StreetXO London
15 Old Burlington St, Mayfair, London W1S
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The infamous chef David Muñoz brings us to London his widely acclaimed Spanish restaurant StreetXO, where over 2.5 million pounds have been invested (£800,000 to refurbish the venue according to David’s peculiar taste, £200,000 for the electricity system, and £400,000 for the fume hood, for starters) as he has revealed recently on a TV show.

If this wasn’t enough, David’s new baby in Mayfair is costing him £40,000 a month just in rent. But this 36-year-old chef knows his stuff, as he turned his restaurant DiverXO into the only 3-Michelin-star restaurant in Madrid at the tender age of 30.

 

The third of the XO family

David has two restaurants in Spain: the 3-star DiverXO, frequented by celebrities and personalities of the likes of Mark Zuckerberg, among others, and its little sister StreetXO Madrid, where you can enjoy his eccentric cuisine at a more affordable price.

The provocative chef,  with his Mohawk and wooden spike earrings, has described his own food as “brutal”, a “gunshot to your head” and “like porno TV”, and claims to be “disgustingly democratic” as he assures never to care which celebrities are at the dining tables when he is in the kitchen. Nor will he do anyone any special favours to get a reservation, as absolutely no one can skip the booking queue, without exception. And they all better bring their wallet because they are no freebies here. This, he explains is for one simple reason: that him and his team each have a salary of 1,000 pounds a month. Although one might find it little hard to believe considering he cashed in over 6 million pounds in 2016 alone.

But the revolutionary chef, who claims to have not taken one day off for the past 10 years, has built himself into a legend. Credit where credit is due. Wherever he goes he is news, and the elites across the world wait patiently to try his kooky food.

He’s just opened his so-called low-cost restaurant in London, without even having its website up and running yet, and it’s already fully booked till the cows come home.

 

Let the cooking show begin

The decor is Muñoz through and through. Bold, bonkers, dramatic, and just so hyper cool. Every one is taking photos of every single bit of it, trying to capture the essence of StreetXO to be able to say been there, done that and instagrammed it.

The actual restaurant is in the basement and is an open-space concept, so you can see the chefs work their magic. They are all experienced, passionate chefs that David specially brought over from his restaurants in Spain.

It is a sight to behold to see them work as a team, so professional, focused, flawless. They move around the kitchen in perfect harmony and here and there you can hear them say “Oido Cocina”, the Spanish equivalent of “Yes Chef!”, in unison. Too cool for school.

 

Trust me, take the lift, just to visit the toilets. It’s decorated with images of dramatic skulls and I have to admit that it took me a while to figure out how to wash my hands!

 

But understandably, who would of thunk it, the cash required for the streetXO universe don’t grow on trees, so you can expect to fork out at least £100 per head, best case scenario. Let loose with the drinks menu and the bill will go through the roof like the bubbles in your Bollinger.

Fortunately for us mere mortals who have to keep a close eye on our pockets, they are now offering the more affordable “Hawkers Lunch menu”, a 3-course menu for a bargain £25 from Monday to Friday, at midday only. So if you have the chance, don’t even skip a beat and head straight over to Mayfair and strap yourself in for a culinary ride.

 

Expect to be baffled with the names of the dishes and the drinks, and to experience gin&tonics bigger than your head that you will want to hold with both hands.

Dishes from both the multi-starred DiverXO and StreetXO Madrid have been included on the menu and I just can’t wait to sink my teeth on them.

Now, this is food porn indeed, and God it’s damn tasty. The combination of textures and flavours are pure genius and every dish is even better than the last.

 

Napkin service issues

But as it can’t be all joy in the Lord’s vineyard, there is a big BUT here.
A but that will leave you two fries short of a Happy Meal, a but that I’m sure will cost David his star in the near future.
While every chef has been carefully recruited, trained and brought over to London to give us a Spanish lesson on how to get things right, the waiters have been casually hired, as they themselves let slip, and the service is far from cricket, to say the least.

Our first waitress is beyond aloof, this being and understatement, as she doesn’t give a hoot. No Hi-how-are-you-guys, no suggestions. Nada. She begrudgingly writes down what we order, bull-dog face to the floor, and leaves.
Great start.

We mention this to our second waiter, who is a lot nicer (phew!) and he says “Yeah, she’s just like that”.
Our faces, a picture of confusion.

We are then given a little bag containing a napkin and the waiter mysteriously asks us to not open it just yet, as we will need it for the next dish – they will explain later.

Oh, here our “who-is-just-like-that” waitress comes, with a wacky dish in her hands. And here she tries to leave without uttering a word.
But obviously we would love to know what this dish is about, it’s just too crazy for us to guess. And what do we do with the damn napkin?
We ask her to explain the dish for us, which she reluctantly does, bull-dog face to the floor all the way through.  We ask what the napkin is for. She says the napkin is just a napkin.
Our face, just a picture. More confusion.

At this point of our soiree we realised we had stopped talking about the food long ago. Then since our other more enthusiastic waiter asked us about the experience with the napkin (seriously, what is this freaking napkin thing about???) we told him about the total lack thereof. To what he naturally replied “It’s just she’s from Alicante”.
Puzzlement. Confusion.

 

We are still wondering about the napkin, sometimes it still keeps me up at night. But you know, we wanted to stay positive and even thought it might be part of the StreetXO show! But no. Just a botch job on their part.

They did attempt to make good by inviting us to taste this new crazy dessert they were working on, a fun spicy ice cream that was still in the lab but they asked us to keep schtum for the time being… work in progress.

 

Truth be told for the next few days I found myself discouraging my foodie friends from hitting this place up, which has left me a somewhat bittersweet taste, as I was very excited having StreetXO in town. And I do hope they work on their staff coordination, and look after the quality of the service the same way they do with the food. Sometimes the former is more important than the latter.

Or maybe you can just always request a waitress from Madrid instead.