London's Tratra Reflects The Chef's Origins

Tratra (slang meaning 'tradition with a modern flavor') is the new restaurant in the double-height basement of the Boundary in Shoreditch. It's the stage for acclaimed French chef and food writer Stéphane Reynaud, who grew up in a family of pig farmers and butchers in the Ardeche region of France and who wanted to design a menu that reflects his origins. 'Basement' doesn't do the space justice: the room was originally designed by Terence Conran, who knows how to style a restaurant.

This bodes well for the rest of our meal.

As does the enthusiasm of the waiter, who appears to have tried every dish and affirms our choices with an unusual (for Europe) enthusiasm. After ordering, we feel we have excellent taste.

We start with the confit (there are several varieties, and you can buy them to eat at home as well) of duck and orange, and it's masterful. Again, it's a kick of sweet and savory, gently spicily fragrant with orange. We can't eat it all but when our main courses are brought, we're reluctant to relinquish it. We ask for it to be left on the table just in case we can manage some more.

For our main, we have the suckling pig with dates, which arrives on a little base of creamy mashed potato. It's a triumph both of taste and texture, soft and yet almost chestnutty in its richness. The flavor is intense, and it's the type of dish we can't help but gobble up, scraping the last vestiges from the plate. We also had some fish.... Yes, also succulent, fresh and flavorful, but the suckling pig hogged all the limelight.

To finish we have pavlova, that dessert of pure joy, and it is perfection, crisp meringue sharpened with berries and softened with cream. It's feather light, so even though we thought we couldn't eat any more, it turns out we can.