Tag Archive for: Mayfair

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How Jayasekara’s The Cocochine has brought a unique magic to Mayfair

‘Mayfair isn’t really me’ is an understatement. From Savile Row with its seamless inside leg measurements to Victoria Beckham’s posh frock shop close to where nightingales once sang in Berkeley Square, past Lamborghini and Rolls Royce showrooms and a Sexyfish that looks sexier than its Manchester spin-off, I have always felt a far from gilded fish out of water, ready to be patronised by snooty doormen and their ilk.

Well, I’ve had a W1 epiphany I call my Counter Offensive. It started with a French dip – smoky steak shards and pulled beef with oozing taleggio and  pickles on a sourdough base accompanied by a generous boat of gravy. An old-fashioned at my elbow, I took in the busy flame-driven open kitchen from my stool at the new Dover Street Counter, casual offshoot of Martin Kuczmarki’s The Dover, a few doors down, whose schtick these past couple of years has been old school Italian New York. I wasn’t quite channeling my inner Damon Runyon here, but I felt properly looked after and energised ahead of a Yapp Brothers wine tasting half a posh mile away along Pall Mall.

Behind the curtain to the Counter
Images: The Cocochine (Justin de Souza)

Counters traditionally are the place to accommodate (or stick) a solo diner like myself. I say, bring it on. Especially when your slice of the action is one of the great current restaurants. If Dover Street was a soothing haven The Cocochine was a revelation. My privileged vantage point on one of the seven ‘front row’ seats offered not just insights into the precision ‘fine dining’ techniques on display but also (unique for Mayfair) a portal into background of regenerative farming and true sustainability.

Such a bonus from a remarkable value £39 three course set lunch. OK, the Cocochine chips I couldn’t resist with my farm beef pie main were a £10 add-on, but wine by the glass wasn’t a rip-off (since I was never going to explore the riches of a cellar boasting over 1,000 bottles in good vintages of Tignanello, Vega Sicilia, Ornellaia, Petrus and the like). 

Larry Jayasekara up close
The fascinating open kitchen

Cocochine – hospitable luxury with an astonishing attention to detail

No exotic allegiances in the moniker; it’s what co-founder Ian Jefferies nicknamed his daughter. Still, it feels not inappropriate when chef partner Larry Jayasekara’s ostensibly Francophile menus are infiltrated by the lemongrass and coconut of his native Sri Lanka.

The last time I strayed along Bruton Place it was for a porterhouse and Guinness at the Guinea Grill in the days when Oisin ‘The Devonshire’ Rogers was running this ageless inn. On the other side of the street a four storey Georgian town house was in the middle stages of its drawn-out transformation into today’s 49 cover restaurant – the counter’s seven, 28 in the dining room and 14 in the private room.

After logistical problems not helped by the Covid lockdown, The Cocochine finally opened two years ago, but its gestation had begun when Larry – after a string of kitchen roles with Marcus Wareing, Raymond Blanc, Alain Roux and, in France, Michel Bras – spent three years as head chef of Gordon Ramsay’s Petrus in Belgravia. 

The Cocochine’s plain exterior…
… belies the lavish interior

It was then that Mayfair gallery owner and legendary suitor of supermodels Tim Jefferies persuaded Larry to showcase his talents at a series of supper clubs, where he pressed him about his future plans. Opening my own restaurant the eventual reply. This from an emigre who had landed in Devon 20 years ago, his first job as a binman, before peeling veg in a Torquay Thai propelled him onto a catering course. The Jayasekara trajectory reads classic rags to riches but he could never have envisaged such a destination, created with a seemingly blank cheque.

Food and drink aside, this is a seriously bravura design destination. Jefferies own art collection is liberally scattered around. Photography is to the fore – the classic likes of  Mario Testino, Helmut Newton and Richard Avedon. Upstairs in the private room with its gold lattice ceiling and elaborate mosaics you’ll find his spare Warhols.

Tanera Mòr’s teeming fishing grounds
Rowler Farm supplies the pork

Regenerative farming in Northants, special seafood from the Hebrides

Readers of this blog will be aware of my commitment to enlightened grass roots  sourcing. Prime example is the Cinderwood Market Garden in Cheshire created from scratch by the Higher Ground team to supply fruit and veg not just their to own Manchester restaurant and siblings Flawd and Bar Shrimp but also fellow new wave independents in the city. Their meat needs are served by Cinderwood neighbours Jane’s Farm and Littlewood’s Butchers near Stockport, a town whose own dining standard bearer Where The Light Gets In holds a Michelin Green star thanks to its own urban sustainable growing programme.

High end London restaurants tend to be less self-sufficient, happy to import from Paris’s Rungis Market and specialist suppliers. The Cocochine is different. Among its investors is Ian Wace, a hedge fund manager who ploughs a different furrow beyond his commercial speculations.

