Jikoni

Jikoni the award-winning restaurant on Blandford Street brings its team, food and hospitality to Frieze for the third time this year.

About Jikoni

Our “immigrant cuisine” cooks across borders and celebrates recipes and techniques from the maternal kitchen. Since opening in 2016, Jikoni has regularly made the Top 100 UK and London lists across the National Restaurant Awards, Hardens, Squaremeal and Timeout and recently was awarded a prestigious 7th in London for sustainability and gastronomy on the Nordic 360 Eat Guide.

In 2021 Jikoni became the first independent restaurant in the UK to be certified carbon neutral and has a pioneering relationship with a biodynamic farm, Waltham Place, just under an hour away from the restaurant. The restaurant was founded by chef and journalist Ravinder Bhogal and her husband Nadeem Nanjuwany.

Jikoni’s Menu at Frieze

In a natural follow on to our style of cooking at the restaurant on Blandford Street and the cultures and cuisines that feature on our menu, Jikoni at Frieze will run a special vegetarian menu.

We already know that a diet made up largely of fruits, vegetables, beans, legumes, grains and nuts is healthier for us and our planet, but we wanted to create a vegetarian menu for Frieze not to preach or to be militant, but instead to celebrate the joy of the vegetarian option.

We inherited our vegetable literacy and the knack for cooking vibrant, inventive vegetarian food without relying on the safety blankets of meat and fish from our long lineage of plant-eating ancestors, who perfected the art of making meat-free plates jangle with flavour.

We inherited our vegetable literacy and the knack for cooking vibrant, inventive vegetarian food without relying on the safety blankets of meat and fish from our long lineage of plant-eating ancestors, who perfected the art of making meat-free plates jangle with flavour.

The menu at Frieze celebrates our relationship with our dear friends at Waltham Place, who have supplied many of the nourishing vegetables and herbs on the menu. When the world feels like a wilderness, we find safety and refuge in nature - in the grounds of our biodynamic farm partner Waltham Place. Unfurling onions from their silky, clinging jackets, or gently pulling an unblemished heirloom beetroot from the ground feels extraordinary – they have stoically held their own against the elements, pests and blight – their presence in our kitchen is life affirming.

Our menu presents dishes that you’ll gravitate towards, ones that bring comfort and joy and that incidentally happen to be meat-free too. They are feel-good, life-enhancing dishes that nurture, nourish and lift your mood, food you never, ever get tired of eating, meals that bring equilibrium when the world seems fraught. Importantly they should transmit a bounty of love and warm sentiment while still eliciting oohs and aahs. And of course, if eating a diet that is mostly plants improves our wellbeing and the health of our broader world even in a small way…. well then that’s a cause for joy.