Menuwatch: Behind, London

"Someone once said they don't eat green food, so I went to my head chef James and we had to work out a special menu," he says. "Luckily, no fish is green."

The opening of Behind was fraught with difficulty, being open for just 10 days before the second Covid lockdown hit at the end of 2020. After another 10 days, lockdown three meant it had to shut once more. Still, that didn't stop the restaurant from being awarded a Michelin star in its first year after hardly a month's worth of days in service.

"[A Michelin star] was not what I was aiming for," Beynon says. "It was so quick, but it just felt so amazing."

The name Behind comes from the idea that the restaurant is a look behind the curtain of cooking. The space is set up with a ring-shaped table where dishes are placed in the centre before being handed out to guests. Beynon wanted to create a sense of honesty with the open kitchen and has fulfilled his desire of making it a chef-led establishment.

"For most of my career I've been cooking fish in restaurants," says Beynon. He cites the ‘old school' style of menu where a fish course is served after a starter and before the main, but likes to play with that idea by including elements of fish throughout.

He likes to work with suppliers to decide what fish will be best at any given time. "They know better than me," he says. "It's like having day boats for what we use and when we use it."

A lunchtime meal may start with a series of snacks: a prawn consommé made from whole prawns gently simmered in wine, mackerel two ways – one combined with rhubarb, apple and plum and cured in a salted spice mix to create a tartare, and the second cured in olive oil. Then there are a series of mains showcasing different fish and preparations, such as the Chalk Stream trout wrapped in nori, or the halibut topped with a smoked kipper sauce with apple, chives, trout roe and pike roe. The sauces used show how Beynon not only uses the fish brought by the tide, but also its salty taste, taking an element of pride in using the natural salinity of his ingredients for flavour.

"I love using flavour bombs in my food," he says. "For example, [in a crab on toast] we use crab stock instead of salt and let the natural umami season the dish."

Reducing waste is also a key part of how Beynon forms his cooking, evident in a side dish of a small croquette-like ball carefully balanced on a golden tree to serve. Its unusual, shiny appearance is thanks to the use of fish scales in the crumb coating. "With the amount of fish we get in, we have a lot of scales," he says. "We don't waste anything – it's giving the customer more and respecting the produce."

The chefs make a fish pie inspired by Beynon's mother's original recipe, with curry powder stirred through. Once cold, they take pieces of the pie in balls and encase them in fish scales, which have been prepared by softening them in water then dried to make them a gelatinous texture. The balls are then deep-fried at a high temperature to crisp up the scales.

With Beynon's lack of menu comes a flexibility in choosing what to serve, but there are some favourites he returns to, such as a dessert based on a lassi, an Indian yogurt drink, in which he reduces milk with cardamom and blends with fresh coriander, or a spiced lavrosh snack, a thin cracker snapped into organic shapes and sprinkled with fennel, pink peppercorns, coriander seeds, sea salt and thyme.

The current dark chocolate dessert is laced with salt to pair it with the rest of the meal and chefs add oil from black olives and truffle to balance sweet and savoury. A choux pastry tuille covered in sea salt is balanced on top.

His love of the world and travelling is where he pins his dream – to open a chef's table in another country. As he financed Behind with his personal savings plus his own Shoreditch flat as collateral, Beynon certainly has the determination to achieve his goals.

From the menu

• Pea nori pike tart
• Mackerel, rhubarb, apple and plum
• Mackerel cured in a first press olive oil
• Spiced lavrosh
• Aged Chalk Stream trout, courgette and basil
• Roasted halibut, crushed new season Jersey Royal potatoes
• Line-caught pollock, Cox crab, fish pie
• Rhubarb and apple
• 82% dark chocolate, milk, sesame, black olive

Eight-course tasting menu, £98. Matching wine flight, £84

20 Sidworth Street, London E8 3SD www.behindrestaurant.co.uk