Guide to London's best Tasting menus

Gauthier Soho

Gauthier, a vegan nexus in Soho’s Romilly Street, offers a £75 per head 10 course tasting menu that includes Berlingot a La Truffe, Pithivier d’Ete, Nuage aux Fraises, Blette de Mer and Comme un Fromage. If that all sounds French to you, check out the link.  

Hunan

Not exactly a tasting menu, more of a magical mystery meal just a short walk from Sloane Square station. There is no menu to choose from at Hunan, you simply let the kitchen know what you don’t like to eat and then sit back and eat what they put in front of you! For the most part it’s tapas-style sharing food with a Chinese emphasis. When it comes to wine the aim is ‘fine wine at a fair price’. The Times restaurant critic Giles Coren says: ‘I have long accepted that Hunan may be the best Chinese restaurant in the world.’ Lunch is £68.80 and dinner £78.80 per head. 

Kahani

If you can’t get a table at Hunan but still want to eat in Chelsea, Kahani is a stroll away off Sloane Street. What you find here is Indian food reimagined at the most culinary of levels, with six course tasting menus for both omnivores and vegetarians. On the first expect scallops, Malabar prawns, guinea fowl, lamb chops, sorbet and desserts. On the latter a feast of vegetables with signature Indian cooking styles £70 and £65 respectively. Both are available with wine pairings.  

Note residents get a 20% discount off food - please mention R&R Resident when you book.

Davies and Brook at Claridges

Known for its chic charm and politesse ever since visitors to the Raj sailed ‘port out, starboard home’ (aka POSH) on the Cunard Line, Claridges has been a watchword for high end dining. The Davies and Brook menu is both mouth-watering and eyewatering – it includes caviar, white asparagus, black cod, dry-aged duck and cheese and, with the wine pairing included costs £250 per head. If that’s not traditionally reassuringly expensive, we don’t know what is. 

https://www.claridges.co.uk/restaurants-bars/davies-and-brook/ 

Ikoyi

Nestling in St. James’s between Lower Regent Street and Haymarket, Ikoyi sets its menu around a vast collection of spices sourced predominantly from sub-Saharan Africa. Expect hot and spicy flavours so, if you’re experimenting, start with the £60 tasting lunch. If you’re ready to go ‘full on’ the dinner tasting menu is a healthy £150. Overall, it’s a uniquely unclassifiable sort of place that pairs equatorial aromas with British micro-seasonality.  

Core by Clare Smythe

The first and only female chef to run a three Michelin-star restaurant in the UK, Clare Smythe’s food defies superlatives. Two tasting menus are on offer – Core Classics at £155 and Core Seasons at £175. That seems like exceptional value, even if you do have to go to Notting Hill. We would quite simply like to have both. Cor – there’s a thought!