Chef Alex Webb, MasterChef: The Professionals winner, has opened his first restaurant in Wimbledon.  Nick wombled over to see.

Such a nice place, Wimbledon Village. I was once in a pub there having dinner and I heard someone behind me do a Michael Caine voice saying ‘This Chicken Kiev is blinding!’

I turned around and in fact it was Michael Caine. Only in Wimbledon could such a big movie star have dinner without anyone bothering him.

Alex Webb is a bit of a star too, from the days when MasterChef had Gregg Wallace, and not Diane Morgan’s Mandy, as a judge. Orion is his first restaurant, which has come about via the support of local investors and a crowdfunding campaign. On this soft launch night many of them seem to have come in to check where their money went.

A fair chunk must have gone on staff. Not only are there a lot of them, they are sporting rather natty aprons with leather straps and all personalised with the restaurant name. Not cheap, I am sure.

The room itself is very smart, if perhaps a little on the too large side, and I am delighted to see the tables have proper linen tablecloths and napkins. Alex was probably less than delighted to see the state I left my side of the table in after a failed attempt to juggle a piece of beef rib.

There’s a bar you can sit at for a light meal, and a seafood bar too, packed with all the best stuff. All very nice.

Chef Alex is on record as being very fond of classical French cooking, which is just as well as the French no longer bother to even pretend they care, and he likes British ingredients and a bit of playfulness. A cheesy donut amuse gueule is a little umami bomb that we eat in one bite.

One of his popular dishes has made it here, a take on the Cantonese dim sum prawn toast so beloved in a thousand ‘Chinese’ restaurants all over the UK. Of course he has upgraded it to use lobster, high quality prawns, and black sesame seeds instead of the more usual white. A chili and carrot puree is a lovely addition, the chili revealing its heat slowly and subtly over time and the carrot sweetness mimicking that of the lobster and the prawn.

Good to see pork cheek on the menu. These ‘odder’ cuts of meat had a renaissance some years back when chefs from Eastern Europe, where the ordinary citizen had to use the less fancy cuts owing to socialism, showed us how to make these cheap cuts tasty. 

Slow cooking is the secret and here it has made the meat beautifully tender ready to share the stage with some gorgeous truffle and potato puree. The truffle is almost certainly truffle oil, but it is the genuine stuff, not the cheap chemical imitation, so that’s alright.

Dish of the day is Lemon Sole, an excellent idea but it has to be shared between two and I don’t really fancy it tonight. Still as P wants fish, she has a cod fillet wrapped in ever-fashionable Hispi cabbage with pickled kohlrabi, white bean cassoulet and a dill sauce.

It arrives very cleverly plated so that the kohlrabi resembles fish scales. I have to say that I have never seen cylindrical shaped kohlrabi and I would have said that it was in fact mooli, a form of radish. I never won Masterchef though, so what do I know? Anyway it goes down a storm with P who loves the fish and beans cut by the sharply flavoured ‘scales’.

Beef short ribs went through a fashionable phase too, not so long ago, invariably smoked for hours over charcoal. Gosh how we loved BBQ , the whole anti-Michelin vibe particularly struck a chord with people that didn’t like using cutlery, which at the time was anyone under twenty five.

My rib has been slow cooked to perfection, the meat is fall-apart tender but it’s lacking a bit of oomph even when jus-ed up at table. Perhaps it is me subliminally expecting BBQ flavours, or maybe it’s just a shortfall in the seasoning. It’s good,  but I was expecting better.

The roasted carrot is a nice touch; beef and carrot have got on well together down the ages and a crispy bitter leaf salad is welcome. We both share lightly crushed new potatoes with creme fraiche and Parmesan, remarking that the cold creme fraiche is a bit too cold, and shredded brussel sprouts with butter and chives, nods to the festive season.

Desserts are a pain perdu, a lovely rich brioche tangy with orange and soaked in a burnt caramel sauce. Very French, very nice. ‘Alex’s Twix’ is a bit gimmicky, some shortbread coated in chocolate to resemble a Twix, it rather misses the point by being just one bar. I didn’t get much caramel either and the rich dark chocolate coating was too thick, very hard to cut, a Twix should be soft and chewy. The creme fraiche helped.

Overall it was a very good meal at a fair price, and while I think Alex may have gone a bit overboard too soon with the money spent on all the fancy trimmings, it’s refreshing to be served a meal that keeps the fussiness down and focuses on the essentials. Not something that can usually be said about Masterchef food, which increasingly seems to be aimed at teenage TikTokkers and not grizzled old gourmets.

Definitely a place the locals are going to love.

orionbyalexwebb.com

75-77 Ridgway
Wimbledon
London SW19 4ST