Much of the restarant’s requirements are supplied by Wace’s 1,000 acre Rowler Farm, 60 miles away in Northamptonshire and the rich fishing grounds of Tanera Mòr, an island in the Inner Hebrides he bought and revived a decade ago. 

Not that the chef is averse to sourcing luxury ingredients wherever in the world to suit the kind of menu he creates. In the two years ahead of the opening he travelled to 25 countries.

 Gougère sets the bar high
Lobster raviolo is sumptuous

What of the food?

Amazingly no Michelin star yet, but The Cocochine has just been awarded 3 AA rosettes plus a prestigious international accolade – La Liste’s UK opening of the year award 2026 and three gold stars on its 1000 Global List.

This level of attention focuses on the culinary riches of the £189 a head signature tasting menu, a rollercoaster of tastes culminating in the ‘Watalappam’ Sri Lankan Crème Caramel, Crème Fraiche Ice Cream, scattered with Golden Oscietra Caviare, a bespoke less salty version. 

My three courser was humbler but enticing. If back in the day Le Gavroche’s £60 a head lunch including a half bottle of good wine was London’s great bargain, this is today’s contender. As with the Roux offering, extra appetisers might crop up. In a the realm of Gougères Larry’s is surely king.

The Farm Beef Pie
Those thrice cooked chips

For starter I chose Raviolo of Scottish Lobster in a lime and lemongrass sauce ahead of French Onion Soup with a truffle cheese toastie and for the main rather than Roasted Line-Caught Wild Sea Trout, Seaweed, Bisque it was Slow-Cooked Farm Beef Pie in a perfect pastry casing. Attention to detail: Rowler Farm has its own abattoir and the beef is aged 40 day. 

Dark chocolate Cremeux with Sri Lankan Cardamom ice cream completed the lunch. In hindsight I regret not having ordered  the Vanilla Ice Cream with Jaggery Caramel having learnt afterwards that half a kilo of fresh Tahitian vanilla for one litre of crème anglaise goes into the glace!

The Cremeux was a treat
Vanilla ice cream envy

The Simple Philosophy of The Cocochine

Service was warm throughout with the chef patron on hand to explain his philosophy unobtrusively. He once summed it up in an Observer interview: “It’s about looking after the guests, cooking with love and heart and respecting the ingredients. Hospitality means opening your home to friends and family. You cook for days, and then the first thing you offer [when they arrive] is water. I don’t want to have a champagne trolley in the restaurant, because that should not be the first thing offered. I want to offer guests a glass of water and let them come in, get comfortable and relax.

“We always wanted to make it a place where it’s about the level of art and the quality of the ingredients together, so it’s not just a plate of food. It is a whole experience. Everything here is custom-made to fit. Everything is like a jigsaw. Everything has to be matched. Everything has to be exactly how we wanted it: the flowers, the water, the steak knives, the plates, the tiles, the curtains.” 

Across Bruton Place you’ll also find simpler sibling, the Rex Deli Restaurant (walk-ins only) which, like the Dover Street Counter, brings a whole new casual spin to Mayfair. It’s never going to be Shoreditch with its tats and beards, but surely that vibe has become a mite wearing.

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BiBi – an Indian restaurant like no other thanks to the genius of Chet Sharma

I relish a certain symmetry in my metropolitan dining out patterns. Take Bouchon Racine and BiBi. The former has just been named Best New Opening by the National Restaurant Awards and placed at no.5 in their prestigious top 50. I’d already visited it in Farringdon, driven there by word of mouth and a residual reverence for its previous incarnation in Knightsbridge.

Flash back to the 2022 NRAs and flying in at no.5 and as best newcomer, yes, BiBi, a very different beast from Henry Harris’s take on a classic French bistro. In a discreetly glamorous Mayfair setting chef patron Chet Sharma nods to his Indian heritage both in decor and what’s on the plate but applies culinary methods learned in the development kitchens of our own Michelin heavies L’Enclume, The Ledbury and Moor Hall. The latter’s Mark Birchall is a particular culinary inspiration. He also worked a stint at the Basque Country’s Mugaritz, a respectable 31st in the 2023 World’s Top 50 Restaurants list announced this week. 

No more lists I promise, just take on board that there is high-powered operator a couple of metres across the counter from me, assembling small plates in front of the sizzling sigree grill. The fish and meat that feel the heat are the best of British, the premium spices and other exotics sourced from across the Indian sub-continent. There’s a little map showing you locations on the back of the Chef’s Selection Menu.

At lunchtime there is an à la carte offering and a new four course set menu for £35, but that Chef’s Selection is the only evening option at £125 a head (an optional and top notch wine flight costs £75). The reasoning behind this no-choice direction, which pointedly avoids calling itself a ‘tasting menu’? Even though seven courses plus additional snacks sounds just that… with a certain welcome brevity.

