Jenius Social – Nose-To-Tail Tapas – Review

Mylen Namocatcat

July 4, 2014

Last week I got an email from Adam (our lovely editor of LDNLife) to ask me if I wanted to go to a nose to tail tapas. I am a lover of offal (and free food). Give me liver, kidneys and sweetbreads any day but when I received the menu it was pretty hard to ignore the word’s ‘testicles’ and ‘tongue’ and not wince.

I arrived at the Jenius Social venue which appeared to be an open and spacious retail unit under a block of new build flats. What I liked about the location, like with many of my favourite restaurants, is that you have to know it’s there. It’s not just one of those places you walk past and decide to go into. Word of mouth is everything here.

The main topic of our small group of food bloggers and enthusiasts was the prospect of eating lambs testicles. The head chef Malcolm Emmanuell demonstrated the various dishes we would be cooking and eating. Tongue stew, pig’s ear tacos, pig’s trotter’s terrine, braised ox tail spring roll and deep fried lamb’s testicles were all on the menu.

Cooking together (whilst also drinking copious amounts of wine) was fun, if not a little dangerous. The buzz and atmosphere is what Jenius Social encompasses; cooking, eating and drinking together and this is what Jennifer Yong, founder of Jenius Social, explained as we cooked our offal. The venue hosts cookery classes, food master classes and gives budding cooks an opportunity to hire the venue for their supper clubs. Jennifer also explained that they hosted food based evenings such as cooking date nights which had proved to be highly successful for single foodies.

After cooking and plating the tapas dishes we sat down with another glass of wine to celebrate our efforts. As I expected (from the smells as we cooked), the offal was delicious and the star of the evening was, of course, the testicles; proof that anything breaded and deep fried tastes superb. I shall now be going into my local butcher demanding animal genitals!

I shall certainly be returning to Jenius Social with friends for some more unusual eating experiences and hopefully one day, to host a supper club myself!

The next Nose to Tail Tapas cooking and eating event is on Friday 11 July at 18:30. To find out more about Jenius Social visit their website