Not your usual surf-n-turf: Hot Stone
(Picture: Handout)Tasting menus are the Marmite of the restaurant world. Some love the idea of a long evening eating as many courses as possible, others hate the endurance test of plate after tiny plate, each gone in a single foamy mouthful.
A tasting menu, however, is more than the fine-dining equivalent of the all-you-can-eat buffet. At its best, one should be a carefully considered procession of self-contained dishes, an ebb and flow of contrast and balance that builds to form a harmonious whole that showcases a chef’s food philosophy. It might not always happen, but that’s the idea.
It is a style of eating that is synonymous with the starry galaxy of the Michelin universe, but steer clear of the Monopoly board’s most expensive squares and there is good value to be found across London, especially beyond Zone 1.
Good value is not the same as cheap, and with food prices rising everywhere, you’re unlikely to find caviar and lobster included for £50. Be aware, too, that wine pairings can easily double the bill; polishing off all those plates is thirsty work.
But nowhere is it more true that necessity is the mother of invention than in the kitchen, and the restaurants below all showcase chefs determined to prove their creativity without leaving diners feeling fleeced. So from humble ingredients turned into haute cuisine, high-end cooking served in low-key surrounds and the cooking of celebrity chefs offered at civilian prices, here are the best-value tasting menus in London. After all, why have three courses when you can have 13?
12:51
Five courses for £40 on one of the most famous restaurant streets in London? Yes please. The Islington dining room of one-time Great British Menu winner James Cochran â — who worked for Brett Graham at The Ledbury and Harwood Arms â — is one of the biggest bargains in the capital, with no skimping on ingredients (smoked Devon eel, rump of hogget) and a sure touch for teasing out the complementary flavours in his texturally contrasting assemblies. That eel, for instance, goes into a seasidey rarebit on brioche with dulse and bacon, the hogget is barbecued and served with wild garlic cream, grilled onion and a herb salad, while vegetarians get their own menu including the likes of a risotto of Jersey royal potatoes with croutons and chives. The suggested drinks pairing will double the bill but even so, this is phenomenal value for the quality of cooking, while the narrow dining room and friendly young staff are both as distinctive as the food.
107 Upper Street, N1 1QN, 1251.co.uk
Anglo
A diamond in the rough of tatty Hatton Garden, Mark Jarvis’ Anglo is one of London’s original outposts of the Parisian bistronomy movement and remains a compelling advert for the merits of serving fancy modern food in no-frills surroundings. The no-choice tasting menu of eight-or-so courses (£75) is brought to the table by the chefs themselves, as they know better than anyone what has gone into the foraged and responsibly farmed dishes, with veg very much to the fore. Cauliflower might be plated with wild garlic, lettuce, curd, black garlic and apple, or Herdwick lamb with sunflower seeds, elderflower, herbs and lettuce. The home-baked sourdough with great clouds of whipped butter would make a meal by itself; any leftover bread is put to use in a cheese course with Tunworth and prunes, typical of Anglo’s sustainable ethos. The natural wine list, with beer and cider detours, is as creatively British as the cooking.
30 St Cross Street, EC1N 8UH, anglorestaurant.com
Myrtle
Dublin-born chef Anna Haugh is taking over from Monica Galetti as the presenter of MasterChef: The Professionals, which means the tables at her tiny, two-floor restaurant will be even more at a premium when the new series hits our screens in autumn. Who knows if Haugh will put up prices, but for the time being her seven-course Taste of Ireland menu is a rare-for-Chelsea bargain at £78. Each course is inspired by a different Irish county: an asparagus tart with Cais na Tire cheese and garlic flower from Tipperary, or cannon of lamb with Dingle pie, wild garlic and pea from Kerry, perhaps. The ingredients might sound hearty but Haugh’s time working for the likes of Gordon Ramsay and Philip Howard ensures an elegance to the presentation, with an Irish accent never far away, whether in the fabulous treacle-enriched soda bread or the Galway crystal glassware.
1A Langton Street, SW10 0JL, myrtlerestaurant.com
Angelina
A Dalston restaurant offering a Japanese-Italian fusion menu sounds like the sort of concept for which one might struggle to get through one course, let alone 10, and yet Angelina’s tasting menu (£59) is delicious proof that opposites do attract. Or maybe not so opposite. Rather than sashimi-topped pizza — God forbid — this is the Italian kitchen of raw meat and fresh fish: not so different to Japanese food when presented as something like cured fish roe served with seashore vegetables, or venison tartare with piadina, the flatbread that it is a rare moment of carbohydrate here. Plates rarely enter into a proper cross-cultural dialogue, although when the two cuisines do arrive on the same plate, such as the dish of mortadella with miso-glazed aubergine, the results are compelling. New Soho sibling Dai Chi, meanwhile, offers similar stuff for £42 for six courses.
