At the time of writing, Dune II hype is at a fever pitch so it’s hard not to feel a little like Timothée Chalamet in a desert camp when arriving at 17 Little Portland Street. The ground floor restaurant is suitably named The Tent (at the End of the Universe) and it looks fantastic. Eight tables sit inside a canvas shelter with constellations of stars winking in the sky above. Fur-clad speakers pipe in a sexy, intergalactic afterparty playlist that is mercifully free from Harkonnen throat singing.

The Mahdi of this culinary Sietch is the acclaimed John Javier. After earning his chops at Noma and Momofuku, Javier cemented his reputation with Chinese hit Master in Sydney before opening Happy Paradise in Hong Kong with May Chow – once voted ‘Asia’s Best Female Chef’.

Javier was consulting in London when a serendipitous encounter with Bas Ibellini – minimal house DJ and 17 Portland Street’s musical consigliere – brought with it an opportunity to take over the venue’s kitchen. The initial plan to serve tacos at the club prompted a judicious rebuke from Javier; ‘You guys are nuts. No one wants to eat fucking tacos inside a nightclub’.

Since February 2022, The Tent has offered a concise Middle Eastern menu reflecting the background of Javier’s partners in the restaurant. While the inspiration for Master came from Sydney chef favourite and Cantonese institution Golden Century, Javier’s research base for The Tent was Dalston Ocakbasi stalwart Umut 2000, where he spent many a Cacik-fuelled evening swotting up on the Middle Eastern palate.

The idea is to ‘pinch and twist’ recipes while keeping flavours authentic – and avoiding glib ‘fusion’ at all costs. Take the taramasalata for instance; a baby pink donut of bottarga-flecked paste with a delightful whiff of petrolic garlic. Elsewhere, burnt onion ash gives the muhammara an amped-up smokiness.

The highlight of the menu is the sayadieh, a Lebanese dish of rice simmered with caramelised onions and garlic, topped with fried fish. In Javier’s otherwordly tent it looks ravishing in black thanks to a squid ink dashi emulsion. Garlic notes come from a healthy slug of toum, and threads of zhug – a Yemeni salsa verde – offset any richness.

Elsewhere on the menu, Javier makes his background in Chinese cooking known with tender skewers of Uighur-style lamb shish encrusted with cumin. More greatest hits from his back catalogue were available to a lucky few at The Tent’s Chinese New Year dinner series earlier this year, with highlights ranging from scallop silk and quivering lumps of gelatinous pork jowl to a potato ice cream fritter topped with caviar.

Here’s hoping that some of these old favourites find their way onto Javier’s new menu launching this spring, which promises to throw off the shackles of a single nationality to reflect the global clientele of the members club hidden underneath the restaurant.

Most importantly of all, says Javier, it needs to be fun. ‘I don’t want to teach people about terroir and then they head downstairs and rave until 6 am’. It’s an ambitious plan but switching up menus entirely to welcome in the year of the Wood Dragon ‘made me miss being in the shit’ John tells me. ‘…I kinda want to be in the shit again’.