EATING OUT

This week, Tom goes wild and freshly foraged at a newly opened Central London restaurant

It didn’t start well. The place was covered in dust sheets, and silent as a morgue. I mean, I’m all for ironically disguised pop-ups and artfully hidden speakeasies, but as I wandered through Brown’s hotel, my footsteps echoing balefully in the empty gloom, the joke began to wear a little thin.

‘Can I help you, sir?’ A smartly dressed man materialises from nowhere, his clipped, polite tone barely disguising the fact that no, the new Native, formerly of Southwark Street and Osea Island, Maldon – the place where the hyper-seasonal and freshly foraged meets the splendidly sustainable – was very much not to be found within Brown’s Hotel Mayfair and no, sir, he had no idea where it may be.

So I call my friend Grace who shrieks with laughter and tells me to trot across Mayfair to Browns, the clothes place. A few minutes later, I find myself in a rus in urbe courtyard, armed with a glass of rosé, and thrown into a merry discussion of life, death and Lidl ham. The food, which I’d expected to be hair-shirted and worthy, is anything but. Flavours sashay and swagger, bold and confident as a Regency dandy, but stop short of showing off. Chef and co-proprietor Ivan Tisdall-downes

Flavours sashay and swagger… it’s cooking to make the soul sing

understands the importance of acidity and balance.

Briny Maldon oysters come with the most sharply elegant of elderflower vinegars. And a burnished waffle, made from fermented potato (and yes, fermentation is big here, but always subtle rather than bullishly minging), is spread lasciviously with a lustrous parfait, topped with a tart film of apple jelly. Smacked cucumbers, flecked with specks of chilli, throb with the low, vinegared hum of fermented brown crab. Cob nuts provide a particularly English crunch.

There’s a blissfully inspired take on a Filet-o-fish, all batterencased sweet, white virginal flesh, soft brioche and bosky crustacean rarebit. Oh, and the mutton, spiced with hogseed, whatever that may be, is truly magnificent. Then, for pudding, a ‘marrowmel’ made with bone marrow and white chocolate, that should be vile and is, in fact, rich and resplendently lovely. Some of the ingredients may be a little obscure (although none the worse for it), but this is cooking to make the sap rise, the soul sing and flood the heart with spring-foraged joy.

About £50 per head. Native at Browns, 39 Brook Street, London W1; brownsfashion.com/uk

The ethos of Native at Browns is ‘sustainable and innovative’, says chef Ivan Tisdall-downes