Anthea Gerrie fulfils a 30-year dream to dine at London’s iconic Pied a Terre.
It’s the oldest Michelin-starred restaurant in London, celebrating three decades of uninterrupted acclaim in a world where establishments have to win the coveted seal of approval all over again when their chefs change kitchens. No pressure, then, for Phil Kearsey, the new boy at the helm of Pied a Terre, who has his work cut out pleasing the notoriously conservative French restaurant inspectors while attracting fickle younger diners who care more about foodie fashions than awards.
Luckily for owner David Moore, who has survived the departure of a handful of Britain’s finest head chefs over the decades with his talent for appointing high-quality successors, Kearsey has bags of experience gained from stints in several of the world’s top-rated restaurants. A veteran of the Waterside Inn in Bray, where he honed his skills with Michel Roux Sr, Corrigan’s in Mayfair and The French Laundry in California, he is a master of the old-fashioned art of saucing.
But as a young chef who looks quite the lad, he is clearly well aware that today’s London dining scene is as much about Instagrammable dishes as tantalising the tastebuds with the deep-flavoured emulsions he brings to table personally in a tiny copper pan.
Having finally bagged a table after dreaming of one for more than 30 years since the restaurant opened its doors in 1991, I found myself snapping away before I had taken a single bite. Moore is to be praised for creating a memorable, sky-lit dining room whose massive floral mural – despite its apparent modernity, actually a fragment of a Dutch Old Master still life – whets the appetite with its luscious pastels on arrival. Booths guarantee intimacy in a restaurant which seems designed for romantic dinners, while a couple of larger tables for convivial small groups skilfully confine buzz to the corners of the room to keep noise levels down.
This is a pricey dining experience, whether opting for a tasting menu(from £95 without drinks at dinner, though a £55 “express” lunch is an affordable way in) or a more conventionally-presented a la carte dinner(from £103). The choices are laid out on one card for omnivores, another for vegans, from which six, eight or ten tasting courses can be chosen (plus four at lunch for £75) as an alternative to larger portions of a few dishes which particularly attract.
Creativity is the keyword, personified by the canapés which come out for everyone as a first course. If possible to better a perfect fresh raw oyster, the big draw for omnivores, it can only be by dropping a soupçon of caviar upon it – from Exmoor, who knew? – and adding dots of less memorable decoration like circles of kohlrabi to enhance the experience. If anything can eclipse that first swallow, it’s the tiny taste of truffled egg with aged Parmesan served in the shell; a scallop-stuffed chicken wing makes up the trio of amuse-bouches.
Second courses can be tricky, but Kearsey’s confection of British heirloom tomatoes was the hero dish of the summer menu, a delight vegans will not have to pass up. A construction of perfectly ripe, multi-coloured fruit, it was lent texture by a delightful Bloody Mary granita topping and the intense flavour of tomato water lining the dish on which the salad was served. Basil was, as ever, the perfect companion, black olive a less expected but perfect taste enhancement.
For the following course, by which time we were enjoying a loaf of house-made sourdough with a Marmite butter a little too much, Orkney scallops were prettily sliced and interlinked with black Perigord truffle, dressed with king oyster mushroom, dots of mushroom ketchup and a sauce of earthy vin jaune from eastern France.
FOMO meant that instead of going straight on to a choice of John Dory or dry aged Merrifield duck we opted for both, preceded by an intervening course of glazed lamb sweetbreads dressed with English peas, mint, and the rarely-seen outside California sweet Meyer lemon Kearsey clearly fell in love with at Napa’s French Laundry.
It was a treat for the tastebuds, but an appetite-depressant; given that portions here are far from tiny, there’s a case to be made for choosing fewer courses in order to better enjoy the John Dory with its crayfish dressing or the duck, inventively accompanied by barbecued peach, violet mustard and a tranche of brioche stuffed with the bird’s liver.
From the onslaught of dessert choices following a single, slightly underwhelming French cheese, this diner’s recommendation would be to go straight to the fresh strawberry soufflé, stunningly served with a beautifully decorated olive oil shortbread and vanilla ice-cream. Gourmands can currently precede this with a green fig brûlée served with fig leaf and mint sorbet and follow the soufflé with lavender macarons, orange and cardamom fruit jellies and caneles, those little cakes beloved in Bordeaux. Enough sweet treats, surely!
One great strength of Pied a Terre is the drinks, not least a carefully curated, delightfully unpredictable wine list from which flights are available for upwards of £70(single glasses from £14). Our four-glass flight took us from excellent examples of Oregon-grown Viognier and Yabby Lake chardonnay from Australia’s Mornington Peninsula to the northern Rhone, home to the under-appreciated but invariably exemplary St. Joseph, here from Laurent Hebrard. We stayed in France to finish with a delicious Jurancon from Castera.
If anything shows Pied a Terre is keeping up with rapidly changing times it’s their cocktail flight – £60 for four drinks – which neighbouring diners were enjoying to accompany their food, as we did our signature aperitifs inventively based on the world’s favourite Negroni. While the Rosa, substituting tequila for the gin, is a perfect lady’s drink, the macho other half was thrilled with his alternative, a strong and smoky mezcal negroni.
With cocktails starting at £14.50 and mocktails from £11, although included in the £40 multi-course children’s menu, the Pied a Terre experience is a rarefied one requiring deep pockets, but the friendliest and most professional restaurant service in London ensures it’s one which will be remembered for years.
Tell Me More About Dining At Pied A Terre
Pied a Terre, 34 Charlotte Street, London W1T 2NH
T: +44 207 636 1178
