The requisite seasonal small plates, by head chef Michael Miles, perhaps play things with a straighter bat. Golden-fried, breaded mackerel lounged beside a zinging pool of tartare sauce; an oiled tangle of roasted leeks were similarly defibrillated by a twin hit of herbed yoghurt and salsa verde; Welsh rarebit, the apogee of blowtorched squidge and crunch, benefited from the lily-gilding exclamation point of fat, glimmering anchovies. Miles previously cooked contemporary Italian at Manteca but here — as clued by the staff’s oversize, St John-style chore jackets — he is channelling something of Fergus Henderson’s gutsy restraint, stark aesthetics and gleeful British revisionism.