56 Dalston Lane, E8 3AH, angelina.london
Kebab Queen
A kebab tasting menu might sound like the stuff of an extreme eating competition — or a bad joke, especially at £95 for six courses of ’bab. But the gourmet reinvention of everyone’s post-pub food shame is not the only surprise at Kebab Queen, however: this “secret” restaurant-within-a-restaurant is a chef’s table hidden behind a mock kebab-shop frontage at Maison Bab, where at 7pm from Wednesday to Saturday, 10 diners eat a tasting menu with their hands straight from a heated, hygienically coated counter. The high-spec set-up should provide a clue that this is not merely an education in the difference between Adana, iskender and shish. Instead, there is a “mixed grill” involving slow-roast chicken supreme, retired dairy cow and aged Texel lamb kofta with a trio of sauces and double Cheddar fondue fries, cooked with fine-dining finesse by former Le Gavroche chef Manu Canales. On a recent trip, the results were extraordinary — just don’t ask for more garlic mayo.
4 Mercer Walk, WC2H 9FA, eatlebab.com/kebab-queen
Hot Stone
Anywhere that bills itself as a “steak and sushi bar” should be a recipe for success but the real ace up the sleeve of this Islington local is a £110 tasting menu which combines raw fish with wagyu steak to create London’s most luxurious surf-and-turf offering. A 10-piece sashimi box is followed by a sirloin of Japanese Kagoshima A5 wagyu served with tiger king prawns and scallops (cooked at the table on a hot stone, obvs); in-between are scallops with ponzu and plum sauce, edamame beans with truffle and caviar, sushi rolls and a course of seared sashimi, plus matcha cheesecake to finish. Top-notch ingredients (Japanese wasabi, five-year-old aged soy, homemade pickles) extend to a wine and saké pairing for an additional £65. Now that chef Padam Raj Rai has made a named for himself as one of London’s sushi masters, he’s opened a smarter, self-titled sibling in Fitzrovia called Rai, which has a similar menu at rather more West End prices.
9 Chapel Market, N1 9EZ, hotstonelondon.com
Fiend
The last time chef Chris Denney was seen in the northern end of Noting Hill was when the chef was threatening suicide if his previous gaff, 108 Garage, didn’t win a Michelin star. It did not, but thankfully Denney is still with us, even if 108 Garage has gone to the great restaurant scrapyard in the sky. This new Portobello venture shows that the chef has lost none of his talent to provoke, nor his ability to cook intensely flavoured, insanely delicious cooking. Fiend’s £70, eight-course tasting menu might bring Vesuvius tomato with caviar and cod roe, agnolotti stuffed with lamb heart, and wagyu short rib with Belper Knolle cheese. This is not food for the faint-hearted and the impression of senses being challenged is enhanced by the long, clattery dining room of jazzy tiles, oversized art works and jewel-coloured leather chairs. But at Fiend, the devil is in all the details.
301 Portobello Road, W10 5TD, fiend-portobello.com
Lyle’s
Given that Lyle’s is a one-Michelin-starred restaurant and the current number 33 on the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list, one might expect its six-course tasting menu to clock in at more than £89. Chef-owner James Lowe, however, has never taken the obvious path, coming to prominence as one of the Young Turks chef collective (which also included Clove Club’s Isaac McHale) in various attention-grabbing pop-up residencies before going it alone at this minimalist dining room in the Tea Building. Pared-back furnishings and super-seasonal foraged ingredients reflect Lowe’s time at world-beating Noma in Copenhagen, but the produce is always the very best of British. Think Maldon rock oyster and sorrel, beef broth with spring vegetables and lovage, and pollack with spring greens and ransom. Vegetarian, vegan and pescatarian menus are available too, and though the wine list has no space for English grapes, there’s a quartet of British beers.
Tea Building, 56 Shoreditch High Street, E1 6JJ, lyleslondon.com
Casa Fofò
Chef Adolfo de Cecco was previously at Pidgin in Dalston before opening his own place, so knows a thing or two about what Hackney locals want from a restaurant. And judging by Casa Fofò, that’s a £55, eight-course tasting menu, washed down with natudral wines and served at tiny tables in a narrow space with an open kitchen at the far end. It’s the sort of ultra-east London experience likely to have you either on the first train west out of Hackney Downs or cooing over the edgy creativity and insider-secret feel of it all. There is a fondness for both fermenting and Japanese technique – crab with nori and daikon; potato with fermented tom yum and seaweed – while sourdough served as a separate course allows a full appreciation of the lusciousness of caramelised butter scattered with roasted yeast. A wine pairing for £39 feels silly to turn down when that’s the price of a bottle of house in many restaurants.
158 Sandringham Road, E8 2HS, casafofolondon.co.uk
Ormer Mayfair
Flemings is one of those quiet Mayfair hotels where discretion has been distilled into the very bones of the place. If its name is less recognisable than other, showier spots, in some way this almost seems by design — it is somewhere where understated elegance triumphs over gaudy exhibition. Ormer is the hotel’s restaurant downstairs and, since its refurbishment eight years ago (with consequent updates along the way, including over lockdown), has dedicated itself to the kind of fine dining that suits any evening of the week. Where once it’s set menu was £75, it’s now £85 — a tenner rise over the best part of a decade is a bargain — which buys six courses of Sofian Msetfi’s detailed cooking. As it should, the menu changes regularly, but offers seasonal British cooking done with flashes of playfulness; guinea fowl with shallots and vin jaune, but coffee too. There is a sense of the serene here which, granted, could be partly down to the Champagne trolley, but is likely owes more to the service. This conjured sense of luxury is the thing that gives Ormer its value.
