Weekly Review: Row on 5
Wit, stories, accessible luxury, technical brilliance, meticulous attention to detail, and fantastic experiences that Thomas Keller would admire.
Quick hit: Delightful place where every single thing is pushed to the limit of perfection and has a story to match.
Details: Booking essential. Mayfair. ££££.
Restaurant website. More on Instagram and from Michelin.
Find it on Google Maps. 5 Savile Row, W1S 3PB.
The first time I visited the French Laundry, it wasn’t in Yountville, California. It was right here, in London, at Harrod’s. America’s best chef, Thomas Keller had taken America’s best restaurant on the road, and his team had contrived to build an almost perfect replica of the French Laundry’s main dining room in one of the spaces at London’s most famous shopping venue.
Needless to say, the experience was fantastic. But the thing I most remember were the laughs.
The second to last course was “Monte Cristo Sandwich,” an item well known to every American school kid. It’s turkey and/or ham with cheese between two slices of bread, dipped in eggs that are sometimes mixed with honey, and browned on a flat top grill. An experienced cook in a cafeteria kitchen could turn out hundreds in an hour.
Keller’s was a culinary joke. A school dish elevated to perfection. A tiny parcel of the best Iberico ham and first rate cheese, seasoned with honey, then carefully assembled and precisely presented. It was the opposite of school food. When it landed on our table, my wife and I laughed out loud.
A lobster course was called “Beets and leeks.” “Chowder” was deconstructed, yet invoked all of the flavours you might expect eating from bread bowl on a pier in San Francisco. But the most amusing and intriguing of all was “Oysters & Pearls.” Keller’s most famous and iconic dish that, with others like it, have inspired countless chefs around the world to let humour and storytelling shape their own ideas.
Which is why I was so struck that the very first course at Row on 5 was “Oysters and Pearls,” and that the chef who served it to us specifically mentioned that it was an homage to Keller and the French Laundry original.
But now the heresy: The Row on 5 version was better. 25 years of collective creativity and advances in culinary techniques plus the genius of the Row on 5 team translated into more luscious flavours and greater refinement. The homage surpassed the original.
More broadly, the whole first act embraced Keller’s philosophy of humour, wonder, meticulousness, and accessible luxury. A round of snacks, taken in the downstairs bar, each with its own little story. “Cheese and onion” was a stack made from onion tuiles, onion marmalade, Lincolnshire poacher cheese, and homemade brown sauce. Amusing. I wanted a sackful.
The case for the bluefin tuna tart was made with stock produced from the fish’s bones. Technically wonderous.
The downstairs langoustine course: Prawn cracker. The technical details so complex that they alluded me. It didn't matter. It was the best prawn cracker you can possibly imagine. To eat it, I was given personalised chopsticks and a rest in the form of a Japanese cartoon cat. Brilliant.
From there, we travelled upstairs to the main dining room, and continued the langoustine course. The upstairs version was made with what Chef Spencer Metzger described as the “world’s sweetest tomatoes” which are blanched for exactly 6 seconds to provide a sweet, acidic balance to the Scottish langoustine tails.
Scallop next. Surprisingly, delightfully meaty. Served with salmon eggs and an XO sauce made from other parts of the salmon, in a plate custom-designed to look like a scallop shell.
Brioche, made by hand in the pastry section every day, with an impossible number of laminations. Served with a honey butter in a container custom designed in the shape of a beehive. It was paired with sparkling mead — a drink made from fermented honey and the foundation of medieval Britain.
Turbot, aged for 5 days before it’s steamed and served with a sauce made from monkfish liver. Then Sika Deer, a loin served rare, tender, and wonderful, along with a sauce made from beetroot and marrow. A deep, rich parcel of haunch featuring more superb, delicate pastry work.
For cheese, a dainty tart of exquisitely thin pastry, served warm, adorned with pretty flowers. Except inside is a Stilton bomb on a short fuse delivering an explosion of intense, salty cheese.
It was followed by a sharp course of citrus ice made from fruits chosen for freshness by a farmer in the French Pyrenees. And then a chocolate course. And then tea and cakes. And then petit fours.
It was tremendous.
If I had one complaint, it was the wine service. We did the pairings, and the pours were small, even tiny. A glass of port barely amounted to 25ml. And there was no particular interest in offering top-ups. For this sort of price point, I’d expect more generosity.
Notwithstanding that niggle, my overwhelming impression of Row on 5 was the singular effort to optimise absolutely everything and the preeminence of storytelling in every experience, no matter how small.
For example, petit fours arrived on a custom-made trolley designed to accommodate a range of sizes and styles. The pastry chef who took us through them knew the story of each petit fours — of course — but also of the trolley and all of the ingredients.
The wine list is one of the longest and most extensive that I’ve ever seen. Sommelier Roxanne Dupuy has written the most delightful, informative, and useful tasting notes — and I read a lot of tasting notes.
The upstairs langoustine dish is served in a crystal bowl handmade by a woman in Copenhagen, and throws off a subtle shadow in the shape of a pineapple.
If you want to step outside for a cigarette during your meal, the front desk team will offer you a tailored smoking jacket made by a neighbour on Saville Row.
The downstairs bar area is designed to feel like a luxurious home kitchen. Some guests sit on stools around the island where each item is finished and plated. The whole room is absurdly comfortable.
The upstairs is designed as a theatre. Virtually every diner has a view of the open kitchen where chefs finish each dish before service. The ceiling is beautiful but acoustically perfect. There is a fun, house-curated playlist that became recurring talking point throughout our lunch.
Even the location has become part of the story.
Metzger and his team were late opening Row on 5 because they had to consult with the Saville Row Tailor’s Guild in order to secure their licensing. No one on Saville Row ever does anything in haste, so the consultations took a while. (Row on 5 is the only licensed premises on the row, and there will almost certainly be no more.) But the result is a real collaboration between the restaurant and the row’s small community. Uniform trousers come from one neighbour. Those smoking jackets from another. Menu covers from still another. Scents from the parfumerie on the corner. Traffic to the restaurant has increased foot traffic to the row. Symbiosis works, even in licensing.
When I summarised Row on 5 for GQ, I said that the restaurant is “delivering at a world-class standard that the row’s meticulous and artful cutters can admire.” But the success goes beyond even that high compliment.
Row on 5 is delivering fun, wit, stories, accessible luxury, technical brilliance, meticulous attention to detail, and fantastic experiences that I’m convinced Thomas Keller would admire, and that is high praise indeed.
But is it for professional lunch?
Absolutely. But plan on spending the afternoon.
Metzger and his team earned their first Michelin star in February when they had been open only 7 weeks. I am certain they will achieve at least two in next year’s announcements, and they clearly have ambitions for three.
So my advice is to go now. It’s a wonderful experience, and you would have to try very hard not to enjoy it.
Thanks for reading this week’s review. And thanks for subscribing to Professional Lunch. I’d be grateful if you could share this review with your friends and colleagues, and please let me know what you think in the Comments.
This is the second very positive review about Row on 5 that I’ve read from afar. Glad to see it’s doing well. We’ve seen Jason in Dubai a few times and he’s spoken about it enthusiastically. Many of the dishes mirror Row on 45 in Dubai.