Wine, dine, wow — the finest restaurants in Mayfair

Times

21 hours ago

There has been food and drink for sale in Mayfair for at least half a millennium, although the quality has certainly changed, and so have the consumers — in both cases, for the better. Five hundred years ago, this was the site of the May Fair, a raucous party around May Day, when food stalls will have served dubious fare to everyone from tightrope walkers to toffs. The party ended when the toffs noticed that Mayfair, edged with royalpParks, was one of the nicest parts of London and soon, thanks to their graceful Georgian buildings, luxury boutiques and grand hotels, it became nicer still. It became, and has remained, one of London's smartest neighbourhoods, with restaurants that are as far from those long-ago dodgy food stalls as it is possible to go without leaving the city altogether. Here are a few of the best.
A hungry diner wandering into the Ritz in search of the dining room recently voted best in the country at the National Restaurant Awards might be in for a shock. Not due to the food, which is exquisite. Nor even the pricing — because who expects a two Michelin-starred restaurant in one of the world's great hotels to be cheap? But this is one of the last places left in London where denim is banned and a jacket and tie are required. César Ritz, the Swiss hotelier who worked his way up from nothing to enter English as an adjective describing high living, would surely approve. And really, it's hard not to. The room is a 1906 Edwardian fantasy, with chandeliers, swagged curtains, gilt, marble and the thickest carpets. The wine list is extraordinary. The executive chef John Williams grew up near Newcastle, and gives menu space to British produce — Norfolk crab, Dorset lamb, Scottish langoustine — wherever possible. However, the foie gras is from Landes, there are tomatoes from Sicily and, sometimes, Australian winter truffles. The modern taste for simplicity has as little place here as a pair of designer trainers: with up to 70 chefs in his kitchen, Williams is able to produce dishes of exceptional intricacy (such as the ballotine of duck liver, in a reduction of Armagnac, Sauternes and port). And yet, nothing is ever overdone.theritzlondon.com
• Read more luxury reviews, advice and insights from our experts
There's an excellent sense of humour on display in Mount Street Restaurant, on the menu and on the walls — and sometimes, at the tables, with at least one famous comedian enjoying his dinner on my last visit. This is an outpost of the prestigious international gallery Hauser & Wirth, so even the magnificent mosaic floor is a work of art, and dinner is all the more delicious for the visual feast that accompanies it — sometimes with a sly reminder that artists are diners too. So, among the paintings by Alexander Calder, Catherine Goodman and Andy Warhol is a plate of prawns by Lucian Freud and a glowing array of herrings by Henri Matisse. The menu also has fun, toying cleverly with received ideas about British food from across the centuries: mock turtle croquettes (actually made from veal), Orkney scallop scampi. But there's nothing old-fashioned about the wine list, which is gloriously varied. So, Champagne, Bordeaux and Burgundy are well represented but there's also the chance to try a furmint from Hungary or a superb assyrtiko from Vassaltis, on the Greek island of Santorini, and these unusual grape varieties feel more in keeping with the adventurous spirit of the place. mountstrestaurant.com
This review mustn't start with the puddings — not with one of the best wine lists in London, an elegant high-ceilinged room where privacy is as subtle as a banquette backed by a wooden screen, and brasserie-style savoury dishes that would make a Frenchman pout with envy. Except that I am a fool for a good list and care little about sweets (I'd say that I prefer my sugar fermented), so it seems useful to mention that, five years on from my first visit to Maison François, that dessert trolley still trundles enticingly through my mind. The apple tart, the crème caramel … still, I will wrench myself away to point out that the famous oeuf en gelée deserves its fame, the gougères, those alluring Burgundian cheese puffs, are light as smoke, the vegetables fresh and the bread homemade. And that delectable wine list is designed by Daniel Illsley, the founder of Theatre of Wine and one of the best palates in London.maisonfrancois.london
Shepherd Market, tucked out of the main drag between Piccadilly and Park Lane, is the perfect spot to lose a lazy afternoon or evening … which may be why Dan Keeling and Mark Andrew, the proprietors of Noble Rot, chose to open their third outpost here. They have not messed with their winning combination of dark wood and brightly smiling staff, well equipped to guide the wine-fancier towards the glass best suited to asparagus with salt cod brandade and egg yolk or roast pork belly strewn with rosemary. The cuisine is Mediterranean, if leaning heavily towards France. The ingredients are local where suitable, but not at the expense of creativity. That wine list is very long, but there are many options by the glass, so the solution is often to order several of those: a round-the-world adventure, without the bother of leaving your seat. No wonder diners often forget to go home.noblerot.co.uk
Pushing open the heavy, blank door of Hide is quite an effort — but that's the only exertion a meal at this beautiful Michelin-starred restaurant requires. First comes the showstopping staircase, a sinuous structure that winds languidly around the three elegant wood-lined floors. Then, out come the menus. And of course, they are showstopping too: à la carte on the ground floor and tasting menus upstairs (the basement is a bar). While the founding chef Ollie Dabbous has stepped away, his replacement, Josh Angus, knows just what he is doing. There are lots of vegetarian options, but even the carnivores' menu is filled with seasonal vegetation, creatively transformed. There's pasta stuffed with peas and marigolds, drizzled with garlic buttermilk; tarragon chimichurri on barbecued wild sea bass. The bread is made on the premises, the charcuterie home-cured. As for the wines, the restaurant is owned by the elite store Hedonism Wines, round the corner in Davies Street, so the list is one of Europe's largest. hide.co.uk
Mayfair diners are sophisticated souls, hard to surprise, but even they respond to the primeval thrill of an open fire, and Miller Prada knows just what to do with his. Which is very dramatic indeed: four metres long, artfully lit, fed by carefully sourced woods from birch to cherry, and put to use in all sorts of ways, from flame-grilling to smoking to cooking meat and fish in the embers. This is an omakase, or Japanese 'chef's choice' restaurant, and that unlikely combination works brilliantly. After all, Japanese fine dining is all about watching admiringly while an expert creates the next gorgeous morsel. Prada combines the technique of his mentor, the sushi maestro Endo Kazutoshi, with inspiration from his native Colombia and produce sourced as close to right here as possible. So the lobster, charred on a branch of rosemary, is from Cornwall, while the eight-day aged monkfish served with grilled asparagus and puffed wild rice comes from Devon. And the service is as sleek as the decor. humolondon.com
There are classics and there are classics: Mayfair has plenty of places that have been around since the horse and carriage, but Angela Hartnett opened Murano in 2008, with Gordon Ramsay, under whose somewhat rough style of mentorship she had not just survived but thrived. She has long since bought him out, but in any case, the restaurant was always hers in essence: the northern Italian cuisine is a homage to her maternal grandparents, who came from Emilia-Romagna, and the produce is largely British, so Murano is as much a blend of the two places as she is. It's not easy to stand out with Italian food in London, but Hartnett's winning combination of sophistication and rusticity — prawn and pink peppercorn bisque on the roasted monkfish, Ortiz anchovy on the Hereford beef fillet — has won her a Michelin star and a loyal clientele of Londoners and visitors. They find the combination of pale stone and dark wood, spruced up with new chandeliers a couple of years ago to coincide with the restaurant's 15th anniversary, as comforting as the menu. muranolondon.com