When my family and I visited London last year, a friend insisted that we go to Nopi. He told me that we could sit anywhere – even the basement was fine. And so we made reservations and went. We did end up downstairs, sitting at a massive marble table, surrounded by racks of storage for the kitchen.

Dinner was amazing. I remember being totally blown away and even the kids thought it was great.

We came back to Vancouver and at some point in the following months I ordered the restaurant cookbook.

I might have been in a bit of a funk, post-London. It might have been the grey fall weather. Maybe I needed some new eyeglasses. Possibly all three, but in any case I found the cookbook really unimpressive. I looked through the recipes and nothing jumped out at me at all. It felt like the entire volume was not to my palate.

But I decided I had better try something, so I settled on the ‘Burnt Green Onion Dip with Curly Kale’.

Holy cow. I was absolutely amazed. Other recipes have followed and they have been roundly incredible. The only drawback is that if you want to cook any of the meals you had best read the recipe really carefully several days in advance because some things take several days to create. The ‘Strained Ricotta with Blackcurrant Compote and Rhubarb’ takes a week to make, I swear. It’s worth it, but man, days pass.

But I’m writing about the burnt onions. The intro to the recipe states:

“One important point to remember: there’s no such thing as overcharring your onions, so hold your nerve at the grill… The more burnt they are, the better and more smoky they will taste.”

After charring my pizza, this was music to my ears. I love recipe instructions like that.

I love the idea of not being able to go too far when cooking something. I guess it’s like roasting eggplant. More is better.

Of course, I do wonder if maybe I should have kept them on the grill for longer? There always seems to be something to improve upon.