Magazine

The pause before the plate

A glass asks for a pause before it reaches the nose, and Magazine in Hyde Park, London builds the whole meal around that kind of delay. The guest arrives through architecture first, then light, then the table, then the plate. The restaurant occupies the Zaha Hadid extension of the Serpentine North Gallery in Kensington Gardens, and it takes its name from the building itself, a former magazine structure turned into a dining room beside an exhibition space.

That inheritance sets the terms of the cooking. A room this open leaves a plate very little cover, so sequence and restraint do the work that decoration would do elsewhere. Since the gallery opened the space to dining around 2014, the kitchen has moved through more than one register, and the current one is quieter than its first: fewer components, more vegetables, and a shorter distance between what is bought and what is served.

Small plates under a white roof

The kitchen at Magazine has changed register since its early Japanese-influenced period. Around 2014, Oliver Lange led a menu that moved from sushi and sashimi into pork cheeks, sea trout with unagi, Black Angus fillet with yakiniku sauce, hamachi sashimi ceviche with mango and scallop crisp, and roasted monkfish with coconut and lemongrass. The current food is quieter and more shareable: harissa aubergines, Norfolk chicken caesar, slow-roasted cauliflower, bonfire potatoes, soda bread with seaweed butter, and poached apple. The format is small plates and à la carte, with a curated wine program beside the food.

The stated sourcing direction now leans toward local produce and zero-waste cooking. That does not make the room austere. It gives the pass a useful limit. A cauliflower can arrive slow-roasted rather than disguised; seaweed butter can carry the soda bread without a longer argument. The room’s best register is that same restraint: a plate, a glass, a view, then enough quiet to notice what changed.

Glass on three sides

The room does not need theatrical service to make its point. Zaha Hadid’s extension gives Magazine its working frame: white pillars widening into an arched roof, glass on three sides, and park light moving across the tables through the day. The building has an undulating exterior, and inside the detail is spatial. Tables sit in an airy volume rather than a tight dining room. Conversation carries without the place hardening into noise.

That architecture changes the craft at the counter and the pass. Plates leave the kitchen into a room already full of reflection, greenery, and pale surfaces, so excess would read quickly. The better gestures are measured ones: aubergine against harissa, chicken against caesar dressing, a pour held long enough for the glass to settle. Slow-roasted cauliflower keeps that argument going under the Serpentine roof.