Mount St. Restaurant and Rooms, Mayfair
Mount St. Restaurant surpassed our expectations, with awe-inspiring works of art to admire and decadent dishes to remember
I’m diving into Orkney scallop scampi with warm, traditional tartare sauce; perfectly cooked, succulent, and wrapped in breadcrumbs. The cornichons are sharp, the capers tart, the sauce rich and creamy.
We’ve already had warm bread with a soft chicken liver parfait and an Eton negroni (negroni meets Eton mess, with dry gin, raspberry, Lillet Blanc, Luxardo Bitter Bianco, and a mini meringue playfully perched atop a cube of ice).
The scampi is hitting the spot but that doesn’t mean I’m not envious of my dining companion’s choice of starter: melt-in-the-mouth Cornish bluefin tuna belly, crispy but soft-in-the-middle potato, seaweed mayonnaise which adds a touch of saltiness and umami.
I’m dining at Mount St. Restaurant and Rooms on Mount Street, one of Mayfair’s most storied streets.
Mount St. Restaurant and Rooms opened in October 2022 with must-try dishes (see above, more on which to follow), wow-factor interiors and fascinating display of over 200 pieces of art (around £50 million’s worth), where it holds its own between Scott’s, the seafood restaurant, and Socca, the French bistro by Claude Bosi and Samyukta Nair. It is directly opposite George, a member’s club with works by David Hockney in the dining room.
Mount St. Restaurant and Rooms is owned by the renowned hospitality group Artfarm, through which Swiss art gallery investors Iwan and Manuela Wirth develop fascinating cultural sites in celebration of art, food and drink, people, stories and place. Their growing empire spans the breadth of the UK.
Other ventures include the purchase of Soho’s famed Groucho Club for £40 million in 2022 (they plan to open a new Groucho outpost in the north of England); The Fife Arms in Braemar (a five-star hotel with bedrooms ‘redecorated in the Scottish tradition and with great art in mind’). The Roth Bar at Hauser & Wirth Somerset, an art gallery occupying a former farmstead in Bruton, is another of theirs.
But for now, back to Mount St. Restaurant and Rooms (where it may interest you to know that King Charles and Camilla have been spotted dining). We’d planned to order the fabled £110 beef wellington for two, with mashed potato, green beans and bone marrow sauce. Confronted with a menu of other tempting courses including Durslade Farm lamb loin with braised turnip and cep mushrooms, and White truffle risotto with English sparkling wine, Waterloo cheese and truffle honey, we stuck to our guns. It didn’t disappoint.
A perfectly cooked medium rare fillet of beef encased in a rich mushroom layer and flaky pastry arrived. The mash potato was the creamiest I’ve ever tasted, and paired companionably with sweet al dente green beans tossed in butter. The bone marrow sauce was decidedly decadent and rich.
As much as I loved every mouthful, I already want to return to sample Mount St’s equally famed lobster pie for two. I spied another table clamouring over the golden-brown crust in a silver-handled bowl (also £110), and I’d wager it lives up to the hype.
This time, with just enough room left to share a dessert, we ordered the Cambridge burnt cream with Kentish raspberries – a very British crème brûlée. It was between either that or the banana soufflé with rum and raisin ice cream and caramel sauce. A deliciously light (thank goodness) vanilla baked custard dessert was presented. The caramelised sugar had just the right amount of bite, and the raspberry sorbet on top added a gentle jolt of sharpness.
Man can not dine on bread alone, and the art at Mount Street is just as much of a draw as the food. Both combined during our time here to make for a sensory feast.
As we’d stepped into the restaurant, we had been greeted with Indian artist Subogh Gupta’s intricately oil-painted ceramic fountain with a brass tap, ‘Wash Before Eating’ (2018), which is filled with fresh fruit.
The Palladian marble, beautifully fragmented mosaic ‘Broken Floor’ (2022) by American artist Rashid Johnson is juxtaposed beautifully with Lucian Freud’s ‘Head of A Girl’ (1962) oil on canvas.
Turner Prize-winning artist Keith Tyson’s oil painting ‘Still Life With White Carbs’ (2011) hung above our table. In a departure from the Dutch 16th century still life tradition, pies, breads, chips, and pastries replace the expected decaying fruits and flowers.
Another conversation point which looms large in the restaurant is Suzanne Valadon’s ‘Nu Allongé sur un Canapé’ or ‘Reclining Nude on a Divan’ (1916). Valadon grew up in bohemian Montmartre in Paris and learnt to paint from the artists she posed for. This striking, portrait-like nude is reminiscent of Titian’s ‘Venus of Urbino’.
An abstract painting by British artist Frank Bowling, who was born in British Guiana in 1934 and arrived in London in 1953, which explores light, colour, and geometry, also garnered our appreciation.
Also not to be missed: Andy Warhol’s “Lobster” (1982; best appreciated while scoffing a forkful of that lobster pie); Henri Matisse’s “Éperlans (Smelts)”, and and Frank Auerbach’s “Primrose Hill, Summer” (1968).
The art here is not only on the walls. Aside from the floor itself being art, art is also on the tables, which are softly lit courtesy of table lamps inspired by the paint and metallic powder on wood Powder Box sculpture (1918) by late Davos-born Swiss artist Sophie Taeuber-Arp. Meanwhile, the intriguingly (and ostensibly provocatively) shaped salt and pepper cruets are inspired by American artist Paul McCarthy’s controversial 79ft high ‘Tree’ sculpture, which was briefly installed in the Place Vendôme in Paris in October 2014.
The Plush Life Verdict: A decidedly extravagant restaurant which lives up to well-deserved hype, and which is as much a place for works of art to shine as it is a place to eat. Book for a special occasion or bring guests from abroad to show off traditional (but vastly elevated) classic British dishes.
The details: First floor, 41-43 Mount Street, W1K 2RX; 020 3840 9860; mountstrestaurant.com
