Taste takes a look at the soon to be opened The Gilbert Scott, Marcus Wareing's British brasserie at the St Pancras Renaissance Hotel.
We've seen a flurry of big name openings across London in the past year or so, with hotel restaurants among the highest profile. No sooner has the online chatter and media's attention focused on the latest returnee (Pierre Koffmann, Bruno Loubet), Atlantic crossing (Daniel Boulud and Wolfgang Puck, imminently), or second coming (Heston Blumenthal) the foodie world's capricious gaze seems to move on, looking for the latest action.
One hotel restaurant thoroughly bedded down since 2008, Marcus Wareing's eponymous, two Michelin starred restaurant at The Berkeley routinely sends critics weak at the knees with his modern French cuisine. Now London's aflutter as Wareing prepares to open his second restaurant, The Gilbert Scott, in one of the capital's most dramatic locations. The "British brasserie" occupies the 1873 entrance hall and coffee room of Sir George Gilbert Scott's Victorian Gothic St Pancras station, now beautifully restored to accommodate the Eurostar terminus, private apartments and the St Pancras Renaissance Hotel. Wareing will remain at his flagship, while his protégé, Kiwi Chantelle Nicholson, takes the reins at St Pancras.
For such an urban restaurant, The Gilbert Scott is very much rooted in its location. The menu takes cues from the building's sense of history and travel - "celebrating the very best of the UK's regional culinary history; subtly modernising traditional dishes to unusual effect" - alongside the influence of Isabella Beeton, cookery writers Florence White and Agnes Marshall, and 18th century chef and author of The Cooks and Confectioners Dictionary, John Nott. Expect an adventure through the British Isles' seasonal, regional ingredients and lesser known recipes like Dorset jugged steak, tweed kettle (sea trout with a lemon, nutmeg and herb crust) and lemon infused water pudding. Wareing explains: "We think Londoners enjoy honest food that has its roots in the past but with British produce very much at the helm... Traditional dishes are simple and unfussy with lots of flavour, using ingredients that were just as popular in the original."
True to its roots as a brasserie and living up to its railway hotel digs, The Gilbert Scott serves food early till late seven days a week - a nod, too, to Londoners' increasingly elastic dining hours. The flexible menu offers breakfast at the bar, an afternoon punchbowl alongside pork pies and "Countess Morphy's croquettes", as well as elevenses and "threesies". An early supper menu leads into dinner hours that should satisfy the most jaded Eurostar hopper: "there are more people willing to book after 9.30pm so our bar is also ideal for this with drinks, nibbles, or for a late night cocktail."
A pastry bar will be serving a regional round-up of puds that sound like stations along a gastronomic railway - Cambridge cream, Bakewell pudding and Manchester tart - a fitting retreat for diners who like their history both as a backdrop and on the plate.
Marcus Wareing and The Gilbert Scott will be appearing at the Taste of London Action Against Hunger pop-up on June 17.
The Gilbert Scott opens on May 5, 2011
thegilbertscott.co.uk