So a lot has modified over the previous two weeks, not to mention the previous two years. It’s made me need to go someplace that’s to date faraway from my actuality that it stops me in my tracks. I need to exclaim: the place am I? Who am I? What is that this place? This is just not my lovely home, this isn’t my lovely spouse!
I digress… I would like escapism, pure and easy. I wasn’t anticipating to seek out it inside the hallowed partitions of The Twenty Two in Mayfair. A stone’s throw away from the terrible, heaving throngs of Oxford Street, the Twenty Two Hotel is a sublime affair – additionally, maybe unsurprisingly, a sublime place to have an affair, though that’s not what’s introduced me right here. Its restaurant, headed by former Picture group Alan Christie and Colin Kelly, is way the identical.
The cooks’ reunion is a nice shock for followers of Picture, which had two institutions in Marylebone and Fitzrovia earlier than each closed all of the sudden in 2019 for “many boring reasons”. But, by way of The Twenty Two, they’re promising to convey a “Mediterranean flourish to modern British fare”.
What does that appear like? Ingredients like octopus (in croquette kind), artichokes (the crisp salad variety with French beans), and Portobello mushrooms (with grilled polenta and slow-cooked kale) characteristic prominently on the menu. It’s additionally peppered with basic French cookery, with dishes resembling tuna Nicoise salad, lobster Thermidor and Dover sole meuniere evoking the reminiscence of an Eighties ceremonial dinner. Surprisingly, no prawn cocktail, however maybe that may be too contrived.
It’s the inside of The Twenty Two, nevertheless, that basically whisks me away to a different world. Stepping off the busy road, a hush falls and I can’t assist however marvel on the restaurant’s grandness; all child blue partitions and mustard-coloured velvet chairs, delicate lighting and plush flooring, fringed lamps and pretentious bouquets of flowers. An ornate gilded mirror takes delight of place in the primary eating room, but it surely’s simple to squirrel your self away right into a darkish nook to conduct your (ahem) affairs, or just trade gossip and secrets and techniques over some actually incredible cocktails.
That is how my eating associate and I start our night. No, not by conducting an affair, however by gossiping in a nook till the waiter gently pops our bubble to take us to a desk by the gilded mirror. It’s the very best seat in the home – providing a panoramic view of the room so we will watch different (extra) glamorous diners come and go. For one night, we will fake we’re buzzy London socialites, guffawing over our glasses of bubbly.
Our meal kicks off with seasonal asparagus and hollandaise, grilled prawns with seaweed butter – each are scrumptious – and polenta chips. The drawback with polenta chips is that they’re by no means fairly pretty much as good as I hope: too massive and scorching to eat immediately, too dry and boring as soon as they quiet down. I might give these a miss subsequent time in favour of the Devonshire crab salad or tuna tartare with fennel, radish and inexperienced chilli.
I go for the sirloin steak – my partner is pescetarian, so I don’t eat a lot meat at house; this makes it simple to chop again on meat however I’ll permit it on this escapist night time out. The solely drawback is that they’ve given me a butter knife to work with. Everything had been just about impeccable till then. This fake pas shakes me out of my reverie, like a glitch within the simulation. But it’s no huge deal. After sawing away with little success, I ask for a steak knife and one seems promptly earlier than me.
It’s unusual how such a small, insignificant factor can stick in a single’s thoughts, but it surely’s small potatoes within the grand scheme of issues. The remainder of the night at The Twenty Two is a delight, and the employees are significantly great. Attentive and pleasant, they supply a extra trendy expertise in what might be a a lot stuffier place, and the restaurant is best for it. I’ve to say: the vibes are immaculate.
22 Grosvenor Square, Mayfair, London, W1K 6LF | 020 3988 5022 | the22.london
Source: www.unbiased.co.uk