From western star to Off-West-End transfer
Cornish fish maestro Nathan Outlaw has set up shop in London. Kathryn Flett reports
The Goring – the last family-owned five-star hotel in London – is tucked quietly away in Belgravia, just behind Buckingham Palace. Well known as the venue where the Duchess of Cambridge chose to spend her last night as a Middleton – priceless global publicity – it has a royal warrant from the Queen and is therefore ever-so-slightly glam while also being a very long way from Beyoncé. One hundred per cent British DNA means no absurdly skew-whiff ideas of Britishness, thankfully; no concierges adopting Dick Van Dyke’s accent in Mary Poppins; no guests believing that a 30-minute stroll from the front door will allow them to take in Buck House and Big Ben, via Portobello Road, the filming of a scene from The Crown and/or Paddington, plus a cream tea at that lovely Tower Bridge, near Hampton Court Palace.
However, there are just enough native quirks for the Goring to escape being tediously haute-bourgeois, too. Not the least of which is Siren, the new Nathan Outlaw offshoot. Outlaw has two Michelin stars at his eponymous Port Isaac restaurant, and one at the nearby Fish Kitchen – and Siren is considerably glitzier than either. Nonetheless, waiting staff sport largely unflattering and fussy outfits in various shooting-party-camo shades of green – colours quite cruel to any skin that isn’t either tanned or naturally olive. As if that weren’t testing enough, the poor male waiting staff have also been gifted oversized pieces of crustacea-inspired jewellery for their lapels.
But despite the dressing-up-box bonkersness, on a Friday lunchtime in mid-August Siren is very Middleton-class, humming with groups of soignée Carole-alikes, up/down/ along from their home counties, contentedly racking up bills that (spoiler alert) are, in fact, very Beyoncé.
The room is an airy revamp of the Goring’s garden terrace – check out the eye-catching glass lobsters – turning it into a light-suffused conservatory that probably would, from my seat, have given perfect views on to the hotel’s delightful garden, were it not for the fact that the horizontal frames exactly coincided with my eye level. This is the kind of intensely annoying thing a restaurant critic whose parallel life happens to include working in an architectural practice will not only notice instantly but point out, boringly. However, if you are shorter than five feet or taller than six, you’ll be fine.
Siren’s service is also less of a seductive come-on than it is a full-blown production worthy of the chorus of Hamilton (on just around the corner at the Victoria Palace) – and with not dissimilar costumes. I am, as regular readers may be aware, increasingly weary of the “…et voilà!” school of service: of interregna, declamatory flourishes, menus with narratives (“…and here we have a John Dory, which is said to bear St Peter’s thumbprint…yada-yadayawn-yawn”) and overweening staff with accents so intense that, after their lengthy dish description, you have still failed to comprehend a word but don’t dare ask for a repeat because you’re unlikely to be any the wiser even then. Eventually, effectively triggered by the apparently endless service, I responded to the news that our fish would “arrive with heads and tails (not A Thing for some, apparently) with a curt “I think we’ll cope.”
To the food, then. My lunch date – a member of the Telegraph’s Boss Class – opted for a pale and delicately shimmering starter of cured monkfish, ginger, fennel and yogurt, all as pretty as a mermaid’s tail (“Fennelly, fishy, crèmefrâichey – mmm!”). Meanwhile, the high-low juxtaposition of my lobster and pea tart was revelatory: I’d expected mostly essence of lobster, receiving instead big firm chunks nestled in a whorl of puréed peas on a skinny pastry tart; basically, Brad Pitt in Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, perched topless on a rock, beckoning and winking. Kudos, too, to the bread and seaweed butter.
My main was the catch-of-the-day red mullet, the colour of a midsummer Land’s End sunset (replete with head and tail), fleshy and firm, falling off its bone and accompanied by a punchy seaweed hollandaise; altogether as good as it could be. And 35 quid. Opposite me, à la carte baked-on-the-bone turbot with fennel and seaweed hollandaise was “pleasingly both firm and gelatinous. Excellent.”
I forewent pud in favour of a sizeable cheeseboard while the editrix scarfed non-wussy “Cambridge” burnt cream, seasonal fruits and shortbread. Having accessorised our mains with only a tomato and shallot salad and a couple of small glasses of wine (I had a mint tea with my cheese) the bill nonetheless came in at a robust 200 quid.
If you like your lunches as easy-going as they are affordable, then I’d give Siren a miss. Everyone else, however, should fill their boots/boats. The context is fussy and not to everyone’s taste, granted, however there is great cooking here, of fine ingredients native to our shoreline (the fish is up from Outlaw’s own manor, Cornwall).
So if we Leave without A Deal and must retrain ourselves to live sans, for example, avocados and wagyu (tough, granted) we’ll be absolutely faine. Especially if your surname is Cambridge and your ’hood Belgravia, via the Goring. For the rest of us, it’s very nice to slip into that parallel universe – just occasionally.
Goring Hotel, 15 Beeston Pl, Westminster, London SW1W 0JW 020 7769 4485; thegoring.com