Wine List of the Week: MATER1A
Douglas Blyde heads to Notting Hill’s MATER1A, where he’s impressed by a wine list that “does not equivocate” and Japanese-inspired cooking, masterminded by Victor Garvey, that’s “built on compression and command”.
“Garvey has had a bad year,” wrote Marshall Manson in Professional Lunch, recalling the headline launch – and equally headline collapse – of Midland Grand at St Pancras.
Six months from ovation to autopsy. The Times and The Londoner supplied the forensic detail. “Garvey is undaunted.” Undaunted proves accurate. MATER1A – from materia prima, raw material – is not a reprise. It is compression. Sixteen covers. A contraction from the forty-eight at SOLA. If Midland Grand was spectacle, this is voltage contained.
The logo, faintly Deathly Hallows by way of alchemy, signals distillation. Garvey designed the room himself, erasing traces of previous occupant El Pirata de Tapas. Entry is via a narrow passage edged with water and a runway of ingredients – mise en scène before mise en place. The dining room opens in pale glow: marble sliced to a millimetre, laminated into acrylic and curved so the stone reads like parchment lit from within. Gold above. Travertine below. And under it all, a low, constant bed of electronica.
Drinks
Devised by head sommelier Cristian Vega de Arona (formerly of Rôtisserie du Chambertin, Gevrey-Chambertin) the list does not equivocate. Burgundy runs the circuitry. Domaine Jérôme’s Nuits-Saint-Georges 2023 (£155) sets the base line; Harmand-Geoffroy’s Mazis-Chambertin Grand Cru 2016 (£878) tests appetite. Pillot’s Puligny-Montrachet 2023 (£236), Morey’s Chassagne 2023 (£219) and Bâtard-Montrachet 2022 (£960) complete the ladder. Structured. Intentional. Margin-aware.
Bordeaux leans Left Bank with bankerly assurance. Mouton 2005 (£1,650). Haut-Brion 2005 (£2,100). Sensible access via Rahoul 2018 (£95) and La Garde 2016 (£116). Champagne remains maison-led and commercially rational. English sparkling is priced in alignment, not as apology. The sharper move? Schloss Vollrads Riesling Trocken (£65). In London, that is not generosity; it is calculation. Austria follows with F.X. Pichler.
Japan enters via Aruga Branca 2023 (£235). America avoids cult hysteria, favouring Mount Eden, Mayacamas and Ridge Monte Bello. Burgundy by the glass around £50 turns prestige into turnover. And then sake, lining the walls like a parallel programme waiting to be triggered.
Dishes
Garvey cooks like someone who has already been through fire and chosen not to flinch. Two years in Japan stripped back his instincts. Europe rebuilt them with weight. Alongside, head chef Kaming Pang – trained at Le Vieille Tour in Brittany – brings Breton rigour, locking the brigade into high-tension service. Nothing wavers.
With Cristian Vega de Arona on paternity leave, drinks were prescribed by Daphne Chan. Formerly a Cathay Pacific flight purser – almost certainly front cabin – she now applies that altitude training to service. Her route north to south reads like a calibration exercise: Mana, Musu, and Lucky Cat in Manchester; Luca, then Head Sommelier at Fallow in London, and now The Peninsula. Portuguese manager, Ruben Santos, ex-Alex Dilling at Hotel Café Royal, brings added warmth and remembers faces.
Lunch began with Castelnau Blanc de Blancs 2009 – not a welcome drink but a tuning fork. It met fermented Marinda tomato water drawn into tokoroten noodles, resting in chilled tomato, saikyo miso and olive oil consommé. Winter Sicilian fruit reduced to its mineral edge. Garvey called it “the cleanest gazpacho of your life.” He is right.
“February in 4 bits” followed, served anti-clockwise. Cold-smoked sardine on Marcona almond bavarois with Shine Muscat and myoga. Sweet prawn tartare in a croustade with whipped tofu and sambaizu. Tuna cannelloni. A potato tube treated with rare seriousness.
The sequence works on pressure – fat met by acid, sweetness checked by smoke. Mr. Tanaka’s Atlantic bluefin, handled with ikejime precision, was the pivot. Akami sashimi and otoro tartare arrived with edamame, tosazu gel, ponzu pudding and roasted leeks. Sixty-year soy shaved at table fell like frost. Lean cut, taut and direct. Toro, expansive and velvet. Chan paired Trapet RQWR 2023 which threaded through.
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Madai followed, flesh left intentionally moist, carrying sake-washed ikura and the snap of kabosu. A dumpling of belly and kuruma ebi introduced sweetness before beurre blanc entered as a measured Burgundian aside. Jean-Marc Pillot Puligny-Montrachet 2023 met the dish with steel and length.
Frøya langoustines – outsized and barely warmed – were brushed with fresh wasabi and puffed rice, set against white curry and Japanese pumpkin. Chan shifted to sake: Iwanoi Yamahai i240 from Chiba, brewed with hard water which builds frame and drive. Another structural pairing.
Segovian suckling pork belly, braised forty-eight hours in the spirit of oden, dismissed any prejudice against pork in tasting-menu territory. Onsen quail egg, daikon and bamboo arrived with ginger broth poured from a warmed vessel into a custom spouted bowl designed to be drunk from. Ro-Rée 2023 from Louis Chèze cut through the fat. Then chawanmushi of Joselito ham with soy-cured Lafitte foie gras and truffle sukiyaki sauce pressed richness to its limit before pulling back. Boya Leyda Pinot Noir 2022, coastal and faintly ferrous, steadied the plate.
Maison Dupont Léon duck, dry plucked and aged fourteen days, stuffed with Christian Parra boudin noir and glossed with sansho-laced demi-glace, landed with depth and assurance. Biodynamic Priorat, Racorell El Mas de l’A 2021, fermented in concrete, introduced mineral grip.
Dessert returned to Kyoto. Kyo No Shizuku strawberries appeared raw, macerated, freeze-dried, set as bavarois and Chiboust, laced with Junmai Daiginjo sake jelly and sharpened with yuzu and sansho. Kacura sparkling sake lifted the fruit without adding weight.
Last Sip
This is cooking built on compression and command, delivered by a brigade operating at cruising altitude. As mentioned at the start, Garvey does not return unencumbered. Some will wait for answers. Others will simply eat.
Andy Lynes, writing on Smashed, admitted he was ready to summon Lucifer when closing “treats” arrived on a pentangle-like wooden interpretation of MATER1A’s logo – though he conceded the Devil might already have been in the building. For now, what is certain is this: for sixteen seats on Westbourne Grove, Garvey has tightened his frame. Whether this marks rehabilitation or simply reinvention will unfold in time. What sits on the plate, however, is 100 per cent assured.
Best for:
- Exceptional ingredients
- Burgundy and Sake
- Sets by “DJ Dan”
Value: 93, Size: 93, Range: 94, Originality: 96, Experience: 99; Total: 95
MATER1A – 115 Westbourne Grove, Greater, London W2 4UP; 020 3872 7240; MATER1A.uk
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