by Richard Vines

Hip hotels need hip restaurants where diners can be served fashionable food by beautiful people.
    
Suka, at the Sanderson in London, fits the bill. The Philippe Starck-designed property is a celebrity hangout and the cuisine at the exotic new eatery, which replaces Alain Ducasse's Spoon, is Malaysian. The staff looks the part, and the customers are of the kind that fill Nobu each night. Let's call them Nobuddies.

It's easy to mock somewhere like Suka, yet the food is good and the place is as much a nightspot as a restaurant. (The ‘consultant chef’ is Zak Pelaccio, whose New York venues include 5 Ninth, in the Meatpacking District, and Fatty Crab.) Suka is next to the Sanderson's Long Bar, which helps explain the quality of the cocktails, and the amount of noise that seeps through.

You can eat indoors in a room designed by the Paris-based architect India Mahdavi or in the garden terrace, a space where you can see the sky through plastic sheeting and listen to a water feature whose splashing occasionally drowns the hubbub from the bar. It doesn't sound like a particularly attractive option, yet it's as close as you'll get to al fresco in most London establishments.

The menu is a bit of a muddle for the uninitiated. It's divided into First Plates, Soups and Noodles, Main Plates, Platters, Side Orders and Desserts. The servers -- I'm sure they wouldn't want to be called waiters -- have to explain the concept. At length.

Street Food

It's similar to Asia de Cuba, a sister restaurant under the same ownership at the St. Martins Lane hotel in London. That eatery offers a modern take on Caribbean cuisine and Suka does much the same for Malaysian street food. Beef rendang is made with short ribs and satay comes replete with foie gras.

The satay, made with ribeye that has been marinated in sesame and chilli oil, is very good indeed and comes with a decent coconut dip. But there are only three sticks, the foie gras element is minimal, and the price is an eye-watering £15.

As complicated as the menu is, it would benefit from some indication of the size of the dishes. A tasty omelette, made with Loch Fyne oysters and costing 14 pounds, is more substantial than the satay, and the salads are generously proportioned. The green papaya salad, with green mango, charred long beans, cucumber and peanuts in a ginger dressing, is good value at 11 pounds.

The crispy chicken salad, with deep-fried strips and roasted breast atop jasmine rice, slow poached egg and sweet-and-spicy dressing is another winner. A starter of slow-braised pork belly in chilli vinaigrette with papaya, roasted jalapeno and spring onions isn't to be missed. The dressing cuts through the fatty meat, while Vietnamese mint adds an unusual citrus flavour.

                         
Malay Textures

Among the mains, the devil curried chicken is especially good. Slow-roasted leg and thigh are served in a spiced tomato curry with a sesame and Chinese celery salad, and slow-poached breast comes with turmeric-pickled vegetables. Loch Fyne poached salmon comes on a bed of Chinese water spinach, garlic-herb yogurt and crispy dried anchovies: Lots of textures and flavours there.

Nasi ayam -- toasted jasmine rice and marinated chicken cooked with Chinese sausage and shitake mushrooms and served in a clay pot -- was less interesting. I recall it as a mound of rice. I couldn't summon the financial courage to order one of the platters, though Foie Gras Panggang (whole roasted lobe of foie
gras with a salad of mangosteens, onions, Thai basil and Vietnamese mint) sounds good if you have 75 pounds to spare.

Desserts such as Coklat Torte (caramelized bananas with chocolate and peanut mousse, topped with chocolate, Asian peanuts and crumble) are refreshingly calorie-heavy for such a sleek dining destination, and the cocktails were delicious when they arrived after what seemed an age. They cost £9.50.

Montego Glamour

The service is uneven. At times, it was hard to find a waiter. At others, people kept coming over and interrupting conversations to ask how everything was. A waitress crouched low to get my attention as I looked at my plate. A waiter, who looked and sounded like a Bond villain, was mildly menacing. Another staffer, who said she was born in Montego Bay, was engaging, efficient and glamorous.

Suka is owned by Jeffrey Chodorow, the restaurateur who took out a full-page advertisement in the New York Times to rebut a bad review of his Kobe Club by that newspaper's critic, Frank Bruni.

As tempting as it might be to court such controversy, the best I can manage is to say that Suka is expensive, even by London standards, and that the food is good, rather than great.

But it's a cool venue. In fact, it's a Malaysian Nobu.

    
Suka, Sanderson, 50 Berners Street, London, W1T 3NG. Tel. +44 20 7300 1444

 

                                               

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