the menu.

boiled beetroot has a texture close to cured fish, so we cure it. purple and golden beetroot, cooked in a rose infusion with a little mascavado sugar, two days in salt, dried slowly, then brought back in its own juice with the rose infusion, vinegar and sugarcane syrup. sliced very thin.

under it, an oat cream we call our tartare sauce, whipped light, with lemon verbena and lemon. the curing liquid becomes a gel. the crunch is puffed quinoa and amaranth tossed in a powder of dried beetroot skin and rose. pickled shallots, and an oil smoked with the onion and garlic skins the kitchen would otherwise throw away.

the whole onion family in one dish. the onions are steamed in the oven with lemon, cloves, bay and garlic until soft and white, and the layers become cups. the white of the leek is poached slowly in olive oil with preserved lemon, garlic and coriander seed, taking no colour, then becomes a cream with oat milk and brewer's yeast. both are charred. the green of the leek is fried and looks like hay.

it has the feel of a French onion soup. the chutney changes with the season, fig and soy now, apple next. the broth is made from the onion and garlic skins, sautéed with sesame oil and brown sugar and deepened with rice miso, so nothing of the onion is wasted. an homage to Javi: Monika made the first stuffed onions in this kitchen with him.

born from the idea of comfort. potato is starchy, so the ferment is fed with 2% salt and 2% light muscovado on a ginger bug base, with bay, allspice, juniper and rosemary. after two or three days the potatoes are still firm, with a gentle acidity running through them.

a 'chocolate' sauce balances that acidity: THIC, treacle and a little coffee. over it, an acorn velouté that tastes almost of mushroom, and the mushrooms themselves, which change with what the forest gives: shimeji with sugarcane syrup, oyster mushrooms cooked with porcini then flattened and baked, shiitake marinated in lemon and cider vinegar and charred. an acorn and porcini crumble and a fermented garlic foam to finish.

a very gooey, rich black sesame brownie. the 'chocolate' is THIC, which is not chocolate, with our own black sesame tahini, treacle for an umami, slightly salty depth, and a little sugarcane syrup. the base is sweet potato, the yellow or orange kind, and the flour is carob with a little buckwheat, so there is no wheat in it.

a black sesame sauce made with oat milk, and poppy seed ice cream, one of the first ice creams Monika made for venn. in Poland poppy seeds stand for wellbeing and prosperity, which is what we wish for this autumn. black sesame and a nougatine of red laver from the Ria de Aveiro to finish.

a pear, but a prickly one. prickly pear is an invasive plant that has taken over a lot of farmland in Portugal, and we are one of the restaurants cooking it to push back. a warm fruit custard with the seeds left in for crunch, thickened with potato starch, with lemon zest and cardamom: a Polish dessert for cold days, fruit without milk or chocolate. the flavour is a little grassy.

a lemon caramel made from the lemon skins the kitchen keeps, boiled soft and then cooked for hours in syrup, zesty with a faint bitterness. on top, an almond cookie, gooey, soft and crumbly at once, made with buckwheat and the last of our almond and macadamia cheese, finished with fig leaf powder and marigold.