Noble Rot Soho, London: ‘the best thing to have passed my lips in 18 months’ — restaurant review

People kept asking me where I really wanted to go when things reopened. I demurred a fair bit in what I felt was quite a professional way, but I have to be honest. It was always going to be Noble Rot. The original in Lamb’s Conduit Street was a firm favourite, and The Gay Hussar is such an important building in restaurant history that diners over 65 can probably use their National Trust membership card there.

It was right at the beginning of lockdown when the Noble Rot team announced they were taking over the Hussar, and I had to watch, gnawing my nails to the bone and hoping they’d survive the exercise of renovation when all their customers were banged up in isolation and Soho looked as lively as Chernobyl.

So going for lunch at the new Noble Rot Soho was my reward to myself for getting through the weirdest year of a restaurant critic’s life. I invited one of my favourite dining partners, skipped breakfast and pushed through the swing doors like a washed-up leftie Liberal gunslinger, lookin’ fer trouble with the Fleet Street Mob and Ol’ Ma Bloomsbury an’ her Publishin’ Gals.

You have to love what they’ve done to the place. It’s got better loos now and a modern kitchen, but everything else, though it’s been stripped back to the brickwork, has been rebuilt so much in the spirit of Old Soho, it feels like it hasn’t been touched for about a century.

We started with choux buns, piped full of duck liver parfait, with a sweet glaze and a pool of Tokaji jelly. I could’ve proclaimed this was the best thing to have passed my lips in 18 months. I could’ve pointed out the witty reference to the Hussar’s Hungarian heritage. Instead, I let my eyes roll into the back of my head and visualised a three-foot high, savoury croquembouche.

Palourde clams were steamed in a bouillon of sherry and speck. Executive chef Stephen Harris (The Sportsman) and head chef Alex Jackson (ex-Sardine) have the refinement to know that a broth for shellfish should have the same salinity as seawater. They have the taste to add the richness of pork and the blinding genius to add a handful of sweet fresh peas. Occasionally, a pea would come pleasingly to rest on the flesh of a clam like a viridian pearl. (Yes, I know. Fortunately, it’s a hundred metres from the offices of Private Eye, so I was able to file that one to Pseuds Corner in person).

Robert Carrier’s pâté aux herbes is a right little belter. It’s based on finely ground pork but flavoured with great handfuls of herbs and dyed green with spinach. This would have looked great in four-colour separations in House Beautiful magazine in 1978, but these days we’re a little less used to green pork. Actually, it tastes as light, fresh and fragrant as Nigel Slater’s window box and delicate enough to pile thick on toasted sourdough.

There’s a good choice of mains, but I’d have had to hand in my gun and my foodie badge if I hadn’t gone for the big performance piece of whole roast chicken, fresh morels and vin jaune. It serves two or three people, so you can see why I’d radioed for backup. The bird is juicy throughout, with skin crisped, and dismembered into a cream, wine and mushroom sauce. There is a pilaf of preternaturally airy basmati rice to help you deal with this unction, because, apparently, it’s rude to ask for it in a pint mug.

Don’t, whatever you do, eat all the chicken, because you need space for dessert. “Ricotta panna cotta” sounds suspiciously tautologous, but the texture can only be described as dreamy, and a topping of cherries poached in pastis can’t really be described at all. You could probably sing it if you were one of the Vatican’s remaining secret castrati. If you find yourself emotionally unprepared for that degree of sublimity, there’s always túrós palacsinta, a cheese-stuffed Hungarian pancake with a sour cherry sauce that will have you chanting traditional drinking songs and swigging pálinka from a flagon.

I’ve left it to the end to remind you that Noble Rot, as the name suggests, is principally about wine. They have a staggering cellar way beyond my pay grade to comment on. What I can say is that if the food is this good, the wine must be out of this world.

Follow Tim on Twitter @TimHayward and email him at tim.hayward@ft.com

Follow @FTMag on Twitter to find out about our latest stories first