On one of the world’s most expensive streets, Willett’s is serving £1 oysters at happy hour and Michelin-calibre plates at brasserie prices. Alex Larman heads to the Belmond Cadogan to investigate…
If you’re on Sloane Street in Chelsea – one of the most expensive patches of land anywhere in the world – you would expect its restaurants to be similarly upmarket, and you’d be right. So the fact that the newly launched Willett’s is offering a happy hour of frankly giveaway prices would make anyone sit up and take serious notice.
Visit this salubrious new establishment for ‘Willett’s Hour’ between 6 and 7pm daily, and you will be able to feast on absurdly priced treats that include sausage rolls and oysters for £1 – £1! – apiece, signature cocktails for £8 and pints of lager for £6. Put your mind to it, and you could have a feast and still have change from a £20 note. For SW1, this is frankly unheard-of largesse, and must be investigated forthwith.
However, if you have stuffed yourself full of oysters and sausage rolls, you run the risk of missing out on a restaurant that is currently pulling off the tricky balancing act of offering Michelin-level food at brasserie-style prices. Situated inside the salubrious settings of the Belmond Cadogan hotel – yes, that Cadogan hotel, where Oscar Wilde was so famously arrested – Willett’s is not attempting to offer a hushed and sombre experience, but to take the very best of modern British cuisine and wine and make it accessible, approachable and fun.
We started off with a couple of ace cocktails – Apricot & Thyme for me, a fine concoction of whisky and apricots, and a Cherry Punch of gin, cherry and goat’s milk for Boothby – as we sample a couple of snacks. Everything here is distinctly English in nature and what could be more redolent of our green and pleasant land than a selection of small but perfectly formed crumpets, served, respectively, with gentleman’s relish and Marmite butter, and a couple of delicious oysters, served with, of all things, brown ale, giving them a welcome saline-but-sweet note.
It is at this point that the sommelier Alex comes over, happily smiling. We are going to see an awful lot of Alex over the next few courses, and he is welcome every single time he appears. His wine list has a strong focus on English wines, and we start off with a couple of contrasting glasses of a Bacchus from London Cru and an Ortega from Biddenden in Kent.
Both are sublime, the Bacchus having a crisp lightness and the Ortega a richer, more complex palette, and go very nicely with the crumpets and oysters, to say nothing of a witty little amuse-bouche of ‘tea and biscuits’, where the tea is tomato gazpacho and the biscuits caramelised onion.
It’s then time for the starters proper, and mindful of the fact that we are likely to be eating an awful lot of food, we attempt to pace ourselves. I opt for a duck egg with girolles, artichoke and wild garlic and Boothby plumps for a really exceptional Orkney scallop ‘scampi’, which has been deep fried and reconstituted into a take on its original form. The kitchen, in their generosity and wisdom, also send us a very upmarket version of a prawn cocktail, a quartet of plump langoustines in a zingy Marie Rose sauce that is absolutely delicious. Alex reappears, and he has another excellent match for us, in the form of a Chapel Down Albarino; it indicates that global warming in Kent might be a bad thing generally, but when it comes to producing wines of this calibre, we will not be disappointed.
Then we move onto mains, and I was tempted by the dry-aged pork chop with mustard sauce, but our charming waiter brings a selection of the special steaks of the day over, in the form of sirloin, rib-eye and T-bone, each of them 75-dry aged and looking wonderful. In all honesty, the only misstep that we made all meal was to order the rib-eye to share rather than the sirloin, which was a superbly flavourful cut but perhaps too heavy on the fat and marbling: a lesson for next time. But it was prepared and served to perfection and came with a variety of delicious sides including triple-cooked chips, hispi cabbage and a fine tomato salad.
And Alex has a surprise up his sleeve, too. We tried a glass of red and it had a wonderfully rich, fruity taste to it, so I confidently said that it was Valpolicella and Montepulciano. Not a bit of it. Greek? Bulgarian? New World? Spanish? None of them. It was, in keeping with the English theme, another London wine, this time the Cabernet Noir from London Cru, and it was every bit as unctuous as it needed to be.
We still had a little room left, unbelievably, for desserts, and it was only right to order Granny Campbell’s sherry trifle and a fine, moreish bread and butter pudding, both of which were the exemplar of ‘pudding’ rather than anything more modish. The kitchen sent over a bonus rice pudding with apricot jam, and Alex appeared for his final flourish, allowing us to try a trio of dessert wines: the Muscat de Beaumes de Venise (Boothby’s favourite), the sweet Malbec and an absolute corker in the form of another English wine, the Bacchus ‘Entice’ from Hattingley Valley.
It was an evening, in other words, of Englishness of a kind that is to be treasured and beloved. There was one final treat left in store as we sipped a couple of divine shortbread Old Fashioneds – a selection of petit fours that included everything from a miniature Rocky Road to a toffee in edible wrapping that had something of the theatricality of Heston Blumenthal about it. And then we were out into the Chelsea air, replete and delighted at what an excellent – and excellent value – evening it had all been. Come for Willett’s Hour, stay for dinner. You will not be disappointed.
Willett’s at The Cadogan, 75 Sloane St, London SW1X 9SG. For more information, and for bookings, please visit www.belmond.com.
