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Putney has never – I repeat, never – been able to sustain a fine dining restaurant. The replacement of Michelin-starred Putney Bridge by a rowdy Thai Square a decade ago is one of the saddest examples of this. Yet Hide & Seed, located within a modish new hotel on Upper Richmond Road, offers hope anew.
The chef has cleverly gathered adventurous ingredients then given them a restrained, classic treatment that won’t scare away the area’s many Ladies What Lunch. Dishes such as ‘fish, bread and coffee’ (bitter-edged brill in a smooth bread sauce with spicy langoustines) are a love letter to Michelin’s inspectors – H&S may not get its star, but it certainly wants one. We also enjoyed our pig’s head terrine, fashioned from meat slow-cooked for 22 hours and served with chewy tendrils of pig’s ear, blobs of smoked pepper jam and teeny pearls of cucumber. Cabrito (Spanish for kid) meat came two ways: slow-cooked leg and tender, pink-middled loin, with two kinds of purée (carrot and rosemary potato) – more haute than goat.
Service, too, is polished yet relaxed. But, and you knew there’d be a ‘but’, this is a small hotel restaurant – and it shows. One side of the room is open to the corridor, which is convenient for servers but distracting for diners, conscious of hotel guests trotting past. The restaurant proper is also a windowless space, albeit one smartly tricked out in the style of a gentleman’s study: floors carpeted, shelves stocked with vintage books and Barbour green walls hung with photos of sporting greats. As it’s ten minutes’ walk from the high street, you’ll need to make an effort to get here. But perhaps the denizens of Putney will save H&S from joining the Great Restaurant Graveyard in the Sky.