Spring

For those of us encouraged to eat the rainbow as kids, Spring feels like a restaurant you should be able to collect a sticker for. Wonderfully bright and beautiful, plates come out in a whirlwind of the seasons.

Skye Gyngell is well celebrated for her love of home-grown produce in her restaurants at Heckfield place in the Hampshire countryside. Bringing that same sense of terroir to a Palladian London dining room feels like a challenge but it’s one that Gyngall rises to with aplomb. If anything, the contrast is enlivening.

Pearly white walls and sweeping ceilings preside over a busy cluster of theatre goers and smart suits (even bankers need their five-a-day) clustered around tables enrobed in thick linen and adorned with farm fresh flowers.

Out on the floor the charge is led by a slightly puzzling team who seem entirely unenthused to be serving the kitchen’s delights. Some are sweet, but none offer the kind of service you’d imagine for such a spot.

The lovely things from the kitchen fittingly then take most of the attention. Slices of sweet cucumbers are concentrated with cucumber yogurt and smack of greenhouses in summer. They’re wonderful proof that just a few ingredients handled sympathetically outdo complex cuisine any day of the week.

It’s hard to call to mind a time when cheese hasn’t been welcome on a starter plate, but here it’s particularly glorious. A pile of creamy burrata innards is laced with herb oil and topped with an assemblage of courgette plus toasted pistachios for a plate that feels encouragingly achievable for mere mortals. The reason that comes to mind is it’s food you don’t want to end, so in your panic you begin mentally noting elements in an empty promise that one day you might produce such dishes yourself.

The good kind of greens keep coming with the mains where a plump, crispy skinned partridge breast is served with courgettes challenging their reputation as watery. They’re slow cooked until sweet and taste of a creamy risotto.

With such a steer towards veggies, the menu could feel too virtuous to be enjoyable. Even adults don’t want to be forced to eat their greens. Yet! There is indulgence here too - gold medal to the chunky, nostalgic summer pudding with a healthy dollop of creme fraiche.

Spring can be found nestled inside the New Wing of Somerset House and is the brilliant brainchild of Skye Gyngell. Skye’s culinary experience spans London institutions The French House and Petersham Nurseries, but it was at the latter where she developed her reputation for creating hyper-seasonal dishes using the best of British produce. Such is the thinking behind her debut restaurant Spring, which adopts an environmentally-conscious ethos with everything that it does.  

The main a la carte menu features a curated range of Modern European dishes including the likes of fern verrow broccoli with white bean purèe, black olives and chilli oil to start, guinea fowl with broad beans, peas, poached radishes and aïoli for mains and blood orange brûlèe custard tart to finish. There is also a set lunch menu available Wednesday-Friday, which constantly changes in line with what’s in season. On that note, Spring also offers its famous Scratch menu, which is available early evening from Wednesday to Saturday and is designed with the aim of using up surplus ingredients that would otherwise go to waste. For that reason, it always changes depending on what the restaurant has in that day. 

To drink, there is an extensive wine list with bottles from all over the world, including wines available specifically by the glass or the bottle. Seasonal soft drinks include clementine soda and apple and ginger juice, while house cocktails feature fruity concoctions such as a winter citrus vesper (housemade blood orange liqueur, Sapling gin, Sapling vodka, clementine bitters).  

Further examples of the restaurant’s sustainable initiatives include its Plastic Campaign, with the aim of eliminating single-use plastic from Spring entirely. From removing plastic straws and introducing bio-degradable cling film alternatives, to eradicating the use of plastic containers, all the above helped Spring to become the first single-use plastic free restaurant in London in 2019.