Tom's Kitchen

This latest venture from the keen mind of Tom Aikens has a brasserie on the ground floor, a first floor bar, all topped with a private dining room. Quite how that works out for supply from the kitchen I have not presumed to ask, and in any case it does not seem to affect the quality of the food.

A white tiled kitchen provides a homely enough setting, but perhaps that should come as no surprise given the propensity for people to do more or less everything in the kitchen nowadays.

A typical meal could consist of butternut squash, sage and honey soup, or goat's cheese salad, followed by roast pork cutlet with caramelised apples, cider and grain mustard sauce, or pan fried foie gras served with a pair of fried duck's eggs and crispy bacon. Puddings could be sticky toffee pudding or rhubarb fool.

You can spend the day here, gastronomically speaking of course, starting with a sturdy breakfast and progressing through the day rather like a gourmet monk. Prices are reasonable, the wine list as good as one would expect of a man with Michelin to his name.