Spring, London WC2 – restaurant review

There’s something dreamlike about Spring. The gauzy drapes and beautiful light fittings, like bunches of softly glowing white currants; the velvet sofas the colour of a baby’s fingernail. We’re shown to our table by a woman whose structural, trapezoid white frock makes her look like a beautiful Dalek. Wafting past a courtyard garden into the lofty, ceramic blossom-strewn room – a croon of sugared almond colours disguises its municipal past – delivers a touch of the Buñuels.

It also, with its nude leather chairs and marble bars, looks like it cost a gazillion quid. It oozes ascetic luxury. (Which, it turns out, is something of a theme: the food is also ascetically luxurious, in that ingredients are left very much to tell their own stories.) Somebody has invested a lot in chef Skye Gyngell – formerly a Michelin star winner at Petersham Nurseries – in an environment so far removed from her previous shack-and-garden-chairs outpost that it draws actual gasps from rubberneckers peering in.

That “respect for beautiful ingredients” wends through her menus like a refrain. Everything tastes the best it can be – the pal and I spend some time trying to identify the sombre, almost liquoricey flavour in a turbot dish. Eventually, the penny drops: it’s the olive oil in the salmoriglio, so fresh-pressed, so bullish, it almost transcends itself, fighting through bone marrow-enriched jus, parsley and garlic to make itself heard. Does that sound pretentious? Sorry, there’s a certain po-faced house style that’s a bit infectious. And I don’t much like the dish, our only dud: the fish is an oafish cut, unfilleted, too near the tail, bony and gelatinous, a shade overcooked, and done few favours by the marrow’s blubber and the fleshiness of chanterelles.

But that’s the bad news: everything else is as dreamy as our surroundings. A clever salad made with raw brussels sprouts and celery hearts in a sprightly, lemony dressing has its potentially Spartan nature jollied considerably by thick shavings of pecorino, folds of smoky speck and the crunch of toasted hazelnut. One of Gyngell’s trademark dishes, scallops with creme fraiche and chilli jam, is heavenly, the scallops caramelised, the chillies smoky and resonant. My Dover sole is a fine, taut fish, its exterior burnished and crisp, served with spinach, cannellini beans and three-cornered garlic (shyly hiding, this last). It’s more like a slip sole in size, and makes me think fondly of Stephen Harris’s version at The Sportsman, where for your money it’s also forensically filleted.

I unreservedly love three huge, silky-chewy porcini and potato-stuffed ravioli, bathed in butter and draped in huge, wilted sage leaves. We’re about to whinge about the lack of parmesan on top, but one mouthful and we shut up: the interplay between earthiness, salt and fat needs nothing further. This is sublime, uncomplicated perfection. As is sourdough, with its amorphous blob of sweet, fresh butter.

It’s hard not to notice how feminine it all is, with chef, sommelier, maître d’ and designer (Gyngell’s sister, Briony Fitzgerald) all one of us gals. Even the artworks are by female artists. At night, it’s seductive and, yes, dreamy. During the day it’s chillier: pale, precious and studied as Dita Von Teese. But still beautiful, even if the ugly old Strand rumbles away outside.

So it’s all charm, grace, light. Men are allowed to work the floor, but tricked out in little bows in case testosterone gets the better of them. (Our amiable server is a scion of the Allen family, from Ireland’s legendary Ballymaloe, and manages to resist emasculation by outfit. He recommends a slow-burning, complex Loire chenin, Les Noëls de Montbenault: remarkable. And 74 quid.) And then the bill comes and it feels as though the sylvan loveliness has cracked to let something altogether more feral seep out from underneath. Sure, I was vaguely aware that starters average about £15 and mains £30. But a cocktail, a homemade boozy cordial and my numerical dyslexia means that the resultant bill of well over £100 a head makes me feel a trifle bilious. Spring is beautiful, and Gyngell’s cooking exhilarating in its (mostly) perfectionist simplicity. Perhaps the Michelin-chasers famously bemused by her Petersham Nurseries’ earth-floored rusticity will feel happier here. But I wonder if she will.

• Spring, Somerset House, Lancaster Place, London WC2, 020-3011 0115. Open Mon–Sat noon–2.30pm, 6–10.30pm; Sun noon–3pm. About £80 a head including drinks and service; set lunch Mon-Fri, £25.50 for two courses, £29.50 for three.

Food 7/10
Atmosphere 7/10
Value for money 5/10

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