The London restaurant The Yellow Bittern serves stews and controversy

The Yellow Bittern, a restaurant and an 18 -seat bookstore near King’s Cross Station, is barely like the most divisor in London.

It looks more like a retired teacher’s farm: customers ring a bell to enter, then hang their coats on ankles through the door, while Irish stew jars simmer in the small open kitchen. The food is copious and hot, served with open jars of mustard. The decor includes books on Bertolt Brecht and an accordion.

But the kitchen and the atmosphere are not the only reasons why the best criticisms, chefs and gourmets of London came to dinner and say to themselves. Many are curious to taste the swirling controversy around his head stove, Hugh Corcoran, a deeply read communist and vocal Instagrammer who managed to enrage half the city shortly after the opening of the Yellow Bittern in October.

“I arrived at dinners or meals with people, then we all say:” Are we going to discuss the yellow bitter? ” “Said Margot Henderson, the chief of Rochelle Canteen in eastern London and a pioneer of modern British cuisine. “It is the speech of the city.”

A large part of this conversation comes down to class problems, as it does so often in Great Britain. The bittern is only in cash and open for two seats, at noon and at 2 p.m., only during the work week. Detractors have noted that few Londoners can participate in a meal at noon several times with a bottle of wine, and less can still justify one that easily costs $ 300 for a group of four. And the suggestion that they could – from a man with a drawer than life of Vladimir Lenin in his restaurant – triggered an onion of irritation.

“The food was good,” wrote Jonathan Nunn, the founder of Vittles, a food publication of London, in an email after having reviewed the Bittern, “but it is like asking the people of the Titanic if they ate well. It was too colorful by everything that was going on around him.

It is not that the bittern is unusually expensive: Mr. Corcoran, 35, is in a long line of London chiefs in the service of the Cheffy riffs on country food. Modern British cuisine took off in the 1990s and still reigns in London. This nose approach to the kitchen is the most important in St. John, a group of restaurants co-founded by Ms. Henderson’s husband, chef Fergus Henderson.

Mr. Corcoran – who is from Belfast, does not see Northern Ireland as a legitimate state and has a passport of the Republic of Ireland – is inspired more culinary from his home than from Great Britain. He was also influenced by France and the Basque Country, where he lived and cooked.

But the hubbub has less to do with its kitchen than with its carpage. It all started within two weeks of opening, when Mr. Corcoran, who also buys wine for the vast Bittern wine cellar, went to Instagram to urge his customers.

“Restaurants are not public benches,” he wrote on Instagram, puncturing people for having divided the dishes and distinguishing those who do not drink alcohol. “You are there to spend money.”

Mr. Corcoran’s post sent shock waves via London, who built his reputation on a reflex “Sorry, forgive me, after you”.

The critic after the criticism wrote Odes and rooms, hot holds and withdrawals. But the storm only seemed to feed media: manufacturers of tastes like Alice Waters have visited. Ms. Henderson, Nigella Lawson, Chef David McMillan and writer Hilton Als came for lunch.

To start, there could be soda bread with thick carpets of butter and a silky leek soup. There are main lessons like a rabbit and a poultry pie with a smoking golden pastry. Fat blood cells float on a tasty cushion, formerly a boiled sausage stew and boiled potatoes. For dessert, the cream could slide on an apple pie. Discount pants as digestives flow. Customers linger long after the owners are starting to wipe the tables.

Some enthusiasts see Mr. Corcoran and his co -owners – Lady Frances Armstrong -Jones and Oisín Davies, who directs the bookstore in the basement – as Mavericks leading to the idea of ​​exploitation that the customer is always right. Others celebrate bittern as a welcome reaction against difficult “brush” food.

But a much stronger choir of criticisms was happily laughed at the Bittern, calling it a network of performative paradoxes.

“The idea that it is a stew and that it is £ 20 and” by the way, we would like you to have a bottle of organic red Burgundy with it? “” Said David Ellis, restaurant critic at the level. “It is a kind of fetishization of a life of the working class that never existed.”

The owners see it differently. On the one hand, they said, they never said that the bittern was for the working class. “We have to manage a business,” said Corcoran. “The people who come here are people who can afford to come here.”

And communism, he said, concerns the rights of workers. These are the hours they want to keep, not during their customers for dinner.

“What is the alternative?” He said. “That we start a restaurant open seven days a week, and that we employ a lot of people and exploits their work?”

Mr. Corcoran also believes that Londoners should not have to rent their soggy wraps of noon. They should have time to eat and talk – to have a meal, not a meal.

“Is this the kind of society we try to create?” He said. “We have to fight for lunch.”

He thinks that criticism can be moved from frustration. The restaurant, he said, “reminds people that they don’t have two o’clock in the middle of the day for lunch.”

Lady Frances, 45, who publishes and also publishes Lunchon magazine, is the Guardian of Bittern conviviality. A graceful and well -connected host and server, she ensures that guests feel welcome when they sip and sup.

“To make a space that seems hot, for me, it’s the height of that,” she said.

But she also became a realistic node of the controversy: her father, Antony Armstrong-Jones, was the count of Snowdon, a renowned photographer and the husband of Princess Margaret. Critics used his pedigree to attack him as well as Mr. Corcoran, who is also his romantic partner.

He thinks it is at best reductive. “People pointing, like” Oh, the communist and the aristocrat? “” He said. “It’s a classic story.”

Lady Frances feels in the same way. She dreamed of helping to build a place where people feel welcome, warm and satisfied. She recognizes her wealth, but said that the emphasis on her family gives the impression that “as if I did not have an agency”.

Mr. Corcoran believes that his history is also exercised against him. “It is also an attitude of the same,” entertain us with your Irishman, but do not exceed your station and start to tell us what to do “,” he said. He prides himself on an impetuous and flawless commitment to the unification of Ireland and Northern Ireland.

“You have no choice in Belfast to be political,” he said. “Having controversial opinions and expressing these opinions is part of daily life.”

This is how he addresses his clients, who, according to him, are neither always good nor always false. (“In such a small place, it is important to define your style on day 1”, he said.) Instead, he considers them as partners: the guests keep the Bittern in business, in exchange for food and wine.

“I hope the food is good,” said Corcoran. “I am proud to make it good. But we do not expect people to come here because it is the best kitchen in London or something else. We expect people to come here because it is a friendly space. »»