“There’s some bad branding around the phrase ‘tasting menu’,” Chet Sharma tells Tony Naylor for a fascinating  Observer Food Monthly article that dropped just as I started to gather my thoughts for this appraisal of BiBi’s cuisine.

The piece goes on: “BiBi’s £125 dinner menu is expensive. But crazy as it may sound, says Sharma, it was introduced to provide value. In London, he argues, you can easily spend £70 or £80 a head on fairly average food, whereas BiBi’s food (“complex enough to sit alongside the most complex dishes in the country”) aims to provide far greater bang for your buck.

“BiBi’s chefs are not wasting hours of costly labour prepping ingredients that aren’t sold. They are focused on perfecting a streamlined number of dishes. This helps Sharma keep tight control of his fluctuating food costs, and enables him to flexibly gild dishes: ‘Let’s add morels to this dish, for example’, when prices allow.”

Papad
Pepper fry

So did the BiBi food live up to its reputation?

Easily. The snacks signal the playful intent, so far removed from stuffier high end London Indians (BiBi’s owners JKS are also responsible for Trishna, Gymkhana and Brigadiers). Take the papad scrolls flavoured with pungent cave-aged Wookey Hole Cheddar to be dunked in the dankest of green chutneys – pure chlorophyll pesto. Or a single Louët-Feisser oyster (from Carlingford Lough, also, incidentally, favoured by Bouchon Racine) dressed with passion-fruit Jal Jeera, a kind of tart cumin-scented lemonade. 

In the second course proper there’s a similar culinary conceit, where an Orkney scallop sits ceviche like in its shell, loaded with a spiced up Nimbu Pani (lime soda, the Sub-Continent’s  favourite soft drink). In between there’s the punch of a BiBi ‘tartare’. The tenderest of Belted Galloway beef is studded with fermented Tellicherry peppercorns to create a ‘chaat’ of pepper fry. Street food elevated, as they say in the trade. 

Scallop
Macchi

Next up a is a Parsi special occasion classic called a macchi, where white fish fillets, often pomfret, are coated in a paste of ground coconut and sour mango, fresh coriander and mint, and steamed in banana leaves. In the Sharma version, with the emphasis on pickled green chillies, the fish is halibut and the result is hot and gorgeous.

Now that grill kicks in. It’s a £20 supplement for the Aged Swaledale Lamb Barra Kebab (main image). I couldn’t resist and it proved the dish of the evening (against a strong field). This traditional Mughli chop, charred and yet tender, comes encircled by spirals of a sensational Kashmiri doon chettin (walnut chutney), which is fiery but also in perfect balance.

Lahori chicken
Roomali naan

Suddenly and surprisingly the counter in front of me fills up with a parade of dishes that signify ‘this is your main’. A pillowy roomali naan and a goodly helping of rice are there to mop up the juices from an ex-dairy goat Galouti Kebab and Sharmaji’s Lahori Chicken. Galouti means ‘melt in the mouth and this dish involving minced mutton or goat (interchangeable in North Indian cuisine) was created for a toothless old Nawab in Lucknow. The Lahori chicken has been marinated in yoghurt and spices before being barbecued. The whey collected from hanging the yoghurt combines with cashew to make a remarkable sauce alongside some wild garlic puree and a sharp cauliflower chutney.

Shrikhand
Kulfi lolly

Strained yoghurt is the base for the delicate shrikhand dessert featuring strawberry and meadowsweet. To conclude a kulfi ’lolly’, given an equally neat presentation to conclude a beguiling experience that redefines high end Indian restaurant food.

BiBi? A homage to Grandma with a contemporary cutting edge

You’ve been waiting for me to explain the name BiBi? There are echoes of some Sixties boutique there and isn’t there a Korean pop chanteuse with that moniker. Actually it’s an Urdu title roughly translating as ‘lady of the house’, often applied to grandmas and yes there are decorative touches honouring Chet’s own bibis – a wooden beaded curtain similar to the one in his grandma’s own kitchen, while Kashmiri Paisley motifs on walls and bar stools is inspired by her shawls. Antique mirrors and lamps add to the surprising homeliness in a tight 33-cover space.

All this is slightly at odds with the back story of Chef Chet. All that high end culinary discipleship that followed his physics doctorate at Oxford and an obvious commitment to sustainability that is very much of the moment. The kitchen grills with sustainable Holm Oak charcoal from the South Downs; the menu paper is compostable. You do sense though that at BiBi he has come ‘home’. And there is heart there. Utterly surprising and revelatory in the oligarch’s playground that most of Mayfair (and Knightsbridge) has become.

BiBi, 42 North Audley Street, Mayfair, London, W1K 6ZP. Vegetarian and pescatarian tasting menus are available.

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