If you wanted a snapshot of what discreet, Michelin-starred dining looks like in 2026, you wouldn’t have to look much further than Belgravia’s most exclusive and sedate restaurant, Muse by Tom Aikens. Although it’s now celebrating its sixth birthday – it had the bad luck to open just before the pandemic, although it weathered the storm unlike many other establishments – it still has the energy and pizzazz of a start-up, albeit a start-up that is specialising in a ten-course tasting menu presented with all the ceremony and pomp that such a procession of food usually involves.
And it has Aikens, a Michelin-starred chef who has been one of the most consistently interesting figures in the British restaurant scene for years. Any restaurant with him at the pass is automatically worth a visit, and so it proves, in no uncertain terms, at Muse.
You arrive in a Belgravia mews a stone’s throw from Eaton Square, where the most recognisable establishment hitherto was the Horse and Groom pub. As you enter, you are struck by how bijou the whole restaurant is. There’s a small downstairs area – ‘bar’ is putting it too strongly – where you can peruse the menu and sip on an expertly made, very strong Old Fashioned if you so desire.
That said, this isn’t a place where the menu is intended to be one of choice. Although there is an a la carte selection, the point of Muse is to go on, if you will, a journey with Aikens from the recollections and influences of his childhood. Over the course of ten courses, ranging from the canape-sized to the more substantial, diners are therefore invited to sample dishes that have especial resonance for the chef, and to engage in an almost Proustian deep dive into memory.
If this sounds a tad pretentious, then Aikens is only following in the footsteps of peers such as Tom Sellers and Heston Blumenthal, whose Michelin-starred restaurants have also explored the links between food and nostalgia to hugely successful effect. And from the beginning of the well-paced, well-judged and always delicious meal, the highlights, which use the very best of seasonal produce, come thick and fast.
Canapes involving everything from celeriac to beetroot come in the first two courses, ‘Forever Picking’ and ‘The Rule of Three’, and then celeriac returns for the more substantial ‘Down to Earth’, where it comes paired with truffle and mushroom. Served with a divine Macon-Villages white Burgundy by the knowledgeable sommelier, it’s an impressive overture. You can tell a lot about a restaurant by the quality of its bread, and ‘Making & Breaking’, the fourth course, marries treacle-glazed sourdough with some sensational butters, of which the greatest is a chicken-infused variety.
It sets diners up nicely for the next two courses, ‘The Essence’, in which Aikens turns beetroot into poetry – ‘we all have our favourite flavours, and this beet flavour is one of mine’, the helpful dining note observes – and the even better ‘Worth the Wait’, a marriage of scallop, artichoke and apple that makes great play of the way that extra-large scallops can be 20 years old by the time they’re caught, giving them an extraordinary depth of flavour.
This is a place that specialises in the pescetarian and vegetarian alike, meaning that a glass of Lepiga Soave is a fine accompaniment to the scallop and its successor, ‘Never Ending Time’, where squid, fennel and kombu make for a fine menage à trois.
However, there’s also a hero carnivorous course in the form of the punningly named ‘Dear, Oh Lovely Deer’, where Lake District venison (including a fine, rich sausage) comes served with red cabbage and pickled clementine, along with a glass of the Santa Barbara County 2023 Âmervive organic Ravie red wine: a serious wine for serious times.
There are desserts, in the form of the surprisingly rich and substantial chocolate ‘Wait and See’ – so called because of what Aikens’s mother would habitually say when asked what was for dessert, and aptly described as ‘a sweet, seasonal delight’, and then the tart, astringent ‘Comfort of Home’, which marries pear, pine and oats to sharp effect.
Yet the meal proper concludes with another treat back downstairs, over coffee and petit fours, when – in what is surely a homage to the Fat Duck’s collection of gummies – you are served various delights including Laphroaig whisky sweets, which taste exactly like a shot of whisky in an easily digested form. Not one for the children, certainly, but unmissably delicious nonetheless.
You leave Muse after a substantial three-hour repast full of the joys not only of spring but of how good cooking can be with someone as engaged and able as Aikens behind the pass. This is a labour of love that doesn’t feel remotely self-indulgent, but instead shows that the talented Mr Aikens is creating alchemy in his small, perfectly formed restaurant. A pleasure, in every sense.
Muse by Tom Aikens, 38 Groom Pl, London SW1X 7BA. For more information, including details of suppliers and private hire, and for bookings, please visit www.musebytomaikens.co.uk.
Photos by Food Story Media
