As we approached No 50 Cheyne in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea on a Saturday evening, the streets felt quaint and soothingly silent. This is SW3. No, 50 Cheyne is a neighborhood eating place where, tremendously speaking, nearly nobody needs to meet over a weekend. If you may come up with the money to have this aesthetically incredible protection as you’re nearby, there’s a strong chance you’ve got different houses to escape to come Friday.
No Fifty Cheyne sits near the Thames, bathed in the iridescent twinkle of Albert Bridge. Blue plaques on nearby walls speak of rose bushes planted by Elizabeth I. Sally Greene, theatre impresario and proprietor of Ronnie Scott’s, has converted her former Cheyne Walk Brasserie into a fashionable, grown-up, secure area from life’s beastliness.
Downstairs is a 70-seat restaurant serving snails and black pudding vol-au-vent, chook liver terrine, a 14oz chateaubriand to proportion, and local lobster. Upstairs is a claret-colored, womb-like, windowless cocktail snug and, to the right of this, the form of paneled, bejeweled, couch-strewn living room wherein one ought to imagine Marquise Isabelle from Dangerous Liaisons carrying a big bonnet and plotting mischief.
This can all be pretty horrific: stiff, sterile, and squander some. Instead, it is an appropriate typhoon of very posh yet additionally pub-like. The roots of this lie with chef Iain Smith, previously head chef of Jason Atherton’s joint Social Eating House and the now-defunct So Share. Should No Fifty Cheyne provide a rigid tasting menu with the requisite “emulsions” and “fragments”?
The cold ambiance derived from such Jeffery can also have ruined the location, but there are grilled lamb chops, red meat-dripping chips, and pear disintegrate with custard for pudding as a substitute. Prices veer from “posh gastropub” to “Jesus Christ, how a whole lot?”; from a Herdwick lamb rump primary at £29 to lobster at £45 – but then, if you discover yourself caught in Chelsea at the weekend, in place of your Cotswolds mansion, a little bisque might be some solace.
Overall, the area is, to apply the technical period, “a great chortle” and truly romantic. The workers, led by Benoit Auneau, have been jolly, active, and discreet. The clients, largely married couples, several of whom appeared as if they had weathered at least a silver anniversary yet preferred a walk together on a hot spring night.
We ordered three starters, all of them quite incredible. A gratifying bowl of smoked Scottish salmon arrived on a soft, heat salad of new potato and muscat grape melded with a pond-green, herby cream. That turned into followed by using dark, squid-ink rice armed with grilled langoustine and scallops, and scallopsed with an archly bouji champagne sauce that Charles decreed the first-class aspect he’d eaten this year.
The veganyearlternative was a wildly ornate salad of shaved beetroot, pickled apple and pear, leaves, and delicate cashew nut cream. However, it became a hint candy, a robust foray into the complicated international of dairy-free great dining. There has been a gradually-cooked fowl’s egg with asparagus, morels, and wild garlic for vegetarians. Portions erred on the aspect of health, as opposed to stingy; that’s perhaps why the temper changed into so buoyant. People were, without a doubt, being fed.
Mains persevered in a largely faultless way. A comforting plate of cob bird – breast and a neat croquette – came with an earthy wild mushroom stew and parsley liquor. A vegan important of braised his cabbage with broccolini and younger leek doused in a herb-and-tomato olive-oil sauce turned into a bold, rural romp that I enjoyed but that went unappreciated through Charles, who turned into distracted through his elderly red meat fillet and cheek crowned with a beneficiant quantity of smoked bone marrow and creamed spinach, which changed into dictionary-definition largesse.
