partly explains why it still feels overlooked. London’s tasting menu conversation remains disproportionately centred around Mayfair, Soho, Shoreditch and other familiar dining postcodes. But on the evidence of the summer menu, Smoke & Salt deserves to be part of that conversation.
Autumn incoming
The timing is particularly good, too. September marks the arrival of Smoke & Salt’s next seasonal menu, continuing the restaurant’s habit of completely refreshing the experience every three months.
The month will also see MasterChef UK finalist and Tooting local Kristen Dodd join the team for two collaborative dinners on 9th and 16th September. The £80 evenings will bring together Dodd’s own love of pickling and globally influenced cooking with Smoke & Salt’s established approach to fermenting, smoking and curing.
It feels like a fitting bridge between seasons. Summer showed exactly what Smoke & Salt does best: bold flavours, clever technique and enough playfulness to stop a tasting menu feeling like homework. Now autumn gets its turn. And at £80, in a relaxed dining room in Tooting, the bigger question remains difficult to ignore: Is Smoke & Salt London’s most underrated tasting menu?
Quite possibly.
