Artichoke just had their 9th anniversary some days back and had come up with a bunch of dishes to commemorate. Those items are - or should I say, were available for a short time on their menu. At least that's what they said. So we came over to try.
That's grilled halloumi, jackfruit, Thai basil and peanuts which felt like it was put together without much thought on if the flavours would synergise. It didn't taste bad. I just thought that the sum of its parts didn't exist and I was eating each item on its own.
We were particularly intrigued by something they called octopus donuts.
It's a ball donut, sugar crusted and stuffed with octopus and chermoula. Interestingly tasty even though I couldn't detect any octopus. The stuffings tasted like spicy tomato sauce sardines from a can. And oddly enough, it worked at least for me, as a donut.
The other thing we had was their wagyu carpetbag kebab. Oysters wrapped in thin slices of wagyu in a pretty kickass oyster chowder. Tasty. I know Artichoke has always been about honest "dude food" and I'm clearly not in much of a position or experience to criticize their choice of ingredients as being poorly conceived, this was to me a poor use of the cow because it could have been any other decent quality beef and I wouldn't have been wiser.
