Chishuru London restaurant review: This is the most exciting food I've eaten in years, and the head chef is Irish

Irish Times

10-07-2025

Chishuru
    
Address
:
3 Great Titchfield Street, London W1W 8AX
Telephone
:
N/A
Cuisine
:
West African
Website
:
Cost
:
€€€€
It's not often a tasting menu floors you – but Chishuru has been top of my London list for good reason. Adejoké Bakare made history as the first black female chef in the UK to win a
Michelin star
, which she got in 2024 – and her head chef is Christine Walsh from Tipperary. Walsh comes with real pedigree, having worked at Enda McEvoy and Sinead Meacle's Loam, Galway's Michelin-starred restaurant that was one of Ireland's most influential
until it closed
in 2022. She was subsequently
the chef behind Éan
.
Her move to London is typical for Irish chefs keen to build skills – but here there's the thrill of working with spices rarely seen outside west Africa.
Chishuru in Fitzrovia is Bakare's first permanent restaurant, built off a Brixton pop‑up she started in 2019. She was born in west Africa – not a generic 'Nigeria' but a region of kingdoms. Her father is Yoruba, her mother Igbo, and she grew up in a Hausa area. Those influences run through her food – Yoruba heat, Igbo spice and Hausa fire‑cooking.
You don't need a primer on west African cooking to eat here. Bakare shows you – offering a sharp, modern take on overlapping traditions. The £105 (€123) tasting menu opens with a snack that sets the tone: a delicate tartlet of puréed celeriac, smoke and spice drifting out in a single, tight note.
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Bakare isn't playing at concept. She cooks what she knows: Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa. Photograph: Harriet Langford
Nothing looks familiar when it lands. Abàchà – a cassava salad – gives little away at first: shredded dried cassava over plantain ash, pickled daikon and a dressing of ehuru – African or Calabash nutmeg – for a lightly pungent lift. It's all about texture and control – a quiet smoke that doesn't swamp but lingers enough to let you know it's there.
Then Ṃóínṃóín – a dish that wrecks your sense of what beans can do. A soft, steamed black‑eyed bean cake sits on a bean milk salsa with anchovy‑red pepper sauce, touched with a gentle funk. On top is a scallop and monkfish boudin blanc – classic technique, clever spice – and then you're hit with toast soaked in beef fat, rich with that aged tang you would normally find under a dry‑aged rib cap.
We pass on the £68 wine flight and choose from a list that's short but serious – mostly Jura, Loire and Alsace, low‑intervention, fair prices, good by‑the‑glass options. A lightly chilled Brouilly – Domaine Crêt des Garanches (£47.50, about €56) – does everything you want with all this spice and depth.
Chishuru's interior. Photograph: Harriet Langford
The pepper soup is another highlight. It's more broth than soup – spiced with uziza peppers and finished with torched line‑caught mackerel. There's a clean heat – restrained but persistent – in a stock built from chicken, beef and fish bones, layered for depth without weight. Vegetables are sliced to near invisibility – radish, apple, maybe squash. It is, perhaps, the most intricate thing on the menu.
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Maneki restaurant review: A showy start gives way to a muddled menu
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Then the main courses; you get a choice, which is rare. We go for both the monkfish (mbongo tchobi) and the hogget (ayamase). The monkfish is poached, served with a blackened tomato and spice sauce that brings slow, earthy depth, balanced by pickled greens and confit plantain. There's heat, but it's measured.
Slices of hogget leg and shoulder, pink and yielding, sit on a green pepper and irú stew – thick, savoury, tangled with fermented locust beans, crispy tripe and smoked lamb's tongue, all deepened with fat and a steady heat that grows as you eat. It's an unfiltered expression of technique and place.
Dessert is egúsí ice cream – melon seed, usually found in stews – with meringue sponge, caramelised brittle and a soaked blackberry. It's refreshing and textural. The ice cream is subtly nutty, not too sweet, and the brittle has a delightful crack. It's a smart, well-judged finish.
Chishuru calls itself 'modern west African', but that barely covers it. Bakare isn't playing at concept. There's no forced nostalgia or claim to purist authenticity. She cooks what she knows – Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa – with discipline learned outside the system, using ingredients hauled from Brixton or Dagenham when the big suppliers fall short. It's personal.
This isn't one of those bloated tasting menus that lose the plot halfway through. It's lean, alive and narratively sharp – each plate knowing exactly when to stop. The €45 lunch is a steal – different dishes, same jolt of energy. Dinner is the full tilt; it's refined, original, and brilliantly creative without ever showing off. It's a sharp, precise record of where she comes from and where she's going. A thrill to eat.
Dinner for two with a bottle of wine and 12.5 per cent service charge was £289.68 (€339).
The verdict:
The most exciting food I've eaten in years.
Food provenance:
Seafood from Bethnal Green Fish Supplies and Fin & Flounder; meat from HG Walter, Billfields and Farmer Tom; and vegetables from Oui Chef, Shrub and Albion.
Vegetarian options:
Vegetarian tasting menu available.
Wheelchair access:
Accessible room with no accessible toilet.
Music:
Afrobeat, Amapiano and Fela Kuti.