Roka pastry chef Julien Philippe, with its signature £55 dessert platter

Roka, which opened on Charlotte Street in central London five years ago, offers a theatrical dining experience. Its cooking is centred on a Japanese robata, or charcoal grill, and diners watch the half-dozen chefs in action with clouds of steam rising from the food and the driving background music.

Created by the team responsible for the Zuma chain of restaurants – Rainer Becker is a German chef who worked for Hyatt in Asia, and Arjun Waney an Indian businessman who made his money in the US – Roka has also flourished, and now has branches in Hong Kong and Scottsdale, Arizona. A second London branch opens next month in Canary Wharf.

A vital ingredient of Roka’s success is undoubtedly its dessert menu. This is less dramatically executed than the main courses, but is every bit as intriguing. I noticed that the couple next to us initially waved away the dessert menu and then found it impossible to resist – they almost fought over who would finish the mango and almond cake with miso and caramel ice cream that they had (perhaps unwisely) decided to share.

Part of the menu’s appeal is in the simplicity and clarity of its layout. My eye was caught by passion fruit tamago, an egg-shaped dessert, and a chocolate tsubo , or pot but also several unusual ingredients such as crunchy jivara (a Valrhona chocolate blended with malt). Roka’s pastry chef, Julien Philippe, 32, is rightly credited at the bottom of the dessert menu.

Philippe trained as a scientist in Bordeaux before realising that he was not cut out for sitting at a bench in a laboratory. After training in hospitality, he moved to England and got a job at One Paston Place, one of the best restaurants in Brighton – where the only vacancy was in the pastry section. This turned out to be a stroke of good fortune. “Pastry chefs have far more freedom than the other chefs, who invariably have somebody above them watching everything they do,” he says.

“Obviously, I talk through everything I am planning with Rainer [Becker] but, if he is happy, I’m left alone to create my dishes and train my staff.”

Philippe has been at Roka since it opened and is also responsible for the pastry chefs at its sister restaurant Zuma. His challenge is to write dessert menus offering dishes with a uniform standard of execution – but taking into account the different preparation times they need.

Managing this latter factor will be crucial at Canary Wharf, as it will always be busier there at lunchtime than in the evening. Meanwhile, the small pastry section at the existing Roka sells up to 190 desserts on a busy night (out of 360 customers served). Whether customers order dessert or not depends very much on how efficiently they have been served their first and main courses.

“If the customers get their main courses in good time, then we have a chance to impress them,” Philippe says. He monitors popularity by checking which of the dessert plates come back clean. “We sell about 25 portions a night of what I call a raspberry and white chocolate usugiri, (Japanese for a thin slice). This dish combines raspberries, lychees, chocolate and rose water on a crème anglaise and seems to have a very wide appeal.”

Stronger Japanese influences pervade his coconut and passion fruit tamago and the ingredients behind the peanut, vanilla and chocolate tsubo – although Philippe candidly admits that this dessert was also influenced by what made a Snickers bar so more-ish.

Tamago is Japanese for egg and this dessert is a hollow coconut sphere into which the passion fruit is injected and then spills out as soon as it is sliced. But candied nori (edible seaweed) and a touch of salt really give the dish a lift – and the Japanese characteristics that Philippe is always searching for.

“I am always looking for the next thing. I’m not sure where the inspiration will come from but usually a couple of glasses of good red wine does the trick.”

Roka, 37 Charlotte St, London W1 tel: +44 (0)20 7580 6464 www.rokarestaurant.com

nicholas.lander@ft.com
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