‘Lilibet’s is not so much a restaurant as an exquisitely gilded delight,’ reviews TOM PARKER BOWLES
Any restaurant that serves a prego steak sandwich for pudding immediately gets my seal of approval. Who needs the fripperies of dessert when you can tuck into this Portuguese classic, a fat slice of fillet steak, cooked rare, slathered in mustard and wedged in the softest of white rolls? But then new Mayfair restaurant Lilibet’s never ceases to surprise. The room for a start: huge yet beguilingly over the top, a high-camp cross between a posh, fin-de-siècle Parisian knocking shop and Joan Collins’ boudoir, circa 1984. I mean that in the best possible way.
Lilibet’s fried crab thermidor: ‘rich as a Mayfair widow’
It’s lavish and louche and lovely – the monogrammed napkins, the gleaming marble floor, the swathes of expensive floral fabrics. Service purrs like a classic Bentley, immaculate but beautifully understated. Lights flatter and cosset. Lilibet’s is named after our late Queen, as it sits on the site of the house where she was born. Oh dear. Here we go again, I thought, yet another caviar-smothered Euro turkey, a witless, Brunello Cucinelli-clad dud. But then I read Ross Shonhan – former executive chef at Nobu and Zuma, and founder of Bone Daddies – was the man behind it all. And that was that.
I’ve always loved Shonhan’s cooking: clean, precise, but fun too. And the menu here, predominantly seafood, is so damned sexy that you want to book two tickets on the Eurostar and slip off for a dirty weekend in Paris. Fire-roasted oysters slathered in aged beef fat are sublime, the sweetness of the oysters magnified by a gentle bovine allure. There are small but exceptionally sweet langoustines, and pristine slices of toro tuna in a gazpacho sauce of glorious acidity. For those after something a little heftier, the baked rice with Spanish prawns is immense, all soft, shellfish stock-soaked grains. Then a fried crab thermidor, served in a silver crab, rich as a Mayfair widow, outrageously creamy and far superior to the lobster original.
There’s even a section entitled ‘Unsung heroes’, filled with cod’s head, gurnard and other unsightly, underrated seafood. Alongside an excellent value £34 three-course set lunch menu, somewhat of a miracle around these parts. Lilibet’s is not so much a restaurant as an exquisitely gilded delight. Serious cooking, seasoned with an oh-so-knowing wink.
About £60 per head. Lilibet’s, 17 Bruton St, London W1; lilibetsrestaurant.com
