The dining room at The Yellow Bittern, seating just 18 people.
What can you tell us about The Yellow Bittern?
Put simply, it's the new restaurant from chef Hugh Corcoran, who recently got a lot of acclaim for a residency at Italo in Vauxhall last year (and was a chef in Paris and the Basque country before that). Here, there's a focus on comfort food with influences from his Nothern Irish heritage.
But there's a lot more to it than that, isn't there?
There is indeed. The Yellow Bittern, despite only opening a few weeks back with little fanfare, has come to a lot of people's attention because of the way it does business. First off, they only take reservations by phone, and they're only open for lunch (with two sittings available). Then there's the fact that they don't take any kind of card payment - it's all cash. There's a regularly changing blackboard menu - but no menu (or prices without asking) for the wine.
There was a little bit of a controversy too?
Yes, the chef took to Instagram to berate a table of four diners who shared a starter of radishes and two mains between them for lunch (with tap water). In fairness, this would annoy pretty much any chef in a small restaurant where losing the revenue of one table can be a big deal. But the discussion over a series of posts expanded to a discussion about how to manage expectations from both restaurateurs and diners when eating out. And as you might imagine from any debate conducted over social it all got a bit shouty.
On a recent visit to Paris, we spotted a menu that said all customers had to order (at least) one main course. Our suggestion would be to follow that simple step here - then there would be no confusion.
This is what you're looking for. You may have to wait outside to be let in, as the door is locked.
Where is it?
It's at the bottom area of Caledonian Road - a part of King's Cross that could do with a bit of regeneration, frankly. Hopefully this and the upcoming Tamila a few doors down will bring a little bit of life back. As for getting there, it's less than five-minute walk from King's Cross tube.
So what's the set-up?
There are two lunchtime sittings, one at 12pm and one at 2pm. We went for the latter on a Friday - given the talk of long boozy lunches we thought this made more sense. If you get there early, you'll be able to browse the bookshop downstairs while you wait for your table (it was only a few minutes wait in our case). It's a small restaurant, so if you're sitting by the wall (see the photo above), expect to stay there as you're only getting out if the table goes too.
Then it's a case of checking out the blackboard to see what's on offer that day. Here's what we had:
Soda bread is surprisingly hard for London restaurants to get right - this was just perfect (£6)
Radishes and butter (£6) - perfectly fresh radishes, but you may need a sprinkling of salt on that butter.
Roast guinea fowl (£25) - a great comfort dish with the roast bird sitting on a pile of vegetables stewed into sweetness.
Dublin coddle - sausage and potato stew (£20) - a lovely dish, but at this point veering a little too close to something we could make at home.
Rice pudding (£7) - There's a lot of rice pudding on menus at the moment but this, complete with vanilla pod, was up there with the very best of them.
The Irish cheese selection (£14) - a lovely selection of cheeses (Mount Leinster, Young Buck & St Tola) but this could have benefited from a few crackers to go with them.
The rotating menu can be a good and bad thing. While it does mean that the restaurant should reward repeat visits, it means you might miss out on some of their best dishes. For instance, we were looking forward to trying the much-praised pie but that wasn't on during our visit. There's also the issue of arriving at the very last sitting of the week, as a fair few things on the menu started becoming unavailable (we had our eyes on an apple pie but just missed that too).
And what about the wine?
Here's where things start getting a little tricky. We're sure there's a great wine selection here, but you'll never actually see it. Instead, you have to tell them roughly what you want to spend and they'll get something to suit your tastes. We offered around the £50 mark for a bottle of dry riesling from Alsace, and although we couldn't say for sure, we think that might be on the lower end of things, with glasses at £10.
Not knowing just what the wine could cost does throw the budgeting into slight disarray, and it did mean we had to pop across the road to get more money out. That's not the end of the world, obviously, but that is something we thought we'd left behind. If money is no object, you'll be fine - but if it is, then it makes things a little anxious as you go through the mental arithmetic to make sure you have enough cash. Frankly, a short written wine list would really help things and we don't think it would break the whole vibe they're going for here.
Overall thoughts
We're in slightly two minds about The Yellow Bittern. Cash payments only aside, we love the idea of bringing back long boozy lunches over plenty of comfort food. The cooking on show was also great in places and the wine was good too. There's real promise here, and we've seen reviewers that really loved it. But it's not quite hanging together just yet. Long lunches aren't that easy if you have the early sitting, don't have access to the full menu as dishes have run out, or are worried about costing it all out because you can't see how much the booze is.
For us, if they can find the balance between being charmingly old school but also making things as easy and comfortable as possible for the diners, which we think is achievable with some tweaks, then this should find its audience.
More about The Yellow Bittern
Where is it? 20 Caledonian Road, London N1 9DU
How to book: Call 0203 342 2162 (they also accept letters and postcards)
Find out more: Follow them on Instagram @luncheonmagazine
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