It is the sort of boundary-smashing, unfussy brilliance that’s low on cost and huge on flavour, impossible to categorise. Here, the cooking showcased is loud, in the sense of taste – optimum flavour is coaxed from every single ingredient each dish a (delightful) flavour explosion on the palate. John Bread & Wine) and his wife, Kate Mullinger Tiernan, opened Black Axe Mangal near Highbury Corner in 2015. In accordance, dinner’s soundtrack is also rowdier than the apocalypse, and so it should be.īorn from a temporary pop-up at Bakken nightclub in Copenhagen, Lee Tiernan (previously head chef at St. Of the many assenting adjectives suited to chef Lee Tiernan’s cooking, ‘loud’ is perhaps most fitting. The liberal seasoning of salty language and peppering of softcore glamour shots (older readers may be reminded of the Rude Food books from the late 70’) may be off-putting to some, but the step by step instructions on the key skills of grilling, smoking and baking that help define Tiernan’s food, along with the story behind his success, provide an insight into one of the UK’s most exciting and original chefs and make Black Axe Mangal an essential purchase.Entering Black Axe Mangal, a sonic boom of hard rock music is instantly noticeable. Black Axe Mangal’s origins as a pop up in ‘a grimy, graffiti-smeared Copenhagen night club’ where Tiernan cooked thousands of kebabs in a ‘ramshackle shed’ makes for entertaining reading.
As a child, he took fussy eating to such extremes (including hiding unwanted meals under a loose floorboard in the family home) that his mother consulted a doctor about his lack of appetite.
BLACK AXE MANGAL FULL
The autobiographical introduction is full of stories and anecdotes from Tiernan’s colourful past. As Henderson notes in his introduction, ‘Lee has borrowed my bone marrow, my cod’s roe, my pig’s blood, but they are not what shape him’. But Tiernan unquestionably has his own distinctive style. Dishes such as shrimp-encrusted pig’s tails with pickled chicory braised hare, chocolate and pig’s blood with mash and oxtail, bone marrow and anchovy wouldn’t look out of place on a St John menu (Tiernan has also included the famous St John rarebit recipe in the book). On the subject of bread, which he says is the ‘anchor’ of his cuisine, he quotes food writer Richard Olney and calls it a ‘symbol of sustenance’ and explains that his seven-page recipe for flatbread was perfected with the help of Chad Robertson of Tartine bakery in San Francisco.Īnother influence on Tiernan’s cooking is Fergus Henderson for whom Tiernan worked for over a decade, including a stint as head chef of St John Bread and Wine. His pizza oven is emblazoned with the faces of the rock group Kiss, he blasts a soundtrack of heavy metal into Black Axe Mangal’s intimate dining room (a converted kebab shop) and the flavours of dishes like the signature squid ink flatbread with smoked cod’s roe are turned up to 11.īut behind all the raucousness there is a considered, thoughtful and meticulous cook. It’s tempting to pigeon-hole Lee Tiernan, chef and proprietor of cult north London restaurant Black Axe Mangal as some sort of ‘rock ‘n’ roll chef’.
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