Single Ingredient at Helm is chef Josh Boutwood’s strongest tasting menu to date

That authenticity extends beyond the plate. Boutwood has always been one of the industry’s most charismatic personalities, a natural showman who effortlessly lights up a room with his humour, warmth and notable charm. Despite his rise to fame, his popularity has never gone to his head, and this is evident to both peers and guests. He has never been the theatrical, standoffish or snooty chef—he has always been easy to talk to as someone who knows what he brings to the table and doesn’t take himself too seriously.

This confidence has shaped Helm’s identity through a series of imaginative tasting menus. While some menus in the past have been more whimsical, mirroring Boutwood’s signature tongue-in-cheek personality (Star Wars), others have reflected his travels (Street Food) and some leaned into a more literal, playful theme (Colour). 

At times, the dishes, while delicious, felt designed to suit the theme or for creativity’s sake, rather than express a culinary perspective. Now, Boutwood turns his full creative attention to the food itself. The challenge became uncovering the possibilities of a single ingredient: its many flavours, textures and forms. And with this, he makes his loudest statement yet.

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This new menu actually puts him on the plate: as he hyperfocuses on ingredients, we hyperfocus on him. I’ve always said that a tasting menu is a chef’s album; much like a singer, it is their way to tell a story from start to finish. It’s a performance that we as diners are privy to at every meal. With this menu, we are witnessing his more personal showcase. As we ate, by course two, I knew that this was his strongest menu yet.

We began with a trio of amuse bouche: a squid ink croustade with trout and caviar; a chewy savoury buchi filled with lobster and prawn bisque; and a rye tart topped with Wagyu tartare, egg yolk gel and black garlic.

The tuna course was both eye-catching and dramatically layered. It showcased akami and otoro, accentuating the contrast between the lean cut’s firm, meaty bite and the prized belly’s fatty richness. It was paired with creamy coconut sauce, aromatic kaffir lime and lemongrass and a roasted miso emulsion that created deep umami notes, with a whisper of acidity from a tuna roe adobo. A crisp cracker sat on top, dusted with a vegetal tomato powder that invigorated each mouthful. 

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The next course was my favourite: a brilliant celebration of pumpkin in its many forms, transforming a humble ingredient into a study of texture and depth. At its centre was a silky pumpkin custard much like a chawanmushi, topped with tender diced pumpkin. A pumpkin XO sauce gifted the bowl with a mild, complex spice, while pumpkin seed oil and lacto-fermented pumpkin syrup introduced earthiness and sweetness. Roasted breadcrumbs provided an irresistible crunch, and toasted pumpkin seeds blessed each bite with warm depth, resulting in a beautifully layered composition where every element served a clear and striking purpose.

Sweet, succulent lobster paired with a roasted carrot purée met us at the table. Its plate was painted in notes of sea foam green with a pattern that evoked the shore’s foamy bubbles cracking onto the sand as the tide crashes in. This detail further emphasised the oceanic theme in the course in a subtle, sophisticated way—no coloured food or drink in sight. As I dug into the dish, each chunk of lobster, tender with a gentle snap, was enlivened with pickled apple and bathed in an umami dashi, enriched with a savoury crustacean oil and airy sabayon. Tarragon and kale oil contributed herbaceous notes as popped buckwheat crowned the dish with nutty crunch.

No meal at Helm is complete without an encounter with Sebastian, Boutwood’s trusty sourdough starter. His famous sourdough was served alongside a knotted, laminated brioche glazed with butter and filled with sharp cheddar and aged Gouda. They were accompanied by a trio of butters plus a Tuscan olive oil.

As the team whirled around the kitchen between courses, we heard no fuss, no clicking and clanking, discussions or trepidation. Instead, everyone moved with clear intention, attuned to one another’s needs and next steps–elegant and never rushed. As different chefs introduced each subsequent dish, they spoke quickly, calmly and knowingly, guiding us into our next experience.

A bare white plate was met with a series of white ingredients: Atlantic cod, cauliflower purée, bacalao confit and roasted kombu cream sauce. At this point, the dish looked quite dull—but as each chef on the assembly line added their finishing touches (dill oil, cod skin powder, tapioca cracker and an unexpectedly fragrant marigold leaf), it transformed into something striking, resulting in a dish that was clean and quietly complex.

Our first meat course was lamb, presented in two distinct expressions. A gamey terrine of lamb belly and loin was paired with a mole made with over 35 ingredients. Alongside it, a perfectly pink lamb tenderloin with a demi-glace. 

A buttery A5 Wagyu concluded the savoury courses. This serving was cooked with remarkable precision, seared in 10-second intervals over the course of an hour to achieve an evenly rendered, melt-in-the-mouth texture. Beneath the cut was a sweet sunchoke and bone marrow purée, and a contrastingly intense Bordeaux wine and bone paste.

The final course turns its attention to Chocolate, Chocolate, Chocolate. This decadent creation played with dark, milk and white chocolate in soft, sharp and creamy textures. A silky burnt white chocolate sauce with toasted caramel flavours swam around a crunchy tart shell that encased a rich flourless chocolate cake, fudgy brownie pieces, crisp chocolate crumbs and a chocolate ice cream. All of which was hidden under a white chocolate gel. 

“This is a great representation of what we do at Helm. We focus on really good ingredients, cooked extremely well, with precision and a lot of love. I find this menu has the perfect amount of wow, but also this amazing flow, so when you finish the meal, you have that wonderful feeling of being extremely satisfied.”

In many ways, it is Boutwood’s clearest culinary statement yet—not louder or more elaborate than what came before, but more distilled, focused and confident. It is a menu that reminds diners that innovation doesn’t always come from adding more. Sometimes, it comes from understanding an ingredient so completely that its depth of presentation disarms and comforts alike. Boutwood regularly speaks of memories and nostalgia, saying he wants diners to leave his restaurants having made memories, or for his dishes to evoke them. I think this menu does just that. It’s intensely developed but not overworked, and is definitely something to be proud of. 

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