South Ken has been waiting for something like The Lavery for years.
Your safest culinary bet in SW7 used to be the Las Vegas-style strip of middle-class bakery chains (Paul, Gail’s, Bread Ahead etc) or Profumo roleplay at Daquise, but into this relative wasteland now steps this effortless, Med-leaning dining room. On the first floor of a stucco-fronted, grand Georgian townhouse, The Lavery is part of a larger, slightly spurious-sounding ‘events space’, named after the Irish painter Sir John Lavery, who once called this lavish Grade-II building home. We can’t really get a handle on what these events are, when they might happen, or where they might happen (is it simply a WeWork for toffs?) but the restaurant itself is a delight. Big windows, polished floors and massive mirrors give it an air of Versailles by way of Fortnum & Mason or a high-end museum cafe, which is fitting, seeing as it’s right in the shadow of the Natural History Museum.
Saintly asparagus slathered with decadent fonduta is the good cop/bad cop of dishes
Not just a pretty space, there’s a hardcore hospitality taskforce behind the launch, with former Toklas head chef Yohei Furuhashi cooking up a seasonally shifting menu that’s not a million miles away from that of his artsy alma mater. Here, food shunts around the edges of Italian and Spanish cuisine, but pulls from homegrown suppliers, with the likes of chalk stream trout with wild garlic aioli; nettle taglioni and Tamworth pork chop with Amalfi lemon on offer.
An impressive opening salvo of salt cod, gothic Iberiko tomato and baked polenta gives us a smidge of San Sebastian, before a plate of asparagus slathered with fonduta, a good cop/bad cop dish, with exceedingly decadent, artery-destroying cheese sauce glooped over saintly steamed veg.
Carne cruda is another superior starter, the bouncy nibbets of perfectly pink veal tartare layered with raw artichoke and salty slabs of parmesan. Think of it as a spritely raw meat salad for anxious vampires who lack the gumption to nibble on actual human necks. The nettle taglioni glows bright grassy green and is furiously fresh tasting, akin to burying your face in a Hampshire field, while the pork chop is just the right amount of sweet. If anything lets the side down (and not much does) it’s a portion of skinless and slippery ratte potatoes, which come over a touch too much like school dinners.
We might not quite understand the overall concept of the space, but the restaurant portion of The Lavery makes perfect sense.
The vibe High-end art gallery canteen energy.
The food Super-fresh, produce-led Mediterranean-leaning dishes.
The drink There’s a great cocktail menu – try the potent grapefruit daiquiri - as well as a whopper of a wine list.
Time Out tip Mains are sizable, so share one between two and go hard on the starters and smaller plates.