Robert Peston savours a feast of cultural diversity at Scully St James’s

Ambience: 4/5

Food: 4.5/5

After reassuring myself that it wasn’t an X-Files themed cafe — ‘the mousse is out there’ — it was with the highest of hopes that I made my way to Scully just off Haymarket.

The chef-patron, Ramael Scully, was head chef at Nopi, the Ottolenghi place just off Regent Street, which I adore. And my guest was my inamorata, the Standard’s beautiful and waspish Londoner, Charlotte Edwardes. If high hopes are often a recipe for disappointment, that was not true of this evening.

Scully is a restaurant that’s all about the small ‘c’ catholicism of the founder — and his multicultural upbringing. I was slightly taken aback when, even before telling us about the menu, the waiter volunteered that Scully himself is an Australian who was born in Malaysia to a mum who is part Chinese and part Indian and a dad who is descended from Irish and Balinese stock.

What these countries have in common is that the UK needs to establish deeper commercial ties with them, if we are going to make a go of Brexit. I could not suppress the thought that I was eating in Liam Fox’s vision of life without Brussels — and that it could all be a spectacular horlicks. Ramael Scully is Global Briton.

Oh me of little faith. Scully is the quintessence of what a UK rejoined to the Silk Road — in a room of Swedish clean lines, and functional comfort — should be. I have rarely been so excited by such a fusion of cultural influences, or at least not since my sister Juliet Peston was pioneering culinary eclecticism as a Soho chef 30 years ago.

Guests are encouraged to order five or six dishes to share, for two people. But there ends familiarity with the bog standard Asian fare. This is a menu that is short, changes with the seasons in herbs and vegetables and is powered by Scully’s imagination.

The glass-fronted fridge is a window on his culinary derring-do: 100-day-old beef coated in coffee and fat; a whole halibut being hung for five days. Then there are the apothecary’s shelves of herbs and spices: dried, pickled and then turned into exquisite confections, which made most of what we ate mind-blowing.

Three of our six dishes were as delicious as almost anything I’ve eaten. A tomato and coconut salad with green strawberries and tomato shrub was a dream of summer. The arepa, eggplant sambal and bergamot labneh was a pancake with aubergine and yoghurty cheese that is presumably Malaysian in origin but took me to South India. And the beef short-rib pastrami, horseradish and pistachio was the most delicate and succulent since the salt beef made at home by my Grandma Rose.

A pair of other dishes, octopus, salt-baked avocado and black garlic, and forbidden rice, vegetable XO and turnips, were only delicious, rather than outstanding. The Londoner says the black rice is too filling. Not for me. The octopus was the tenderest I have encountered.

If there was disappointment it was that we couldn’t see the point of crispy baby Sicilian artichokes. Yet if they had been served elsewhere I would have said they were fine. As for pudding, a frozen ginger marshmallow with rhubarb was the tangiest sweet and sour I’ll ever consume.

Scully is loud and boisterous: the music is Seventies and Eighties jazz funk and Prince, which makes me feel at home but won’t suit all; the central open kitchen is percussive. The crowd was considerably younger than me (though not the Londoner). We were asked twice, by our waiter and our taxi driver, which club we were going on to next, which I suppose was flattering, but all I wanted to do at 11pm was go home and dream of green strawberries. ​

Scully St James’s

1 Warm chickpea masala Free

1 Bottle of sparkling water £4

1 Turmeric pandan rockslide £14

1 Bloody Negroni £14

1 Arepa £8

1 Tomato salad £9

1 Forbidden rice £9.50

1 Baby artichokes £8.50

1 Octopus with avocado £15

1 Beef short-rib pastrami £18

1 Frozen ginger marshmallow £7.50

Total £107.50

4 St James’s Market, SW1​ (020 3911 6840; scullyrestaurant.com)