As London emptied out for Christmas, there was one new restaurant we kept seeing on our Twitter and Instagram feeds. Everyone, it seemed, was heading for the new Mayfair restaurant Kitty Fisher's.
In the kitchen is YBF chef of the year Tomas Parry along with Chris Leach, formerly of Pitt Cue Co. Together they're turning out the kind of dishes you might be used to in Hackney, but which will seem incredibly novel to the folk in Mayfair.
The restaurant itself is tiny with just 40 seats, most of which are on the lower level, looking into the kitchen which sports a custom-built wood grill by the London Log Co that will be the envy of chefs across London. But, due to cunning trickery/an incredibly powerful extraction system no hint of this smoke seeps out into the dining room.
Decor is very much 1970s Berni Inn crossed with the kind of rollicking country inn seen in Tom Jones (the movie, not the singer). Which is to say, it's hugely comfortable and somewhere you feel instantly at home. The wine list is pretty good for Mayfair with carafes for £15 and a few bottles south of the £30 mark, but most of the natural clientele here will probably head for the upper reaches of the list.
As for the food - well we ripped our way through the brief menu and loved pretty much everything we had from the huge slabs of bread served with a burnt onion butter so good we could have eaten it with a spoon (£3) to delicious, but pricey, lamb cutlets, singing of anchovy and parsley (£10 for two).
It's easy to over order and to rack up quite a bill in the process - mains are around the £30 mark - as that menu makes everything seem so tempting. But we reckon Kitty Fisher's will do very nicely indeed here.
Kitty Fisher's, 10 Shepherd Market London W1J 7QF.
