Cheneston’s Restaurant at The Milestone Hotel and Residences

Cliché as it may be, Cheneston’s is truly one of Kensington’s best kept secrets. This traditional dining room is tucked away inside The Milestone Hotel just opposite Kensington Gardens, where Ritz-trained executive chef Daniel Putz showcases his extraordinary talent via a menu of classical dishes.  

The dining room is the epitome of old British elegance, with classic wood panelling, delicate Victorian leaded windows and tables laden with silverware. It seats just 24 diners, and we visited on a particularly quiet evening, but service is genuinely relaxed and warm and goes a long way to making us feel at home. 

The staunchly British theme continues with the food, and the tasting menu reads like an old friend in its commitment to familiar flavours. Putz, however, injects purpose into every plate, so that the whole eight-course experience feels seamless, exciting and well balanced. We start with warm, sweet soda bread served with a perfect quenelle of soft cultured butter, followed by an impossibly light crab salad with crisp apple and crunchy sourdough croutons. These great dishes all led to an extraordinary one: a perfectly cooked piece of hake paired with a deep-fried smoked salmon beignet, broccoli puree and a superb white wine and caviar sauce. A pretty key lime pie, zesty and sweet in all the right places, would have been the perfect conclusion to a fantastic meal, but Putz is a clearly a feeder and rounds off his menu with a thick wedge of goat’s cheese, with walnut bread and fig jam.  

The whole affair is yours for £110, which for the location, quality of dishes, and all-round state of London’s restaurants scene right now, doesn’t seem like a bad deal. We weren’t drinking on the night, but wines can be matched with your meal if you like, or there’s an extensive wine list for more discerning drinkers. If you're after boundary-pushing cuisine laced with theatre and innovation, there are plenty of places in London we'd recommend instead, but when it comes to superb classic cooking served with grace and finesse, you can’t do much better than Cheneston’s.  

Cheneston’s is a fine dining British restaurant located inside the Milestone Hotel just moments away from the stunning Kensington Gardens. Oozing plenty of traditional British charm and serving a comforting menu of refined classics, this elegant restaurant offers a sumptuous escape from the bustling streets of the city.

The traditional but luxuriously-dressed dining room boasts rich mahogany furniture, warm wood panelling, high ceilings and large windows which flood the space with plenty of natural light. This beautiful room is bursting with period features and character that’s guaranteed to transport guests to another world while they dine.

The kitchen team is headed up by executive chef Daniel Putz who has created a menu of warming signature dishes inspired by the hotel’s founder Beatrice Tollman. All the recipes have either been passed down in the family or discovered while travelling, adding a personal element to every dish. Examples of starters on the a la carte menu include Mrs T’s chicken noodle soup which is presented in the form of a pie, as well as H Forman & Son smoked salmon with soda bread. For main course, you might like to try Mrs T’s chicken pot pie, grilled dover sole with new potatoes, creamed spinach, lemon and caper dressing, or roasted loin of highland venison with celeriac, pear, hispi cabbage and red wine jus.

While dessert includes plenty of indulgent classics – think tonka bean custard tart with pear and amaretto reduction, and Mrs T’s baked vanilla cheesecake with strawberry compote.

There is also a Night Menu which serves food from 10:30pm for late-night diners, and includes a selection of light bites and starters, mains and desserts. Children are taken care of by way of a kid’s menu if you’d like to bring the whole family along.