Evelyn’s Table is one of the littlest restaurants in London. When it reopens on 27 October, it will be even smaller. The venue, in the converted beer cellar of The Blue Posts pub in Chinatown, ordinarily seats 11. With social distancing in place, there will be room for only nine. The chefs Luke Selby and his brothers Nat and Theo were set to debut here in April. The restaurant’s extended closure has kept them treading water until now. Luke, 29, was head chef at Hide Above on Piccadilly when it won a Michelin star in 2018. Before that he worked under Raymond Blanc at Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons and Clare Smyth at Restaurant Gordon Ramsay. Nat, 27, and Theo, 25, have cooked alongside him for years, first at Le Manoir and more recently as sous-chefs at Hide Above.
Evelyn’s Table is their chance to cook the way they love most – classically – and to do so in front of an audience, as guests are seated at a counter overlooking the kitchen. Much of the pleasure of coming here will be watching the chefs perform. But don’t expect any razzle-dazzle for its own sake. What you get isn’t so much a song and dance as a quiet show of confidence. “We know what we are thinking without speaking,” Luke told me when I visited for a preview tasting in September. The challenges of pulling together a five-course meal in a galley kitchen the size of a closet hardly registered. What struck me more was the ease with which they glided around one another. It was an endearing pas de trois.
The menu wasn’t showy either. Dishes were rooted in classic French and Japanese techniques. A starter of Jerusalem artichoke and sour-cream sorbet was full of textures and teasingly subtle flavours. The buckwheat noodles with mushroom dashi and smoked soy was just as light, a soothing distillation of umami. The third course was bolder, and very French – brill poached in a braisage sauce with leek terrine. The leeks had been pressed into a chequerboard of white and green and were the most gorgeously leek-tasting leeks I’d ever had. Next was a sublime lamb belle époque, followed by a pre-dessert scoop of toasted rice ice cream (like a yummy bowl of cereal). Last came tarte tatin in a miso-caramel sauce, for which the Pink Lady had been cut into a long strip, fashioned into a rose bud and swaddled in pastry. The muffin-shaped dessert was beautifully chewy on the outside and moist in the middle.