45 Jermyn St.

45 Jermyn St. – St James’s London SW1 - Home

http://www.45jermynst.com

45 Jermyn Street restaurant review: A rare find where you'll be ...

There is a hefty and original drinks menu, which makes the most of the kitchen’s homemade sodas, but staff are just at ease if you stray away from the list of signature cocktails.

The current menu has fully embraced Autumn and Winter, and the bounty of new ingredients that the changing seasons bring – think Thai pumpkin and coconut soup and the signature beef Wellington, made with Glenarm 28-day aged beef, carved, flambéed and served tableside on the restaurant’s much-loved trolley.

In fact the trolley might be one of 45’s highlights, appearing whenever someone ordered caviar (served on top of lightly scrambled eggs), the lobster spaghetti for two and baked Alaska, my pudding of choice and a sophisticated, and much, much better take on a long-forgotten school favourite.

I am sure that the trolley isn’t a necessary – all of the above could have been produced in the safe anonymity of the kitchen – but every time it was wheeled out I couldn’t help but smile.

The three-course menu at 45 costs £35, including a cocktail.

Fortnum & Mason's New Restaurant: Snails, Style and Inexpensive ...

45 Jermyn St. - Fortnum & Mason

Redecorate the restaurant, but you can't redecorate the clientele ...

Forty-five Jermyn St lives in the left-hand buttock of Fortnum & Mason (F&M), a shop whose acronym is slightly too close to FGM (female genital mutilation) for this column to be able to relax there for long periods, even though its Diamond Jubilee Tea Salon is excellent.

Its name is part of a vogue for naming restaurants after postal addresses, and even street numbers (Richard Caring’s 34 in Mayfair).

This restaurant seemed to be composed entirely of flounces and it suited F&M, a peculiarly British palace of dreams that sells heritage relish across the globe.

The customers, despite the rebranding, are still ageing, international (Jews and Arabs, temporarily at peace due to the soothing proximity of food), soft in face and the sort of rich that does not care what it looks like; that is, very rich.

There is a soft buzz of pleasure in this restaurant, just three days old.

Grace Dent reviews 45 Jermyn St.: I can think of no better place to ...

I have a terrific soft spot for Jermyn Street, sitting elegantly behind Piccadilly — just a brief skip away from the ragged hordes on the steps of Eros, the open-until-midnight Boots and the lo-fi electric billboards that resemble a sort of Lidl-brand Times Square — yet it’s a different world entirely.

I can’t say that 45 Jermyn St, the new cocktail bar on the ground floor of Fortnum & Mason (taking the place of the 60-year-old The Fountain Restaurant), will be an enormous help to such easily led people.

Useful when you’re greedily coveting an ice cream float from the ‘Afters’ menu like a woman not remotely ready for a close-up.

Brown butter syrup, Four Roses bourbon, cornflake ice cream... No?

How about Sarsaparilla syrup, Gosling’s Black Seal rum over gingerbread ice cream?

New Openings: 45 Jermyn St.

The concept: If I were a guidebook-toting tourist and I stumbled upon 45 Jermyn St., I’d give myself a pat on the back for finding such a beautifully preserved gem this close to Piccadilly Circus.

For that’s certainly what it looks like with its pretty pleated table lights, green gloss paintwork, rosewood tables and textured silver glass walls.

Open from breakfast to late supper, 45 Jermyn St. harks back to a golden age of dining, when waiters wore dickie bows and the maître d’ knew your favourite table, but it isn’t afraid to reach out to today’s bright young things who, if they dare leave east London, will love the grey and gold marble bar dispensing retro sodas, rickies and floats.

45 Jermyn St. | Restaurants in St James', London

From the lacquered tables and salmon red leather banquettes (one of which snakes down the centre in a dramatic double S bend) to the Art Deco lamps and crackled glass panels, 45 Jermyn St makes you feel under-dressed in anything less than a beaded shift (ladies) or spats (gents).

Dimming the lights would help, but this is a place to see and be seen and the greeting from waiting staff was warm.

Given that the place wasn’t crammed, the meal felt a tad rushed – starters arrived within 10 minutes of ordering and mains followed with barely time for a convenience break (on that note, follow the door marked ‘Peas and Leeks’ – not a dedicated vegetable kitchen, but a punning pointer to the loos).

Oysters and caviar top the menu – if you like theatre, the latter arrives by trolley and accompanying eggs are scrambled at the table.

It’s a great place for a grown-up treat and, if you choose carefully from the wine list, pretty reasonable too.