Please note, Wild Game Co has now closed. Time Out Food editors, MARCH 2020.
This is another long-term pop-up, in Fitzrovia, from Scottish game specialists the Wild Game Co. The restaurant has hard benches, shared tables, a chill counter and a blackboard menu like a hymn board. It’s about as sparse as a John Knox sermon. True to the name, they serve venison from their own estate in Sutherland, at the far north of the Scottish mainland.
The menu is a short one: simple platters of venison steak with chips (£12.50), venison burgers (from £6), a squash-based salad (with optional venison steak or venison carpaccio) and even stovies (£3.50). Scottish children are raised on stovies as they’re cheap, and sold from chip vans and caffs across the land. Here, this stew of mashed-up new potatoes is cooked up with onion, seasoned with pepper, and – in this case – mixed with venison mince to add flavour.
Venison steak, the fanciest and priciest dish, was very well executed. Tender in the centre, not too gamey-tasting, nicely carved and served with crisp beef-dripping chips and hollandaise sauce on a wooden board as sturdy as a drawbridge.
Despite the presence of the token salads, vegetarians are definitely better off elsewhere. The Wild Game Co may be more chip van than ‘Wicker Man’, but authentically Scots nonetheless.