Al-Jawad Pike completes a temple to clean eating in Notting Hill

Ten years after launching their East London practice, Jessam Al-Jawad and Dean Pike of Al-Jawad Pike have established a signature tactile minimalism, achieved with natural materials, earthy composites and organic curves. So it seems appropriate that their most recent project was an au courant restaurant with a plant-based menu and sustainable concept that honours natural, organic, earthy ingredients.

After a popular residency in Knightsbridge, restaurateur Irina Linovich hired the architects to furnish Holy Carrot’s new flagship, on a chic corner of Portobello Road in Notting Hill, with putty-coloured plaster walls, dappled stone flooring and a textured ceiling that evokes fresh-fired porcelain. The architecture avoids hard angles so the space flows easily from the tan banquette by the front windows to the rear dining room, past a bar with organic shapes and a neon light above that traces its contours. Even the basement restrooms are moulded from earthy-red clay.

Paper-thin steel stools at the bar echo the custom lighting. They can move around the space, along with pedestal tables and chairs in contrasting walnut.

Linovich, a former Vogue Ukraine fashion producer, has worked with executive chef Daniel Watkins to craft a menu around organic and micro-seasonal produce sourced from regenerative growers nearby. Formerly at Acme Fire Cult in Dalston, Watkins uses intense heat to boost his preservative-free produce, like smoked mushrooms and carrots and coal-roasted leaks and corn. He does a coral-tooth mushroom burger with pink-fir potatoes and pickled mayo from his collection of fermented and pickled pantry items, made in-house to help achieve the lowest carbon footprint.

Holy Carrot’s dessert menu includes a sticky toffee pudding free of dairy and refined sugar. And the bar menu, a collaboration with Dalston’s very-hot A Bar With Shapes for a Name, touts a savoury dill-infused martini, along with natural wines.

www.holycarrot.co.uk

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