Review Shwen Shwen, Sevenoaks by Jay Rayner Illustration by Daniel Egnéus
Shortly after the main courses have been scraped down to the glaze at Shwen Shwen, a new restaurant in Sevenoaks celebrating the earth and fire tones of Sierra Leone, chef-patron Maria Bradford brings to the table various of the spices she uses in her cooking. Suddenly, lunch becomes a cheery game of show-and-tell.
There is a long, ridged yanghanyanghan pod, one of the ingredients for a west African pepper soup, which looks like a deflated cosh. There is African nutmeg and bush onion and a small bulb that yields up “grains of paradise” like gunshot. I chew one and get a rush of something akin to the citrus burst of yuzu, only with smoky black pepper heat. If it sounds like I am grasping desperately for reference points here, flicking through the hungry mental Rolodex, that’s not accidental. Some of these flavours are new to me and I am very happily adrift.
