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The £110 takeaway – that sells out in 30 seconds

Uber Eats has launched a five-course menu with L’Enclume chef Simon Rogan – here’s how it tastes

The bell rings, but it isn’t my typical lazy midweek delivery. Instead of a pizza or curry, the food is a little more elevated – chicken offal doughnuts, “Park House pudding glazed in birch sap” and a 51-ingredient salad, “Aynsome offerings”, with Morecambe Bay shrimp custard. 
Simon Rogan is one of Britain’s most celebrated chefs – his restaurants have garnered eight Michelin stars – but most Britons must travel miles to visit his flagship, L’Enclume, in Cumbria (he has the 12-seater Aulis in London). Now Rogan has teamed up with Uber Eats for a special two-night series of deliveries on 18 and 19 September. 
The pandemic changed Britain’s food scene in a number of ways, from shifting weekday patterns (Fridays are a struggle in central London) to the dreaded QR code menu. But arguably the greatest shift is the continued rise of takeaways. According to an Institute for Fiscal Studies report released earlier this year, the average adult consumed 270 calories from takeaways per week pre-pandemic, a figure that’s risen to 400. 
We are scoffing ever more food arriving in cardboard and styrofoam, but perhaps the surprising thing is that a lot of that food is of very high quality. Five years ago, who would have considered a Michelin-starred dinner arriving at the door? Not me. 
But as top chefs pivoted in lockdown, many realised it was another handy way of making money. Tommy Banks runs two Michelin-starred restaurants in Yorkshire, yet he still sells food boxes via Made in Oldstead, offering multi-course menus delivered by overnight courier throughout the UK. Likewise, Aktar Islam of Michelin-starred Opheem in Birmingham, launched Aktar at Home, a meal kit that has “now become a bona fide business,” he says, allowing him to “target a different demographic.” Dishpatch, founded in 2020, brings “high-quality restaurant food into more people’s lives”, with boxes from the likes of Rick Stein and Michel Roux Jr, many costing north of £100 for two people. Rogan himself launched Home by Simon Rogan, which is still going strong. 
Those are meal kits, designed to be finished off at home, but high-end deliveries – which arrive ready to eat – are also rising. In late 2023, Uber Eats teamed up with Gareth Ward, who runs Ynyshir, an idiosyncratic two-starred spot in rural Wales twice named the best restaurant in the country. The collaboration saw home diners paying £200 for a 10-course feast including dishes of hot and sour crab soup and barbecued black cod with caviar – not your normal Friday night curry. Earlier this year, Jeremy Chan, who runs two-starred Ikoyi in central London, launched a £60 menu with fancy versions of takeaway classics – think fried chicken with smoked scotch bonnet and raspberry. According to Uber Eats, it sold out within 30 seconds. 
Both were available for two nights only, and only in a few London postcodes, adding a sense of exclusivity. The same is true of Simon Rogan’s menu which goes on sale to Uber One customers this evening at 5pm and is available to all app users at the same time tomorrow. If you’re expecting to impress a date and miss out, it’ll be pizza for dinner. 
It is the first time Rogan’s food has been available for takeaway. “It’s something fun and unexpected, which allows us to share our food and ethos with an audience we haven’t reached before,” says Rogan, who insists “nothing can replicate the experience of being in one of our restaurants,” but recommends “low lighting, candlelight, nice tableware and good wine” to home diners. Speaking of wine, there is the option to add a £30 pairing of two half bottles chosen by L’Enclume head sommelier Valentin Mouillard.  
For Matthew Price, Uber Eats’ UK, Ireland and Northern Europe general manager, the deliveries are “about giving people the opportunity to try hard to access our unique food experiences. When it came to Simon Rogan, we wanted to work with a chef who is making huge strides in the area of sustainability.” Rogan is renowned in this field – much of the produce for his restaurants hails from his own farm just down the road from Cartmel. True to form, my meal arrives in bespoke biodegradable packaging made from seaweed. 
When I visited Rogan’s three-Michelin-starred L’Enclume in 2022, I was struck by its unshowy blend of technique and produce. There were clearly cheffy touches but they never felt superfluous – no gels or foams at the expense of flavour. 
So it’s no surprise Rogan’s delivery menu is similar: delicious but approachable. The food was excellent, and ample enough though I could happily have eaten more. Snacks, including a doughnut stuffed with chicken offal and topped with a roast chicken skin and yeast crumb, packed incredible amounts of umami flavour for something so small. 
That 51-ingredient salad, made with produce from Rogan’s farm, was excellent: I won’t list them all, but I think I found some potato, pickled red onion, grilled courgette and the tiniest of kale leaves. The shrimp custard on which it sat went surprisingly well with it. The braised short rib main was tender as anything, a thick strip of fat and dollop of fermented bean paste providing a flavour bomb that was beautifully offset by fermented cabbage. A cake made with bee pollen, strawberries, cream and foraged herbs – a Rogan staple – was elegant and balanced. 
Eighty pounds – or £110 with the paired wines – is a lot for a takeaway. For that much, it’s nice to have the experience of eating out. But one worry proved unfounded: there was no washing up. Those seaweed packages were perfectly shaped to eat from and went straight into the compost afterwards which, no matter the price, I count as a win.

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