The Lavery, London SW7: ‘One of London’s loveliest new places to eat’ – restaurant review | Grace Dent on restaurants
This plump, glossy quenelle of joy makes every other chocolate mousse in the UK taste like Instant WhipOne of the main challenges of writing a weekly restaurant column is finding new ways (and at least 11 times a year) to describe the experience of eating Mediterranean small plates in a room painted in Little Greene’s Silent White. Other food – and, indeed, paint colours – are available, but in recent years, whenever you cast an eye over some hot, hip new place, you need to brace yourself for polenta, coco beans, galettes and neutral furnishing. The Lavery, just opposite the Natural History Museum in South Kensington, is by no small margin the new emperor of this style of cooking and decor, with a former River Cafe, Petersham Nurseries and Toklas chef, Yohei Furuhashi, serving up gnocchi with fresh peas on the upper floors of a dreamily restored, Grade II-listed Georgian townhouse.This room is white – let’s call this shade John Lennon Imagine Video White, or Ascending To Heaven And Sitting At The Right Hand Of The Father White. It’s all very heavenly, anyway. There are gilt-edged, floor-to-ceiling mirrors, original fireplaces and expensive wooden flooring. It’s modern minimalist with a glut of leftover grandeur from fine times past, when the Irish painter Sir John Lavery and his wife Lady Hazel lived here. The Lavery is not only beautiful, but useful, too, being close enough to the museums to make it a fine place to pop into after a trip to the V&A, or after enduring the half-term scrum around Hope, the blue whale skeleton, at the Natural History. Would I take children to the Lavery, though? I’m not too sure. What are your kids like? Will they eat blood orange and puntarelle salad with taggiasche olives? Do they say things like, “Mummy, can I have the Isle of Skye scallop with cime de rapa, tomato and cedro, please!” If the answer to either of those questions is no, it’s possibly not the brightest idea. Continue reading...
This plump, glossy quenelle of joy makes every other chocolate mousse in the UK taste like Instant Whip
One of the main challenges of writing a weekly restaurant column is finding new ways (and at least 11 times a year) to describe the experience of eating Mediterranean small plates in a room painted in Little Greene’s Silent White. Other food – and, indeed, paint colours – are available, but in recent years, whenever you cast an eye over some hot, hip new place, you need to brace yourself for polenta, coco beans, galettes and neutral furnishing. The Lavery, just opposite the Natural History Museum in South Kensington, is by no small margin the new emperor of this style of cooking and decor, with a former River Cafe, Petersham Nurseries and Toklas chef, Yohei Furuhashi, serving up gnocchi with fresh peas on the upper floors of a dreamily restored, Grade II-listed Georgian townhouse.
This room is white – let’s call this shade John Lennon Imagine Video White, or Ascending To Heaven And Sitting At The Right Hand Of The Father White. It’s all very heavenly, anyway. There are gilt-edged, floor-to-ceiling mirrors, original fireplaces and expensive wooden flooring. It’s modern minimalist with a glut of leftover grandeur from fine times past, when the Irish painter Sir John Lavery and his wife Lady Hazel lived here. The Lavery is not only beautiful, but useful, too, being close enough to the museums to make it a fine place to pop into after a trip to the V&A, or after enduring the half-term scrum around Hope, the blue whale skeleton, at the Natural History. Would I take children to the Lavery, though? I’m not too sure. What are your kids like? Will they eat blood orange and puntarelle salad with taggiasche olives? Do they say things like, “Mummy, can I have the Isle of Skye scallop with cime de rapa, tomato and cedro, please!” If the answer to either of those questions is no, it’s possibly not the brightest idea. Continue reading...
