Levente Koppány: 'I’m happy to be back in London'

For S.Pellergino Young Chef Academy Competition finalist Levente Koppány, London is a second home, having previously spent time in the UK capital and loved it. So when the chance came to head up the kitchen at a brand new Hungarian restaurant there, he jumped on a plane quicker than you can say palinka.

“I just arrived two weeks ago,” says the Hungarian chef when we speak in late spring. “I’ve been 10 days in quarantine. Now we are working crazy hours without days off to sort everything out.”

It sounds like a suitably frenetic re-introduction to London life then. The reason for his relocation from Budapest is the Turul Project, a new Hungarian fine-dining concept that started out as a pop-up and now has a bricks-and-mortar location in busy Haringey, North London.

It opened in June, serving 40 covers for dinner, with an array of dishes inspired by traditional Hungarian cuisine. There’s mangalitsa pork terrine, monkfish 'paprikas' with a little lasagna of sour cream and cottage-style cheese – the dish would traditionally be served with catfish, but Koppány senses the Brits aren’t too keen on it – and a rich walnut dumpling with walnut ice cream and vanilla custard.

Almost all of the dishes and all of the wines are Hungarian, and he plans to launch a tasting menu in the autumn alongside the à la carte. The only problem is getting the products.

“It's hard to get Hungarian ingredients here because of Brexit,” he says. “But if it's reasonable to bring something from Hungary, we are managing to do that, for example we are using one of the best Hungarian paprika powders, Hungarian wines, and Hungarian oils. But the meat and fish, we are trying to get it locally, and trying to be sustainable, as much as we can. In the [S.Pellegrino Young chef Academy] competition, one of my missions was sustainability and I'm looking for that here as well. Also we don't want to forget that we are in London, we are in England. So we are trying to use the best British ingredients at the same time.”

So, on to the competition – Koppány, finalist for the Central Europe region, who will be mentored by Italian chef Luigi Taglienti, says he was disappointed that the Grand Finale had to be postponed until October, but he understands the precautions were necessary. And on the way to the Grand Finale in Milan, he’ll be stopping off in Budapest to catch the fish for his dish of rainbow trout with chervil, forest mushrooms and wild garlic.

But for the moment he’s focused on making the Turul Project successful and planting a flag for Hungarian cuisine in London.

“Many nations have their own restaurants [in London], but you can't really find Hungarian restaurants at the moment. Except in Hungary, there are no other restaurants where they're going to serve food like this."