An evening at Muse, a book, and a quiet conversation about where fine dining goes next
Some evenings announce themselves as significant before the first dish arrives. This was one of them. The counter at Muse, Tom Aikens’ intimate Belgravia restaurant, was set for a dinner that was officially a book launch for Oteque, the monograph celebrating Alberto Landgraf’s Rio de Janeiro restaurant. Unofficially, it was something rarer: a student returning to cook alongside the chef who taught him, in the city where it all began. Two chefs, alternating dishes (all dishes are pictured at the bottom of the article), one night, old affection, different worlds. And, as it turned out, one excellent langoustine.
Tom Aikens needs little introduction in British food. The youngest British chef ever to earn two Michelin stars, at just 26, trained under Pierre Koffmann at La Tante Claire and Joël Robuchon in Paris; his kitchen became one of those rare places that produced chefs who went on to define their own careers. Alberto Landgraf was one of them. He trained under Tom in London, alongside Gordon Ramsay, before going back to Brazil, opening Epice in São Paulo, earning a Michelin star, moving to Rio for a girl, and building Oteque almost from scratch into what many consider Brazil’s finest restaurant. The signed menu sitting on the counter said everything about the evening’s texture.
That counter, incidentally, is possibly one of the best seats in London if you want to watch two brilliant chefs work and pretend you are not watching.
The Theatre of the Plate
Tom Aikens is a genuinely talented chef, and Muse is his most personal project, a small, obsessive, technically ambitious restaurant that bears his personality on every surface. His head chef, Andrei Avrinte, warm and quietly gifted, had handled much of the preparation. The plating that evening was Tom’s alone, for every dish, every table.
What you watch at Muse is elaborate. The philosophy here is that ceremony and visual complexity are integral to the experience, that the arrival of a dish should be an event in itself. It is a conviction Tom holds fully and executes without compromise. His dishes arrive preceded by their names: “A Slow-Paced Life.” “Making and Breaking.” “All the Way from Rio,” a nod to the time Tom cooked with Alberto in Brazil. Between courses, the counter transformed. Objects arrived and disappeared: a bread basket, a crystal bowl of pebbles, a Laphroaig card, etc. Each course brought its own props, then cleared the stage for the next. It was theatrical and generous and entirely Tom.
The snail course, “A Slow-Paced Life,” was the one that stopped the kitchen. Tom plated it personally, and he took his time. First, one circle of sauce, then a second, then a filled circle of a third sauce at the centre, then the lettuce ball filled with snails, then the flowers and micro elements placed one by one with tweezers. Every table’s version required the same attention. While he worked, the rest of the kitchen stood still: no space, no movement, the whole room in a pause. The finished plate was intricate, layered, and visually complex. Nobody minded. You do not rush a man with tweezers.
It was good. Everything at Muse that evening was good. The skill was never in question.
The Silence of Alberto Landgraf
Six years ago, the journalist Kaja Sajovic wrote about Alberto (you can read it here). Her opening line has stayed with me: at a time when every fine-dining meal almost has to come with a story to sell, it takes a certain courage to take the approach Alberto Landgraf does. He refuses to serve you stories. He will, however, serve you dishes of extraordinary intensity and finesse, food that never announces itself and never needs to.
This refusal is rarer than it sounds. It is not simply a generational shift. Plenty of younger chefs have replaced one set of stories with another: provenance narratives, foraging mythology, the chef’s childhood reimagined on the plate. Alberto’s silence is unusual not just among his peers but within fine dining as a whole. He is one of the very few, at any level, in any country, who lets the food be what it is.
That night at Muse, surrounded by dishes named like memoir chapters, the point proved itself in real time.
Alberto’s courses arrived quickly – no ceremony, no props, no explanation. The glazed langoustine, with kale, soubise sauce and miso, was plated in seconds. He was done before I had finished looking. One beautiful piece of crustacean sitting in a clean foam, a few leaves of kale, done. I rarely order langoustine on its own. I find it too sweet, too one-note, a luxury ingredient that too often exists to justify a price rather than a flavour. Alberto’s is what I would order every time. He had done something precise and almost inexplicable to the sweetness, pulled it back, balanced it against the miso and the soubise until what remained was all the best of the ingredient without any of its excess. The work had been done entirely in preparation. There was nothing left to do on the plate. This is not simplicity for its own sake. It is the opposite of comfort food: it is the result of complete technical mastery, choosing to show nothing of itself.
I should make it clear that I have represented Alberto for seven years. I took him on because I loved what he did. That has not changed. If anything, evenings like this one remind me why. He is also, for what it is worth, one of the most genuinely cultured people in the food world: well-read, curious about art, design, philosophy, science, and management. It is not common among chefs. It shows in the food.
The lamb followed the same logic. Loin, sausage, slow-cooked aubergine, and a proper sauce. Three components that understood each other completely. The sausage alone was a statement: this chef uses everything, wastes nothing, makes something from what others might discard, and sends it to the table without apology or explanation. Its name on the menu was a list of facts: lamb loin, lamb sausage, aubergine. No story, just what it was.
And then the Brazil nut ice cream, one of his signature dishes, and the reason you understand immediately why something earns that status. A single quenelle, milky, clean, a perfect palate reset after the richness of the lamb. I have eaten a great deal of ice cream in the service of this job. This was the one I am still thinking about.
What the Evening Left Behind
Two chefs, one counter, one evening. A mentor and the student he helped shape are now cooking from completely different places. Tom’s language is ceremony, story, and the dish as an event. Alberto’s is silence, precision, the dish as fact. Both have their logic. Both reflect genuine conviction. The difference is not one of quality but of philosophy, and of what fine dining decides it owes the person sitting down.
That question feels particularly alive in London right now, a city we wrote about recently on this site, a city that has grown very comfortable with theatre and spending and the already known. Alberto’s four courses that evening were not a lecture on any of this. They were just a langoustine, a lamb, and an ice cream. Food that reached you before you had time to think about it.
Alberto trained in this city, in this chef’s kitchen. He left, went to Rio, and built something entirely his own. He came back for one evening, cooked alongside his mentor, and reminded everyone at the counter why they fell in love with restaurants in the first place.
Then he went back to Rio.
We kept the book. Published by Phaidon, written with Andrea Petrini, journalist, critic and founder of Gelinaz, and photographed by Robert Astley-Sparke, whose clients include Tom Ford and Cartier. It is structured not by course or ingredient but by five guiding culinary principles, and it includes carbon footprint data for all 78 recipes (merit of Reach Eat), a first in the world of cookbooks. It is as uncompromising as the food. (You can order the book here.)