Flemings Mayfair, 7-12 Half Moon St, W1J 7BH, flemings-mayfair.co.uk
Salon
This Brixton Market landmark began life as a pop-up and not only has a claim to being the best restaurant in Brixton but south of the river, too. Salon has kept the informal spirit from the early days and although the pared-back surroundings might lead one to expect avant-garde cooking from the seven-course menu (£52), the combinations are as likely to be classical as experimental: pot-roast chicken with morels, tarragon and crème fraiche, say, or mackerel with cucumber, coriander and lime, while the courgette chutney served with the cheese is a revelation. Salon is in no way formal, but for something even more casual, there are snacks and small plates in the bar. Wine is just as important as food here (Salon has a wine shop next door) and, like the ingredients, sourced from small-scale, organic producers.
18 Market Row, SW9 8LD, salonbrixton.co.uk
Restaurant 1890 by Gordon Ramsay
While the “menu prestige” at Gordy’s three-Michelin-starred Royal Hospital Road gaff will set you back £170 for six courses (and is, by the way, totally worth it), a meal at this dinner- and-tasting menu-only new dining room within The Savoy is a comparative snip at £110. Nine courses of modern French cooking might bring asparagus with morels and wild garlic hollandaise, turbot Véronique with Champagne and caviar beurre blanc, and raspberry Melba as a nod to Auguste Escoffier, the legendary French chef who invented the peach original at the hotel in homage to Dame Nellie. There’s nothing to scare the horses here but the cooking is the safest of bets to send you out on to The Savoy’s forecourt with the feeling of having been royally treated. And with room for only 26 diners, the romantic, velvet-upholstered dining room is somewhere to find space for in any little black book.
The Savoy, Strand, WC2R 0EU, gordonramsayrestaurants.com
Launceston Place
Ben Murphy was dubbed a young chef to watch when he took over the stoves at Princess Diana’s favourite restaurant in 2017. He’s older and wiser now (and even more thoroughly tatted) and, free of the pressure to be the next big thing, has settled in very nicely to Kensington, ditching the dishes that can be chalked up to youthful folly (chips in a mini shopping trolley) and turning out a seven-course tasting menu (£96) likely to appeal to 30-somethings like him and make anyone older feel like they still have their finger on the foodie pulse. The restaurant, curving around the corner of one of the prettiest streets in Kensington, might have all the fine-dining trappings of white tablecloths and old-money elegance, but Murphy’s cooking has lost none of its playfulness while making the most of the classicism learnt working for three-Michelin-starred greats in France. A meal here not long go confirmed his luminescent talent glows brighter than ever.
1a Launceston Place, W8 5RL, launcestonplace-restaurant.co.uk
Smoke & Salt
Riding the current wave for all things pickled and preserved, Smoke & Salt began life in a shopping container in Pop Brixton and having won the hearts of south Londoners, owners Aaron Webster and Remi Williams crowdfunded their way to this permanent site in Tooting. The six-course menu (£50) isn’t so much a tasting menu as a feast for the table to share according to which dishes Webster and Williams reckon are at their best (and likely to produce the least waste); pescatarian and plant-based menus are also available. Several dishes have a Middle Eastern accent – rose veal kofte labneh with radish and sumac, or roasted courgettes with grilled chickpeas, baba ghanoush and pickled garlic – though there are some weird and usually wonderful British inventions too in the likes of 12-hour smoked pork in a house rub with apple-seaweed jam and green goddess dressing. A snappy European wine list with only a dozen bottles to choose from is as refreshingly unpretentious as the whole setup.
115 Tooting High Street, SW17 0SY, smokeandsalt.com
Aulis
Simon Rogan of three-Michelin-starred L’Enclume in Cumbria has tried to crack London several times but this chef’s table in Soho is the one that has stuck, possibly because it doesn’t attempt to replicate the Cartmel experience in the capital. Instead, this is a determinedly urban affair, with space for just eight diners around three sides of the table while a team of young chefs beavers away along the fourth. Of course, £155 for dinner might be stretching the concept of good value, but that buys 15 personally prepared courses, complete with all the cheffy gubbins of tweezering micro ingredients and cooking fish with a blowtorch, while native produce such as the pinkest piece of venison or Newlyn cod shimmering with a mother-of-pearl sheen demonstrate where your money is going. The food is extraordinary but really, you’re paying for an immersive experience overseen by one of the country’s most visionary talents, determined to prove that British ingredients and technique can stand alongside the best in the world. Plus it’s way cheaper than dinner in Cartmel.
