Spring

Occupying the west wing of Somerset House, Skye Gyngell’s Spring starts with the advantage of a beautifully calming space, enhanced by a clever and sympathetic interior. The lofty ceilings, the many shades of white, the artful wall sculptures, even the Japanese-influenced staff uniforms all add to the mood of peaceful serenity.  

The kitchen uses sustainably produced and ethically sound ingredients for seasonal dishes that are “modern, fresh and different enough to feel exciting”– as in in a starter of perfectly ripe peach, sweetened with honey, perfumed with rosewater and given a savoury, salty kick with Culatello ham or a carpaccio of sea bass dressed with a salsa of cucumber and green tomatoes, corn, chilli and lime.  

Stick to the simple main courses to get the best from the kitchen – a generous chunk of steamed turbot served on a bed of cucumber with an exemplary béarnaise is as unfussy as can be, yet delivers a lovely balance. So too does fillet steak (served Italian style with salsa verde), though perfectly grilled lamb cutlets with aubergine gratin somehow lose their intensity through the build-up of herbs and spices.

To conclude, there’s a choice of straightforward desserts: bitter chocolate cake with coffee ice cream; treacle tart; warm ginger and rhubarb pudding. The wine list promises an enlightened world tour with fair mark-ups, but also check out the zesty cocktails and homemade tonics.

While the main repertoire is both elegant and wholesome, Skye Gyngell has taken the sustainable ethos to another level for pre-theatre deals. Arrive between 5.30pm and 6.30pm for the ‘scratch menu’, which utilises ingredients that would otherwise have gone to waste. The menu is not designed to be fancy or complicated, rather think organic ingredients such as beetroot tops and potato skins turned into simple soups or yesterday's bread transformed into warm bread pudding served with a spoonful of last year’s gooseberry jam. At £25 a head, this is a steal, and the feel-good factor is priceless.

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.