Vesper has been open for two weeks, but Jackson Boxer is still not quite sure what the sunny spot on Exmouth Market is meant to be just yet. “The marvellous thing about a new restaurant is it’s yet to really discover what it is,” he tells Broadsheet. “It would be a contradiction to my whole philosophy of restaurants to define something which hasn’t yet fully come into existence.”
The chef’s latest project – following Dove in Notting Hill and Brunswick House in Vauxhall, as well as collaborative spots including Below Stone Nest, Taq and Henri – takes over the site that was Mexican restaurant Taqueria. Boxer has teamed up with designer Jermaine Gallacher (Bar Crispin, Bistro Freddie, Lant Street Wine) to create what he describes as a tribute to London: a cosmopolitan, democratic celebration of produce that’s comfortable in its own skin.
Boxer’s vision began with the room. “My starting point as a cook is kind of sitting in a space when it’s empty and just thinking, ‘What do I feel like eating in this space? What does this suggest to me?’” he says. He brought Gallacher, an old friend of 20 years, to the site early on. “Immediately I could see the light start sparkling in his eyes,” he says. “It started this amazing collaborative process of basically building this space out and realising what we consider it to be, its full potential.”
The light-flooded neo-industrial space now includes a casual bar area, dining counter, back room and vast terrace, with a newly built kitchen that has given Boxer the chance to make dishes he says had no natural home at his other restaurants. There is a charcoal grill, a larger pastry section and, crucially, enough room to make fresh pasta. “For me, building a new kitchen is really exciting because it’s just like, wow, I can cook whatever I want,” he says.
The menu, which changes daily, promises a broad range of creative, idiosyncratic dishes designed to break the mould. There might be butterflied gurnard with silky albufera congee; a salad of cucumber and Galia melon spiked with spicy cashew salsa macha; indulgent baked crab fat rice; or plump squid stuffed with shrimp and blood sausage.
One plate of chicken liver agnolotti with madeira jus took four months to perfect. Inspired by a dish at New York bistro Claud in New York, Boxer’s take turns the dish into something closer to a soup dumpling, with chicken liver parfait sealed inside pasta so that it melts when bitten. “I thought that was a very clever idea until I tried to do it and realised that it was basically impossible,” he says. “Cue four months of basically making the same pasta every single day.”
Elsewhere, a dry-aged chuck eye with sauce Diane, smoked chestnut mushrooms and baked saffron rice for £50 to share is great value by design. “We’ve been thinking a lot about process,” says Boxer, “about using cuts and working with produce which we think is amazing, but is perhaps slightly undervalued, is less obvious, but how we can use all of our imagination and experience and technique to really champion those.”
Any offcuts from beef dishes are turned into an off-menu burger, of which there’ll only be 10 available on a first-come, first-served basis each day. The juicy blush pink patty is brushed with beef stock infused with parmesan rinds during cooking before being layered with gorgonzola cheese and served with a rich cognac-infused peppercorn sauce.
Despite the hype the burger will inevitably generate – a similar burger at Dove has become a viral hit – Boxer does not want Vesper to become another tick-box London destination. Instead, he’s encouraging spontaneity by reserving a large section of the restaurant for walk-ins. Part of this is tied to the charm of Exmouth Market, which the chef sees as a rare slice of the city that has retained its personality. “It has this amazing sense of being historic London and being very unchanged,” he says. “It feels very industrious, very used and lived in.”
While it figures out its identity, Boxer wants Vesper to sit somewhere between an occasion destination and a place for everyday use. “We want people to be able to just drop in for a quick meal or a drink or a snack or a full meal or a blowout,” he says. “We want that sense of spontaneity.”
Overall, the chef just wants guests to feel looked after. “Restaurants exist to spread joy,” says Boxer. “There’s almost no equivalent in urban life to the restaurant in its ability to give you the opportunity to be genuinely nurtured, loved and cared for by people you’ve never met before.”
Vesper
8–10 Exmouth Market, EC1R 4QA
Hours:
Tue to Sat midday–2.30pm, 5.30pm–10pm
