12th April 2013
Summer 2008: Raw revolution
Bringing the concept of raw food to London's East End, recently opened SAF Restaurant is taking a fresh and innovative approach to fine dining
With dishes such as beetroot ravioli and cauliflower risotto littering the menu, many chefs may disregard SAF as just another trendy vegan haunt. While the food is undeniably vegan, a closer look reveals the use of intriguing ingredients such as macadamia ‘cheese', hemp praline and fennel pollen, and 10 minutes spent with the brains behind the menu, executive chef Chad Sarno, leaves you in no doubt of the innovative and inspiring creations being served here.
Although new to the UK, SAF – which stands for ‘simple authentic food' and translates to ‘pure' in Turkish – is a restaurant concept already proving a success in Turkey and Germany where LifeCo, the ‘raw lifestyle' company behind the London opening, owns three restaurants and a quick service outlet. Sarno, who hails from the US where he first established his raw food restaurant consultancy, has overseen the opening of each restaurant, and has brought all that experience with him to the new Shoreditch based venture.
While the menu at SAF is 100% vegan, it is also 80% raw, which, says Sarno, is what makes it a first for London. “It's fine dining in terms of the quality of service, knowledge of the staff and quality of product coming out of the kitchen. I expect we'll have quite a big celebrity base once we're established as there are only a few high end vegetarian or vegan places in London and I believe we are the only raw and vegan place.”
Designed to be a trendy hot spot, its stylish set up includes an open air courtyard at the back of the restaurant that seats around 30, with planter boxes growing edible flowers and herbs for the kitchen. The courtyard leads to the LifeCo headquarters, where more interested diners can find out how to lead a ‘raw lifestyle'. Inside the restaurant, which caters for a further 80-90 covers, a theatre style kitchen dominates the space. Here the chefs plate up the delicate creations in full view of diners, who can either sit at the chef's table, on leather banquettes in front of the pass, in the main restaurant space, or at bistro style seating in the bar area.
From the sustainable harvested wood used for the stylish interior to the energy efficient equipment installed in the kitchen, the restaurant has clearly been created with good ethics and clean living in mind. All produce is carefully sourced with the priorities of “local and organic, then local, then organic if possible”. Even the drinks menu has good credentials. “We have a ‘green' bar concept, where our sommelier and mixologist Joe McCanta has hand sourced organic, biodynamic wines and hard to find spirits,” explains Sarno.
Everything is made in house, from the syrups in the bar to the sauces in the restaurant: “Nothing is bought in pre- packaged”.
For the considerable mise en place required, there is a large production kitchen downstairs, with a bespoke walk-in cool room that allows the team of eight chefs to access produce from glass sliding doors at the front, or by walking into the room itself. There is just one conventional oven in the whole restaurant but six food dehydrators, which Sarno refers to as his “raw ovens”. The dehydrators keep the food under 48ºC, a requirement of ‘raw' food ensuring enzymes remain intact. They are used both in the preparation of the food – from drying peppers which are then powdered, to creating sweet potato latkas – as well as for warming food before service.
The restaurant tempers its own chocolate and truffles and makes its own specialist sugars – orange, lemon, mint, rose and beet sugars – used for both taste and aesthetics. A lot of wild food is used, sourced from around the country. “I have guys we use locally who roam the countryside foraging for wild produce such as chervil stem, which we use in our miso soup.”
Being a vegan restaurant, no dairy produce is used, yet ‘cheese' and ‘ice cream' feature heavily on the menu, made possible using a number of speciality techniques. “The cashew cheese and cream is like a mother sauce for raw cuisine,” explains Sarno. The first step in making the cheese is soaking the nuts in a mixture of vinegar and oil.
“This brings out the enzymes, which from a nutritional point of view makes them easier to digest and from a gastronomic side of things, easier to manage.” The nuts are then puréed and mixed with probiotics and purified water. This mixture is covered and left to culture in a warm place overnight. Spices and seasonings are then added to create an authentic cheese taste. “There's no dairy involved, but it's made in the same way as cheese – by adding enzymes and cultures and allowing it to go through the culture process.”
Almond and macadamia cheese is made in the same way, and popular ‘cheese' dishes on the menu include almond cheese rolled in fennel pollen and candied pecans.
The cheese mixes are also used as a base for desserts, such as apple cheesecake, which is made of a coconut and lemon base with a sweetened cashew cheese top. “We use agave syrup – a sweetener from a cactus plant – which has the lowest glycaemic index compared to other sweeteners, and a really clean taste; similar to corn syrup.”
SAF's dairy free ice cream also makes use of the ‘mother sauce': “The base for our ice cream is made from either a cashew, almond or coconut milk base, adding cocoa oil for fat, and a bit of algae to stabilise. After this we add various natural ingredients depending on the flavour we are creating and use a Paco Jet to aerate before freezing.”
Sarno uses several key methods to create different tastes and textures with raw food. His mushroom dish for example delivers a meaty texture and taste. “We make a purée from walnuts and mushroom, adding oils and pine nuts to give it a meaty quality. The purée is formed into a croquette and then dehydrated for six hours.” This mushroom ‘patty' is served with king oyster mushrooms, which have been marinated in salt for several hours. “The salt opens up the pores of vegetables, especially mushrooms, so you don't have to cook them. We just dehydrate them for an hour before service, to warm them through and concentrate the flavour,” explains Sarno.
“There's a number of ways to make food taste cooked and they're all age old techniques, many from other cultures. People were dehydrating food 2,000 years ago by leaving bread in the sun; or pickling and pressing produce like Korean kimchi.”
He admits to having learnt a lot through trial and error. “This will be my 14th restaurant opening – and not all of them have worked. I've opened four other raw/vegan restaurants and spent two years researching these ingredients.”
