Restaurants

David Collins’ interior, with its otherworldly brass fittings and olde worlde wood panelling, smacks of an HG Wells novel. It perfectly suits a restaurant where chef Andrew Turner presents British ingredients with molecular gastronomy touches. Customers can enjoy a view of Nash’s All Souls Church and the BBC’s Broadcasting House through regal windows curved around one end of the oval room. Beautiful breads, presented in a silver bowl, included carta di musica smeared with fresh pesto, a baguette glistening with olive oil and nourishing seeded varieties. On the side – a pat of butter and a little pile of pink Himalayan sea salt. Slow-cooked roast chicken had a good crisp skin, which also featured as a decorative shard to garnish pommes purées. This was accompanied by reassuringly seasonal veg including morels and green and white asparagus, plus a lovely mushroom cream sauce. Expect some confident flavour combinations, such as in our sweetly spiced pastry parcel of duck confit with orange segments, green asparagus and sun-dried tomatoes. However, the foie gras terrine with passion-fruit and vanilla sauce was not quite a harmonious match. Desserts are excellent. Most popular are the profiteroles filled with raspberry sorbet and cream and covered with dark Amedei chocolate sauce at the table; their caramel antenna ‘allows you to pick up the BBC’, staff joke, and the assembly looks like something from The Jetsons. A substantial summer pudding came with well-balanced milk and mint sorbet (we doubt there’s a better mint ice in London) and a clever blob of vanilla-flavoured milk, formed by dolloping the liquid in a seaweed bath. The wine list offers plenty in the £28-£35 bracket but nothing under £25 a bottle. We weren’t impressed by the wine waiter pointing us to pricey bins, though the wine he eventually persuaded us to order was delicious.

Time Out Eating & Drinking Guide 2009