Fay Maschler reviews Coya

In the war — restaurant gossip that may come as news to them — between Richard Caring and Arjun Waney for the monopoly of Mayfair clubs and restaurants, Waney has launched the latest salvo with the opening of Coya on Piccadilly. The ground floor bar and terrace is a member’s club whilst the 100-seater basement restaurant is open to the public.

Clubs are obviously an important signifier of exclusivity. Caring bought Mark Birley’s group; Waney, co-founder of Zuma and Roka, took over the Arts Club on Dover Street.

Both chaps could be described as entrepreneurs rather than restaurateurs but in this instance Waney has sniffed the wind and decided that it is coming from Peru. Nobu Matsuhisa, in his more Japanesy way, figured that out 25 years ago, but recently in London Ceviche, Tierra Peru, Lima and Sushisamba have driven home the point.

Ceviche (marinated and diced raw fish), tiraditos (thinly sliced raw fish) and small skewers of grilled meat and fish called anticuchos appeal to the dainty eater with a handspan waist, and pisco sours please everyone. In fact the prevalence of pisco sours with their disarming air of innocence is one of the best things to come out of this fashion. A study of their heights and depths and the contribution of in-house infusions can be made at Coya’s dedicated basement bar.

The extensive dining area resembling an underfunded opera set has at one end the parrillada (charcoal grill) and in the middle a ceviche and tiradito bar with seating that looks too low for comfortable eating. On the first visit at lunchtime to a more or less empty restaurant, my pal Caroline and I were led to a dark corner table near lavatories and a door open to the basement area. We asked to move but elsewhere proved uncomfortable, as there were problems with the heating system — ie there was no heating, and the open door wasn’t helping much. We asked for our coats to wear but it is hard to enjoy a meal when you are turning blue with cold, so I went back for lunch with other friends a few days later.

This time we requested a table near the grill so we were warm at least on one side — it was still generally chilly — but we were assailed by noxious fumes seemingly emanating from the terracotta tiles on the other. The waitress cheerfully passed off the low temperature — she volunteered that she had just shut an open window — and the cleaning fluid stench as teething problems. Teething problems are why many restaurants have a soft opening period with reduced prices…

Head chef at Coya is Sanjay Dwivedi who — a topical piece of info here — cooked for The Rolling Stones on their 1998 Bridges to Babylon tour, but more relevantly was chef for more than a decade at Zaika in Kensington. A fact-finding tour of his own in South America and experience at Astrid Y Gastón in Lima (one of The World’s 50 Best) has him revved up with Peruvian fervour.

Ceviche of sea bream with Amarillo chilli, crispy corn and coriander and a punchy tiraditos of yellowtail with green chilli, coriander and lime were thoughtfully assembled and pretty as pictures. You are supposed to drink up the leche de tigre (tiger’s milk) that is the remains of the ceviche marinade but we didn’t.

Salmon is now such a pervasive menu item that I suspect it’s best left out, an intuition confirmed by a grey-edged salmon, celery juice, ginger, daikon and wasabi tobiko ceviche and a boring salmon anticucho.

In items such as ox heart skewer and baby back ribs from the charcoal grill, the spices came across as insufficiently cooked out, lacking the aura of faded elegance and ennui that the surroundings — if it weren’t so cold — might invoke. Much better were brisk burnished octopus tentacles with olives and potatoes, and the skewer of mackerel and patatas bravas licked with huancaina sauce, which were like the crunchiest nubbly bits from a pan of roast potatoes anointed with a layer of spicy creamy cheese. Quinoa with coriander, mint and pomegranate was a sparky manifestation of this blameless pseudocereal.