He says he first got interested in raw food for health reasons. “Nutrition is the foundation but it's now the innovation and creativity on the gastronomic side that pushes my mind. Raw food is new territory; you know when you create a dish you're the first to do so. It's the most innovative cuisine out there at the moment, aside from molecular gastronomy perhaps.”
Although new to the UK, SAF – which stands for ‘simple authentic food' and translates to ‘pure' in Turkish – is a restaurant concept already proving a success in Turkey and Germany where LifeCo, the ‘raw lifestyle' company behind the London opening, owns three restaurants and a quick service outlet. Sarno, who hails from the US where he first established his raw food restaurant consultancy, has overseen the opening of each restaurant, and has brought all that experience with him to the new Shoreditch based venture.
While the menu at SAF is 100% vegan, it is also 80% raw, which, says Sarno, is what makes it a first for London. “It's fine dining in terms of the quality of service, knowledge of the staff and quality of product coming out of the kitchen. I expect we'll have quite a big celebrity base once we're established as there are only a few high end vegetarian or vegan places in London and I believe we are the only raw and vegan place.”
Designed to be a trendy hot spot, its stylish set up includes an open air courtyard at the back of the restaurant that seats around 30, with planter boxes growing edible flowers and herbs for the kitchen. The courtyard leads to the LifeCo headquarters, where more interested diners can find out how to lead a ‘raw lifestyle'. Inside the restaurant, which caters for a further 80-90 covers, a theatre style kitchen dominates the space. Here the chefs plate up the delicate creations in full view of diners, who can either sit at the chef's table, on leather banquettes in front of the pass, in the main restaurant space, or at bistro style seating in the bar area.
From the sustainable harvested wood used for the stylish interior to the energy efficient equipment installed in the kitchen, the restaurant has clearly been created with good ethics and clean living in mind. All produce is carefully sourced with the priorities of “local and organic, then local, then organic if possible”. Even the drinks menu has good credentials. “We have a ‘green' bar concept, where our sommelier and mixologist Joe McCanta has hand sourced organic, biodynamic wines and hard to find spirits,” explains Sarno.
Everything is made in house, from the syrups in the bar to the sauces in the restaurant: “Nothing is bought in pre- packaged”.
For the considerable mise en place required, there is a large production kitchen downstairs, with a bespoke walk-in cool room that allows the team of eight chefs to access produce from glass sliding doors at the front, or by walking into the room itself. There is just one conventional oven in the whole restaurant but six food dehydrators, which Sarno refers to as his “raw ovens”. The dehydrators keep the food under 48ºC, a requirement of ‘raw' food ensuring enzymes remain intact. They are used both in the preparation of the food – from drying peppers which are then powdered, to creating sweet potato latkas – as well as for warming food before service.
The restaurant tempers its own chocolate and truffles and makes its own specialist sugars – orange, lemon, mint, rose and beet sugars – used for both taste and aesthetics. A lot of wild food is used, sourced from around the country. “I have guys we use locally who roam the countryside foraging for wild produce such as chervil stem, which we use in our miso soup.”
Being a vegan restaurant, no dairy produce is used, yet ‘cheese' and ‘ice cream' feature heavily on the menu, made possible using a number of speciality techniques. “The cashew cheese and cream is like a mother sauce for raw cuisine,” explains Sarno. The first step in making the cheese is soaking the nuts in a mixture of vinegar and oil.
“This brings out the enzymes, which from a nutritional point of view makes them easier to digest and from a gastronomic side of things, easier to manage.” The nuts are then puréed and mixed with probiotics and purified water. This mixture is covered and left to culture in a warm place overnight. Spices and seasonings are then added to create an authentic cheese taste. “There's no dairy involved, but it's made in the same way as cheese – by adding enzymes and cultures and allowing it to go through the culture process.”
Almond and macadamia cheese is made in the same way, and popular ‘cheese' dishes on the menu include almond cheese rolled in fennel pollen and candied pecans.
The cheese mixes are also used as a base for desserts, such as apple cheesecake, which is made of a coconut and lemon base with a sweetened cashew cheese top. “We use agave syrup – a sweetener from a cactus plant – which has the lowest glycaemic index compared to other sweeteners, and a really clean taste; similar to corn syrup.”
SAF's dairy free ice cream also makes use of the ‘mother sauce': “The base for our ice cream is made from either a cashew, almond or coconut milk base, adding cocoa oil for fat, and a bit of algae to stabilise. After this we add various natural ingredients depending on the flavour we are creating and use a Paco Jet to aerate before freezing.”
Sarno uses several key methods to create different tastes and textures with raw food. His mushroom dish for example delivers a meaty texture and taste. “We make a purée from walnuts and mushroom, adding oils and pine nuts to give it a meaty quality. The purée is formed into a croquette and then dehydrated for six hours.” This mushroom ‘patty' is served with king oyster mushrooms, which have been marinated in salt for several hours. “The salt opens up the pores of vegetables, especially mushrooms, so you don't have to cook them. We just dehydrate them for an hour before service, to warm them through and concentrate the flavour,” explains Sarno.
“There's a number of ways to make food taste cooked and they're all age old techniques, many from other cultures. People were dehydrating food 2,000 years ago by leaving bread in the sun; or pickling and pressing produce like Korean kimchi.”
He admits to having learnt a lot through trial and error. “This will be my 14th restaurant opening – and not all of them have worked. I've opened four other raw/vegan restaurants and spent two years researching these ingredients.”
He says he first got interested in raw food for health reasons. “Nutrition is the foundation but it's now the innovation and creativity on the gastronomic side that pushes my mind. Raw food is new territory; you know when you create a dish you're the first to do so. It's the most innovative cuisine out there at the moment, aside from molecular gastronomy perhaps.”